Garden Diary, 22 February 2006
Peas have finished now. Didn't get much out of them (4 or 5 meals) but the strike rate was only about 60%.
Mesclun has done really well, will definitely do that again next year, much earlier in the season, too. And maybe around the side of the house, since they don't really need much sun.
Other late-planted things doing OK. Parsnip and leak strike-rate very low, will need to plant some more. You're not supposed to sow them past December, but it's worth a crack. Second lot of carrots doing well, and a few spring onions and coriander coming up. I might try some carrot and coriander soup again !
The runner beans have done well again, but the little dwarf beans were a bit of a waste of time. I definitely planted them too early, but I did replant some. Admittedly they've beena bit overshadowed by the rhubarb (which has done really well).
Got a few onions in the end - they were hard hit by the snow last year, hopefully better luck this year or maybe plant them slightly later ? Maybe check with Richard ...
Corn seems to be doing really well, even after it was battered by the NW winds of a couple of months ago. 16 plants, hopefully two ears off each plant = 30 ears. Most plants seem to have two ears, some have three, and some probably won't even produce so 30 ears would be pretty good.
The tomatoes have ripened very late this year, apart from the beefsteaks which are in a prime position (and I fed them some tomatoe food when I planted them - maybe helped?). The cherry tomatoes are just starting to ripen up now, so we should get quite a few over the next month.
Potatoes have done their dash, but we'll leave them in the ground for a while - I'm not sure when you're supposed to harvest them. I think you can leave them in the ground for quite a while, but they'll go funny eventually. We haven't bought potatoes for nearly a couple of months now, and I reckon we've probably got another 4-6 weeks worth left, and that's from 15m2, around 50 plants. So, we should be able to meet our potato needs from around 60m2. At a guess, if a serve of potatoes was about 10% of your daily energy requirements - if I needed 2700 calories/day, and there's around 75 calories in 100g of potatoes (probably a daily serving), then I'd need the equivalent of 36 servings of potatoes per day, for which I'd need around 2000m2 of land to provide. So, for the whole family, we'd need around 8000m2, or 2 acres, to feed ourselves. Food for thought ...
The pumpkins have exceeded expectations, because I thought they wouldn't produce anything at all ! There's 7 decent sized ones, so that'll be a few nice autumn meals.I harvested the garlic a week or so ago, and there's 16 very small bulbs. Given that the soil they were in was not good, and didn't get much water, they didn't do too badly.