The exertions were mighty, though. In March, as planned, I planted carrots, onions, lettuce, coriander, and mizuna. Unfortunately, I was paying more attention to the dates on the seed packets, and not enough to the last frost dates, and all those seeds got a blast of wintry temperatures, which seemed to kill everything except the mizuna - and even it's only coming up slowly, although I'll freely admit I have no idea what's normal for it.
In any case, the bed I had dug - with much effort, I might add - for the carrots really isn't suitable for anything but quick-growing summer crops; it's in shade too much in spring and presumably in autumn as well. I'll plant some lettuce there in summer, but for now, it'll have to remain fallow.
So in the past couple of weeks, we've planted: potatoes (of an unknown cultivar, marked as 'good all-purpose potatoes), onions (Stur BC 20, from sets), asparagus (Connover's Colassal, three crowns), more carrots (Early Nantes), two new blueberry bushes, and a decent-sized bed of strawberry plants (Elsanta and Loran).
We also put in a twisted hazel (Corylus Contorta) and a weeping birch (Betula pendula Youngii) at the front, removing a rather inappropriate small palm and some shurbs of unknown provenance to make room.
We still have a variety of herbs, pumpkins, and tomatoes to plant when the weather warms a bit, or when I work out the logistics of cats and windowsill plantings. In the meantime, I received a gift of two small tomato plants (a Siberian black tomato, apparently) which are doing well on a north-facing and reasonably cat-safe windowsill - alongside last year's surviving sweet pepper, which seems to be having a go at being a perennial. The tomatoes will go outside later in the year, but I think the pepper will stay inside.
No comments:
Post a Comment