Garden Diary, 17 February 2007

Corn was in later this year but is in a slightly sunnier spot than last year. The summer has been rather crappy, though, just starting to come right in February. I think we'll get some corn after all, but it'll be probably mid March.

Got heaps of self-sown pumpkins this year, in a much better spot than they were last year, so we'll hopefully get some decent pumpkins before the first frosts get here, maybe mid/late April. That's two months away, so I think it will be OK.

Spuds have been low key this year - we certainly won't have the massive crop we had last year, but we've using them steadily so I reckon we'll have them for another month.

Rhubarb as reliable as ever.

Celery has worked out really well, but sadly we left them too long before harvesting - they started to go from translucent to floury white inside just in the last couple of weeks. So, note for next year - harvest them late January ! Still worth planting six plants like this year, as it's apparently expensive to buy. We did get quite a bit of it this year just by picking stalks as we needed them, which worked well. Next year we'll probably have to give most of it away.

Carrots and spring onions successful as always, except we planted way more spring onions than we could use. Katrina planted some coriander this year which worked really well and since we started doing some more Asian dishes it was very useful. Probably the same amount next year. We had some basil in this area as well, sowed from seed, which did much better than the stuff by the tap which went to seed very early on and wasn't happy. Not sure if it was wet feet from the overflowing spouting or not enough sun.

Carrots prolific as usual, such a great crop when you've got kids as they can eat them straight from the garden.

Parsnips coming along nicely, so we should be eating these all winter - great because they're quite pricey. A good lot of beetroot this year, too. I soaked the seeds overnight (accidentally) before planting them and they seemed to germinate really quickly. Might be the cause, might not.

Cherry tomatoes here have rather odd looking leaves, all big and distorted - something odd here. Also, not much fruit at all. Asparagus chugging along well.

Strawberries still rather patchy - not a patch on last year. I really need to weed out the old plants.

Galas still coming along - I haven't picked any more since a couple of weeks ago (I tried one and it wasn't too bad, just small), but they should be good to go in a few weeks, I think.

Peas by the gate are doing well, will be picking them in another week, I think. Some pumpkins here, too.

Moneymakers are flowering prolifically and fruit set is good, so we'll hopefully get a decent crop in another month.