The New Vegetable Patch
Tuesday 14th April
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I have been quite busy in the garden, but got a bit behind with this! So here is a catch up, organised in topics, & what better topic to start with than Compost?
Compost
In the orchard there are at least two compost heaps; in one, I have been putting the mucky straw from the chickens, along with veg peelings, grass cuttings etc. It is about full now so I need to get the other one ready. I have taken most of the compost out, and what's left has a covering of stinging nettles, so not ideal to be plonked on my pristine veg patches! Clearly, the remaining compost needed sieving. I dug it out, put it in a heap, and started sieving. As far as I could, I picked out any worms and put them in the bucket, so they didn't get sieved, while stinging nettles weed roots, and stones were discarded. I put the buckets of compost in the trench dug in the new veg patch for the runner beans, which get planted later.
Seeds & seedlings
I planted a dozen tomato seeds in March, and after a while, two seedlings popped up!
While tidying up in the garage, I came across about half a dozen old seed packets - they had been nibbled by mice or rats, which had eaten the packets, but not the foil packed seeds. Some of the packets were so damaged I'm not sure what the seeds were, but the more intact ones are from 1995 to 2000. As seed shops are shut (though I suppose the internet is still open) I thought I'd plant a few seeds from each packet. I had an idea I'd heard of really ancient seeds being able to germinate (eg see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldest_viable_seed). I was very pleased that after a couple of weeks, things started to grow, and last Saturday I transplanted a dozen or so last century tomato seedlings from being all in one pot to having one each, and spaced out some onion seedlings and three leek seedlings. I also moved six of something else from one small pot to a larger container. Being a hoarder is handy sometimes - you can see the old icecream containers being repurposed!
More soon!