Sunday 25 April 2010

Salad leaves


It appears there is no limit to my brother's talents! I arrived at his flat, which happens to be above the office at Rocket HQ (so that we can keep him working 24/7) and he proudly showed me to the direction of his balcony where there were 3 containers full of a variety of salad leaves. Considering we haven't yet reached May, this is quite a feat and so I made suitably impressed noises.




I imagined that there must be some clever gardener's trick that he had employed to get such successful results so early on in the season.


At this point, he went rather quiet.


At last, he confessed that, no, there was no trickery or voodoo magic involved, he had simply stumbled across some plugs leftover from last year and had casually sown them into the pots to see what would happen.


It would seem that our particularly mild climate, deep down in the southerly tip of the UK, means that plants, such as delicate-looking lettuce, are able to survive where in other parts they wouldn't be quite so lucky. The farm is also pretty well sheltered from any extremes of cold or wind.


I should probably now highlight that my aim of writing this is not to encourage you to ring up our office, demanding our Salad Garden immediately! Although Rob was lucky, it is definitely preferable to wait a month to be sure of success.


Having said that, the taste of those leaves, picked fresh from the ground and chopped straight into a salad is absolutely divine! If you've not tried growing salad yet, I cannot recommend highly enough that this is the year that you give it a go. As proven by Rob, you don't need much space, or skill, or even a very high attention span. The books say that lettuce likes shady, cool areas and damp soil. In a roundabout way, they imply that salad leaves are easy to grow.


From Rob's experience, I'd recommend the following:


Stick them in whatever container you have available. Water them occasionally (Rob admits he was sometimes a little sporadic with this). If they are outside, watering them is often done for you, straight from the sky.
Rob is now noticing though that a lot of the salad plants are going to seed, he reckons through lack of care and attention, so regular picking is good.


One book I read gave "Keep eating," as aftercare advice. Now that's something even the most novice of gardeners can surely do!

Monday 12 April 2010

Onions

Inspired by a delicious recipe for onion and cheese pie in How to be a Domestic Goddess (I'm aiming high on the domesticity front!), onion sets are next on my list of "Things to plant."

I'm going to be growing some onions from plant and others from sets, to see how I get on with both. Onion sets are basically mini onions, which are meant to be much easier to grow than from plant. Despite this, I'm quite looking forward to attempting to grow from plant though- I like the surprise of not knowing how many onions you're going to harvest. With sets, the number of mini onions you plant is the same number you'll harvest- only, they'll hopefully have grown quite a lot bigger!

I'm growing Sturon onions, which are a variety that can be planted during the Spring. I'm planting mine in the raised beds that have already been prepared and, like the rhubarb, they like growing in a sunny spot. Onions are a good companion for carrots, so I'm told, as they help to keep the carrot fly at bay. Which is helpful.




I've planted the onion sets straight into the ground, without digging a trench or anything as they need to be planted only shallowly. I pushed each bulb into the ground, leaving the tips only barely showing. If you leave too much tip showing, there's a danger that birds will uproot them. I left a space of about a hand-width between each onion. The books tell me you have to be particularly fastidious about weeding around onion plants because their thin leaves can't deal with competing weeds (bless, the delicate little things!)

And that's it! A big tick for the ease of planting onions! Completely faff-free! I just hope that they grow just as easily!

PS. I had a look at my forced rhubarb just now and it is looking FANTASTIC! Bright red and delicious- I can't wait for it to be ready. As a comparison, I also planted some in pots and left them to grow normally- although they're growing, they are nowhere near as big or as brightly-coloured as the forced stuff.



Forced rhubarb (not a very convincingly Unforced rhubarb- much
red photo, I'm afraid.) smaller!