Fresh Garden Salad

We have been harvesting fresh leaves from the greenhouse for a few months now. With the small glimpses of sunshine we have had recently and the slightly less arctic temperatures, we now have more salad than ever and I am battling to stop some things bolting. In the picture, going clockwise from top left, we have a mix of mini gem and all the year round lettuce, wild rocket, radishes and right at the front you can just see some coriander (which started to bolt almost before it got any real leaves). In another greenhouse bed I have more rocket, mizuna and corn salad (I think it's corn salad, the label disappeared and I threw the empty packet away). I regularly patrol the beds for slugs and snails, I don't think I've ever seen as many as I have this year. I love taking my trug and a pair of scissors up to the greenhouse and snipping away until I have the right mix of leaves for dinner that night. The mizuna is very spicy with a mustardy flavour, while the rocket is peppery and the little gem leaves are refreshing. I have also been adding fresh garden herbs to my salad mixes. I really like the freshness and lightness of produce seasonal to this time of year. Add my salad mixes and herbs to the broad beans and baby new potatoes we have been harvesting and you have a pretty perfect dinner. Next time it stops raining I must dash out and sow the next lot of salads to keep the supply coming - and to mix up the ingredients of my salads!

One Year of Veg

When I got going with growing fruit and veg when we moved into the house, I set myself a challenge. I decided it would be interesting to see if in my first year I could have something to eat from the garden every month for a whole year from the first harvest.
Well... fast-forward a year and... I MADE IT! Woohoo! Starting with lettuce which we harvested last April, we have eaten food from the garden every month, finishing up this April with chard (yes more chard and it's still going), radishes, herbs and purple sprouting broccoli - which is still going.
The Summer months are obviously the easiest to keep the harvest coming, from salads, tomatoes and courgettes to potatoes, onions and garlic, but the Winter months and the so-called 'hungry gap' are the bigger challenges.
By far the biggest stalwarts of my patch have been the leafy veg like chard and kale, the chard has been giving me harvests for about a year now and the kale came into it's own over the winter.
This year I am hoping to have more to keep us going over winter, including more stored veg. Last year I had a few spuds - they were used up fast, and we froze a lot of runner beans, carrots and parsnips. This year I would like to have a good stock of onions and garlic and maybe extend the season a bit more by making more use of the greenhouse (if a) the greenhouse stays standing and b) we ever get any sunshine to make anything grow.
Do you ever set challenges for yourself to keep things interesting?

First Early Potatoes

I planted out my first early potatoes today in re-useable grow bags. (I'm saving all the space I can on the plot for maincrops varieties). I am growing two varieties of early potato - Pentland Javelin and Rocket and this will be the first year that I have really paid attention to the difference between earlies/mids/mains and lates. Usually I just chuck them all in the ground at the same time and dig them up gradually from one end of the plot to the other. This year I am keen to get more succession going with my crops so I am doing everything I can to have home grown produce for as long as possible.

The seed potatoes have been chitting on a windowsill for several weeks now (you can read about chitting potatoes here) and finally I couldn't wait any longer to get growing.

I put a layer of home made compost (about three quarters rotted) in the bottom of the grow bags, about 10 cm worth. I also added a handful of wood ash and put the seed potatoes in, chits facing upwards, three to a bag. I added more compost and some bagged topsoil that we got from freecycle so that the potatoes were just about covered.

As shoots start to grow, I will keep covering them with more earth until the bags are full. If there is going to be a frost, I will lift the bags off the ground and protect them with some fleece. Hopefully, I will be harvesting my first potatoes of 2012 around May or June time.

Chitting Potatoes

These are my seed potatoes which have been chitting happily (apart from when one of the cats had a nap on them) on the windowsill for a couple of weeks now.
This year I am mainly growing three varieties plus a couple of early ones to get some successional cropping going on.
I have Maris Piper which I haven't grown before but they are a good all-rounder and Sam asked me to grow these.
I'm also growing Pink Fir Apple, I grew these last year for the first time and they have a delicious flavour and are particularly delicious roasted with some garlic and rosemary.
Another new addition this year is the Salad Blue. It has dark purple skin and the flesh is also purple and retains its colour when cooked which I am very excited about. According to the seed company, it tastes just like a normal potato but has similar health benefits to the sweet potato.

I bought six single seed potatoes with three each of Rocket and Pentland Javelin.

I will probably grow some in pots or reuseable grow bags and the rest in the main plot. The ground is frozen solid at the moment and it's a bit early to get potatoes in the ground yet but I will probably plant them out in March sometime.

What varieties are you growing this year?