Roots and New Shoots For Overwintering

With October comes the need to eat stored roots. Soulful stews remind us of the need to think about next year's roots. So with this in mind I have planted my polytunnel garlic varieties of Provence, Iberian Wight and Thermidrome.

The Meteor and Douce Provence peas in gutter, sown in September are peeping through.

The Aquadulce broad beans are too just breaking the surface.

All are sheltering in the poly. They will eventually be planted in there. The brassicas have put on good growth. As too have the celeriac and it is time to give those a boosting feed in order to give me more veg for my stew!

Getting Laid

The path that is...what else to do when the rain descends. After some breaking up of the hard, compacted and somewhat stony path, we scraped off the top layer, put down a bed of sharp sand and laid the slabs directly. This means I have a hard surface upon which I can water, in order to damp down. What a pity we didn't start operations until the start of Autumn...oh well!

In Which I Get A Path To Pursue

Mr VVG made my day today when he gave me this...

I have boards and can now hold back the mulch that I have been heaping on. It has given me a pathway that will be wide enough to take pots, but not so wide that it "steals" my growing area. Hopefully by the weekend I will have a finished pathway of slabs laid onto sharp sand. I feel the polytunnel is settling in rather well now. Notice the celeriac, which is growing away quite happily in there.

Clearing and Cleansing

Well Autumn has arrived with the month of September. We are seeing misty mornings and the start of turning leaves. I have cleared the tomato plants which to be honest have not faired particular well in the poly, but I'm putting this down to a peculiar 2012. We have had enough tomatoes to make a few bags of passata plus provide some seed saving so I'm fairly ambivalent over the shortened season. It was, if you remember my year to grow heritage varieties for seed saving and trialling, so it is somewhat frustrating that I picked the one year when everyone has reported problems in GYO. The peas and beans are over too.
Anyhow it has created an early start on soil conditioning and cleaning of the polytunnel.  So yesterday saw me add the seaweed out of my water butt to the top of my beds as a cleansing mulch. It was extremely pungent and so it necessitated chopping in and turning under. This has now been finished and compost has been added atop, ready for Winter sowings.  Today was a biodynamic root day, which meant that I could sow my overwintering onions and shallots. Two module trays of Radar Onion have been sown, the remainder have been pushed direct into the poly soil. Same with Shakespeare Onion and Golden Gourmet Shallot.  As per pictures below.
The next step is to clean the outer cover with Citrox. Let's hope for at least one warm day with which to get this messy job done.

Compost Gets Added

 Radar Onion Sets

Shallot Golden Gourmet 

 

Do you like my new hanging shelf made for me by Mr VVG? I like it so much, I want another one...

Beans Means A Pretty Poly

It's a nod to the Linear Legume from me with close ups of Mrs Connell's Black and her beans! Courtesy of Zazen999. This is the legume side of Polly and in the background are the peas, climbing and dwarf. French beans (dwarf) in the middle. Runner beans in the foreground. Fingers crossed for a bumper harvest!

Slugs, Snails and Salad Days

June came and went with a deluge of water and not much else. It was our first month of planting in the polytunnel and I had devoted a whole side to tomato growing. This was going to be my year to build up my seed bank of many different and rare varieties I had never grown before. However, foliage is browning, flowers are not setting and are dropping. Those that have set are growing slowly. There has been no sunshine to ripen them either. As we move into July the rainstorms are continuing. It's an oasis in the polytunnel though. As the weather lashes against the tunnel's plastic, the temperatures are peaking around 30-35 degrees centigrade, but I cannot ventilate the tunnel as we are experiencing Full Smith periods. These are the perfect conditions for breeding blight on your tomatoes and potatoes. It is the former in the polytunnel that yesterday I thought had caught the dreaded disease. I ripped them out without a second thought...two varieties stricken from my list in a swipe. But should I have left them to spread to the other plants? Now, a day later and I am undecided on whether it was blight or magnesium deficiency. I feel saddened at the gap that stares me in the face. To that end, I have planted my waiting celeriac into the space  instead. I figure that in having lost some, with the tomatoes, I might win some by putting my roots under cover. Every year I end up with middling sized spheres, maybe this is the year, mixed up as it is, to see an increase in root size. I can but hope.
There is one thing that is loving life in the tunnel. Slimy things! Yes I am talking slugs and snails...ugh! Every night we are having a midnight feast by torchlight, picking them off into a pail, adding salt and disposing off their shrivelled remains down the lane. But as we find the partygoers each night, more find their way in by the next evening.
We do have a successful crop of salad leaves in the tunnel, whilst we wait for everything else to play catch up, so dinners are consisting of our own new potatoes (I am on a mission to eat them quickly before blight strikes), radishes (grow super quick in the polytunnel), salad leaves including basil and rocket and cucumbers from the greenhouse. Tomatoes? We are still waiting...
In June I sowed some peas direct, as the ones on the allotment were slow to grow. They are now romping up the bean/pea netting, so I am hopeful for something. The runner beans, sown and planted six weeks behind the allotment ones are lush and green and at the top of their canes already. They are Mrs Connell's Black and come from Zazen999. By comparison my HSL Blackpod, which were doing so well and looked  so green and lush when planted out are now yellowing. It is apparent that the rain is washing any nutrient out of the soil. Sure we need some water, but not this much. I haven't had to lift a hose or watering can at the allotment so far this year. It's bad news for the growing season so far, which means the onus on the polytunnel growing is ever greater. I am wishing that we had ordered a 4 x 6 metre now, but we weren't to know the weather would be this dire. What is it they say? "Buy the biggest you can afford, because it will never be big enough!"

Veg Growing In The Poly In June
- Tomatoes
- Peas
- Climbing mange tout
- Courgettes
- French Beans
- Runner Beans
- Celeriac
- Cucumbers
- Leaves/herbs
- Grapevine
- Fig

Summer Days With Polly In The Tunnel

It's almost July and I decided a new month, a new blog! So I created Polly In The Tunnel. She is my alter ego and details life with a new polytunnel. As you know if you read my other blog, erecting the tunnel was merely a precursor to growing.
Now the real slogging and blogging begins...
Enjoy!