Garden Diary, 4 November 2005
Despite the snow, the broad beans have bounced back really well. I probably lost maybe half the crop, but I figure we'll still get aaround 4 kg of beans. Some figures: Average 4 beans per pod at avg 2 g per bean, maybe 30 plants in a 4 m2 area, maybe 40 pods per plant = 9.6 kg. So, if I lost half the crop I'd still have 4.8 kg of beans - pretty good result for a first time !
The strawberries are doing well, too. I think we've got 25 plants now (bought four more) and there seems to be an average 12 flowers on each plant = 300 berries ! Given that our berries are small and that there's around 20 berries in a normal punnet, that's still 15 punnets which is quite a few summer desserts.
Apples, red and blackcurrants are doing OK.
Potatoes are all up now - we have over 50 plants so that should be a fair feed of spuds. Should be enough to try keeping some as seed for next year. Some of the spuds we accidentally kept from last year had massive sprouts when I planted them maybe 6 weeks ago near the house, and they've come up well. With better storage we should easily be able to keep enough for next year - sustainability !
Tomatoes are in (6 beefsteak plants). They've got great sun and lots of compost, so should do well. They're rather close to some trees which is not so good, but regular feeding should compensate for that.
The root veges have been a bit of a failure because they went in a bit too early and just before the snow. Some carrots and onions have survived, but the parsnips and celery were a washout and I've dug them over - will need to fill in the onions and carrots and resow the others. We've got some peas and corn to go in that area, too, so that should be good.
I bought some worms for the worm farm, around 1500 for $25 from Bedrock Worms. The farm seems to be doing better now. There seems to be a lot of casts at the bottom of the tray and a fair bit of worm rum is coming off, but they don't seem to have really exploded in population. Maybe I'm just being impatient ...
Harvested some rhubarb the other day. Big stalks but a bit hollow in places - possibly lack of water. Tasted fine, though. I need to feed them up with compost and water them more regularly, probably.
Runner beans from last year are coming along well. The dwarf beans have been rather slow - only 3 up so far. The instructions did say they should be planted in summer, so I jumped the gun once again. Again the snow probably didn't help and I understand soil temperatures are a bit colder than normal for this time of year.
The herb seeds I scattered about under the redcurrant by the house have come to naught - I was just a bit too cocky :-) Will try again somewhere else when I've cleared some more ground, maybe where the rhodo by the crabapple is soon to be removed.
Still working on the composting set up - I'm in the process of building a 3 bay bin thing which should increase our capacity quite a bit. I don't think we'll ever be able to process everything here, but I'll give it a damn good try !