First harvests

It's nearly two months on from my last post and things are growing better than I expected in the vegetable garden. It has been a lovely mild autumn down here and we have been harvesting kale and chard for several weeks now.

Chard plants a few weeks ago

 ..and this kale is called Red Russian kale and has grown much faster than some of the others I sowed. I let it flower every year and save my own seed, and if I don't get to it in time it happily self seeds everywhere. Its down side is that it's not as hardy as some of the other varieties of kale, and in the middle of winter it looks really sad and scruffy and stops growing, but has another flush of growth in the spring. Brassicas are supposed to be difficult plants to save your own seed from because they will cross breed readily with and other brassicas in the area, so I'm not sure why this one seems to come so true from seed.

Red Russian Kale

The vegetable garden area looks a bit like a proper vegetable garden already. About half of it is roughly dug over and the old turf has mostly been killed quite well by the thick grass mulch.

A few of the old seeds didn't germinate, but most did. We've eaten most of the radish, there are tiny thyme plants, parsley just about ready to harvest and one lonely rocket plant! I have transplanted sweet williams, pansies, hollyhocks and evening primroses into the flower beds and there are lots of different kinds of kale plants coming on to keep us in kale through the winter. There are also some broad bean plants, a few hardy peas (the seed was a bit old and only 3 germinated) and some winter onion sets. I Because I only have a small area cultivated but want lots of variety I have mostly only sown 12 inch rows of each plant, and if lots come up I thin them or transplant into spaces elsewhere. It's so easy to be swamped by 60 hollyhocks or 20 kale plants, and really, I only need 5 or 6 of each.

A lovely purple kale I haven't grown before
(can't remember its name!)

And finally here's a general view of the veg garden looking lovely and green in the sunshine a few days ago.

Seedlings germinating

Even though I have been sowing seeds all my life I still get excited when little green shoots start popping out of the ground. There is something very magical about burying tiny little seeds in the ground and seeing them transform into plants. Many of these seeds have been sitting in a tin in a drawer at home for months if not years, some I was given and many are past their 'sow by' date.

The first radish, about 3 days after sowing!

One rule of seed sowing is to try and sow them thinly. This avoids having to thin them later and is more economical on seed. I know it’s easy to say, and, even after all these years I still sow stuff too thickly, I’m as guilty as everyone. So this is a ‘Don’t do as I do. Do what I tell you to do’ rule! 

My excuse on this occasion is that most of these are old seeds. Some have even been salvaged from chewed packets in peoples sheds, and some are seeds I’ve saved myself and which I therefore haven’t had to pay for. So I sowed most of them a little too thickly, and now have to thin them.

Radish a few days later

I wouldn’t normally thin radish, but because I have too little garden and too much time at the moment I have thinned them a little. The are also likely to be the first thing that I will be able to harvest so if I thin them a little they are more likely to reach maturity quickly. (we don't even like radish much, but it will be our first crop so we will eat them anyway!!)

kale before thinning

kale after thinning

chard before thinning

chard after thinning

Even now, after thinning, they are still far too close together and will need to be thinned again. In fact I did transplant a few which I wouldn't normally bother to do but I have lots of space and not a huge variety of crops because winter is on the way. I made a point of watering them really well before and after transplanting and also transplanted them the day before lots of rain was due so nature watered them in for me, and she does a much better job than I do….particularly here in Cornwall it seems?

It is always a good idea to water seedlings well both before and after thinning. Plants will take at least 3 or 4 hours to soak up water so give them a good soaking well in advance, even the day before. 

When I had an allotment that was 3 miles away and which I only got to about twice a week I would sow a lot of stuff in trays at home where I could keep an eye on it and give my seedlings a good start in life. Starting stuff in seed trays, in my opinion, is a lot of work. Now that my veg garden is outside the door I will be sowing as much as possible directly into the ground where plants can search out water and nutrients with their own wide-spreading roots and  nature will look after them, with help from me during dry spells.

The vegetable garden

As we have a huge amount of grass and therefore grass clippings I decided to put them to good use to kill off/mulch the new vegetable garden.
I marked out the area and we piled the first lot of grass clipping on to it about a month ago. It seems to have worked well because not only do they block out the light but they heat up too. Last week covered the next section by laying out all our many empty cardboard boxes, with all the plastic tape stripped off, and piled the clippings on top of those. It will be interesting to see if there is much difference.

Nearest half just grass clippings,
furthest half cardboard and grass clippings

I try to avoid digging as much as possible but the edges were rather untidy so I tidied them up by turning the turf over.

Vince then got very enthusiastic and started clearing back the original clippings and turning the almost dead turf over.

Then I rummaged through my seed tin and sowed some seeds. Very exciting!

It's not the best time of year to be sowing stuff but there are quite a few things that can go in now. I've sowed some kale. It's a bit late really, but if we get a mild autumn ...this is Cornwall after all... they might get going. I also sowed chard which may not get big enough to eat this autumn but will be ready to get going early next year. If we do get some cold weather (below -4/5) I'll give them some protection with some glass or fleece.
I sowed some thyme, just because I had some seeds, and today I'm planning to sow a few Sweet Williams for flowers next year and some parsley, although I think the seed's a bit old so it may not grow. Some seed, notably brassicas (the cabbage family) will keep for years, some, like parsnips ands parsley won't germinate very well at all after a year or tow. I'll do a separate post about seeds/saving and viability sometime.
I'm a great believer in using what you have so when I took on my first Devon allotment I had a access to some mouldy hay and used that to mulch the areas I wasn't cultivating to start with. Another allotment I started was mainly covered with old carpet to start with. I'm a great believer in starting with a small area and not trying to get the whole area under cultivation at once. Ultimately the veg garden will probably be about twice the size of the currently mulched bit, but it will be two or three years until it's all properly under cultivation. Gardening isn't something that should be rushed.
The long term plan is to have no dig (or minimal dig) beds. Here is my current allotment in Devon, and this is what the veg beds will look like eventually.