New Veg Gardener in Suffolk

I've bought two Bird scarers today – they are the foam “Cats” with glass eyes. I've hung them on two angled canes and they seems to work against a pair of Blackbirds, but I'm not sure the local Magpies and Pigeons will be fooled. Do these work ok? My Granddad used to use plastic “humming strips” but my local Hardware shop and Homebase don't stock it – is it still available?

I plan to plant cloves of Garlic(Solent Wight) in my raised bed and seeds for Parsnip(Tender and True) and Leeks(Musselburgh) in mid March straight into the bed without manure. But the ground is a bit wet at the moment.

If you know any tricks for a small gardener, or advice please let me know. I don't want to have to much of the garden turned over to veg, as my three year old daughter still has to play there too. My budget is limited, but I'd like my daughter to learn about plants and food – and introduce her to new food too. Thanks for any advice, I'll try to keep this thread updated with my successes and failures.

Thanks to SueA for telling me that I can plant the peat pots straight into the garden/grow bags. I've been using them to put my other large seeds in the propagator too – the pumpkins have already got one plant showing signs of germination and the sunflowers I put in with my daughter are growing so fast you can see a difference in hours! 9 out of 12 seeds are doing Triffid impressions. I do agree, SueA, that birds can be useful in the garden, but I don't want to use netting except to cover my raspberry bush later in the year. The two foam cats are doing well, but one of the pigeons is getting brave and stands on the grass between the two beds – perhaps it is time to get out the milk bottle tops or some of our old cds, as mentioned by Liz.

I invited my parents down for the Saturday of Mother's Day weekend, so that Dad and I could get some time together in the garden, it was a lovely sunny day here on the Costa Del Suffolk – but there was a bit of a wind – I don't mean Dad! He gave me lots of good advice, some garden related, while I raked my un-manured bed ready to plant the root veg seeds and then we decided on the spacing and made the seed drills with the rake. I've planted a row of “Red Baron” Onions in clumps of five or six, its a method in the two books I mentioned before and it means you can have more in the ground while allowing for some to fail to germinated without having too many bare patches, apparently. I also put in a row of Parsnip “Tender and True”, which I see Nick is also doing this month at Barnsdale and also two thinly spaced rows of Carrots “Autumn King2”. I used the final row of the bed to plant some seeds for transfer to other beds, I've done a third each of Leek “Musselburgh”, Brussell Sprouts “Evesham Special” and in the middle of the row is Perpetual Spinach. I popped the rest of those in the front garden bed at either end.

I also planted out ten garlic plants “Solent White”, which again Nick is using at Barnsdale. I had a little potter around this morning and can see a nice green shoot coming up from one of them. I've planted them at the corners, and in the middle of the edges, of my two manured beds to hopefully encourage the slugs to keep away – hopefully they may be able to smell them!

I've put five of my Tomato “Gardener's Delight” and one Sweet Pepper””California Wonder” plants (grown from seed in peat pots) into two grow bags, one behind my right-hand bed against the south facing fence and one against the fence facing east for the early to midday sun. I've used some twine along the top of the fence panels and three verticals coming down from each one, going under the growbag and around a stake for a cordon to help support the plants as they grow. I've made the verticals into a “fan” to help spread the plants out as they grow. They are currently growing under a 2litre lemonade bottle each, to act as a cloche/greenhouse to keep the wind off and stop them drying out in the sun.

I had already started off my early potatoes in the last post, I'm using two tyres and a sheet of glass, with a small air gap – so far there is nothing to see, but my Dad tells me to be patient and I'll see shoots soon. What do I do when I see them? Do I put more soil on to encourage them to grow up after a few leaves have formed? I want to leave them in to grow quite large as I'd prefer to have some decent jackets rather than steaming them as new potatoes, ok – maybe just a few then!

I've also started an indoor mushroom farm. I've followed the instructions on the box and left it in the airing cupboard for a couple of weeks, on Sunday I brought them down to the dining room and have propped the lid on the little sticks. I can see some tiny white dots in the compost – hopefully they will be the start of the crop. Apparently you can get three crops from the kit, and then dig the soil into your garden.

Last weekend I came up with a hopefully clever solution – I hadn't really got time to prepare the soil where my cold frame was sitting on the grass, so I decided to plant out some of my seedlings into it after moving it on to the left hand bed. In one stroke saving time, keeping the pigeons off my seedlings, and depriving the local cat of it's toilet. It did seem a bit like the cat bird scarers were acting as WC signs for the cute little sod. I have planted the rest of my soil based propagator, (as opposed to the peat pot ones), seedlings into the cold frame, that's strawberry plants “Fresca”, onions “Red Baron”, sweet pepper “California Wonder” and Tomato “Tumbling Tom Red”. I have also stared off some seeds in there too, savoy cabbage “Traviata F1”, leeks “ Musselburgh” and Brussell Sprouts “Evesham Special”. There is also a row of the Traviata F1 in the small raised bed on the other side of the garden. I have also carefully planted out the three remaining lettuce - there were ten of them in a propagator but suddenly seven of them collapsed and died with no apparent reason, everything else in the propagator was fine.

So the watering routine has started in earnest, I'm popping out now and then to check for weeds/germination and signs that Mother Nature is tending them as well as she can.

Thanks for your interest,

Is it really a month since I last wrote on here? The change in the garden is huge, now cutting the lawn every week and some of the plants are doing really well. The biggest change is my potato tyre – I've now got proper plants sitting up on the top of the first earlies and have earthed them up, but taken the second tyre off for a while, so that they can get some sun and wind through their leaves. I'll put the second tyre back on when they get big enough to be fully earthed up – there is one small shoot at the front which needs to catch up to the rest. I've also started two more tyres off with potatoes from a friend at church. I went to my local tyre garage and asked if I could have half a dozen scrap tyres and they said help yourself, so I was driving a car with 11 tyres! I popped in to Homebase and got four bags of multi-purpose compost for the price of three (£13.47) on the way home. Obviously my wife is thrilled to have a back garden looking like a recycling plant with the 8 tyres and 5 helicopter windscreens plus reclaimed wood (at least it's been painted to match the fence!). It'll be worth it in the end.

I'm also not happy with my carrots, I think maybe mid March was a little to early for them as the two rows don't seem to have got going yet, perhaps I'll try a few seeds in between the two rows to see if they germinate, then put some more in. I've put carrots and parsnip in the front garden to see if they start growing there either.

On the plus side again, my garlics have all come up and are doing really well. I've put one clove from a garlic I bought at Tesco in to see how it compares to “Solent Wight”. I think I might let one go to seed this year instead of saving one whole garlic to break up next year – is this a good idea, or shall I just buy a new one next year?

I put some “Tumbling Tom Red” into two hanging baskets and left them under glass leaning against the cold frame to keep the frost off, they've now germinated and so hopefully I'll have 8 plants of these tomatoes on the front of the house as well as the 10 “Gardeners Delight” that are growing – I've also got five GD's in reserve in the cold frame just in case the others get hit by tomato blight.

I've put four strawberry plants from Homebase (99p each) into a container by back fence as my wife promised my daughter some home grown strawberries this year, not knowing that I was planning to pinch any flowers off my “Fresca” to promote good growth for stronger plants and better fruit next year. I've bought “Matis” & “Elsanta” and two perpetuals “Albion” & “Everest” to see which ones we like the taste of too.

Have you been watching the BBC2 program “The Edible Garden” - it's got lots of good tips and information, I've been saving it on my Sky+ box, might have to burn it to DVD, or perhaps I'll be lucky enough to get the book for Father's Day. Its a spin off from Gardener's World, it is about Alyce's (hope that is spelt right) own garden, she is trying to be self-sufficient in veg/salad. It really is good – try the BBC iplayer if you've missed it.

Another good thing I've been looking at is the seed catalogue from DT Brown, loads of information about the various plants in there, where as the two books I mentioned in my first post list recommended types they don't tell you too much about them. Of course the new Gardens Monthly magazine is great, very interesting bit about how long seed can last and still germinate.

Thanks again for any comments you've made, or would like to make – I've put more photos on my album, and I'll keep updating them.

Edited By Kevin Rouse on 24/04/2010 23:04:12

Hi.

The cabbage and Brussels sprouts are taking hold ok, the right hand bed is still under netting, so hopefully that will keep the brassica predators away for a bit. I should be able to keep the bed under the net as I won't be needing it for the fruit on the raspberry bush as it shouldn't fruit this year either.

My leeks have taken a good hold too, some of the ones in the front have been taken by slugs and a very large snail that I removed the other morning, he was too full to move away from the bed before I got the milk in. Shame we haven't got some Thrushes around here.

Edited By Kevin Rouse on 12/05/2010 22:32:27