Little Mudlets Garden

Neat and tidy: yoghurt tubs make ideal bear traps.

Following on from the success of her older sister last year, Little Mudlet asked if she could have a section of garden this year and so a couple of months ago, I paced out two equal areas at one end of my longest bed, marked the boundary of each with house bricks, and let the girls choose which bit they wanted.

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Holiday List Item 4 (and teensy bit of Item 5) – Tick!

Yoghurt pots make handy compost scoops.

Ordinarily, at this time of year, I would temporarily turn the kitchen floor into a makeshift potting shed and spend a pleasant hour or so sowing more seeds into various sized seed trays and propagators. Plastic sheeting would be laid over the carpet tiles with the bag of seed compost, a large black catch-all tray in which the seed trays are placed whilst they are filled with compost, the propagators themselves, already written labels, my small watering can and last but by no means least, the seed packets, all carefully laid out on the sheeting.

Pumpkins!

Sugar Pie Pumpkins: at this point the large one was the size of an orange and the smaller one was the size of the lemon.

This time last month I was really, REALLY concerned that we wouldn’t have home grown pumpkins for Halloween this year, due to the unseasonably cold temperatures which were prohibiting the growth of the squash and pumpkin plants in my garden. My vining squash plants were still huddled up, reluctant to spread their roots, never mind their vines and I was busy snipping off the female flowers, to try and prevent them developing into tiny fruit and stunting the spread of the vines. Then the sun arrived. The temperatures rose …… significantly …… and finally, the plants began to explore the world around them and soon became intent on making use of every available spare inch of ground, throwing out male flowers as they went.

Nipping the buds

Far too small for flowers

This past weekend was a frustrating one, with almost constant rainfall from late Friday until mid afternoon Sunday and temperatures more akin to April than mid-June (especially at night), so many jobs that needed doing, had to be postponed. Out in the beds, some of the plants are really suffering with the unseasonably low temperatures and I had hoped to apply a liquid feed to them on Friday evening, to give them a much needed boost. However, with the forecasters predicting heavy rain from late Friday night, I decided that applying a feed to the beds was pointless and so I restricted my feeding to the greenhouse plants. Thankfully, the weather for the next few days is set to be warmer and dryer, so I plan to apply the feed to the outside plants today and then give them another feed in 3 days (permissible according to the instructions) to try and kickstart a much needed growth spurt.

A bit of squash (and other things)

The nearest propagator houses the winter squash and pumpkin seeds and the other is home to the flowers and courgettes.

As a result of my potting on, I suddenly found myself with a load of empty propagators and windowsills which could only mean one thing…. time to sow a load more seeds! I rifled through my seed drawers and to my absolute glee, realised that it was time to start sowing my winter squash and pumpkin seeds.

Beans, peas, squash and sweet corn

Sweet corn and winter squash plants in front: cucumber and Hunter Butternut to climb the fence.

I love the process of filling my empty brown spaces with greenery from the greenhouses and yesterday (Friday) was a bumper day. Careful monitoring of the temperatures over the last week and studying of the predicted temperatures for the week to come, led me to feel that the danger of a hard frost had, for the most part, gone and so I could begin hardening off my plants, ready for planting out.

The vegetable garden in June

The vegetable patch in June

Before Mud decided to bathe the camera in white spirit, I had taken several pictures of the garden in the sunshine with the purpose of posting an update on how the various plants are growing. I’m always amazed at the amount of growth plants can put on with just a few days of sunshine, a drop or two of rain and a couple of degrees increase in temperature – you can almost see it.

Squash, Winter Festival

This is a record of how long this particular set of seeds took to germinate and how they looked at various stages from first appearance to the development of the first set of true leaves and beyond. I hope this will prove useful.

Variety: Winter Festival
Sown indoors: 29th March 2013
First Seedling: 11th April 2013
Germination: 13 days

1 day old seedling

Ooops I did it again!

I planted far too many Winter Squash seeds!

I am a Squashaholic, specifically a Winter Squashaholic. I love them and every year I sow too many, struggle to find space for them all and promise myself that next year I will be sensible and only sow a few seeds in addition to the compulsory 6 pumpkin seeds (3 each for the Mudlets) but each new growing season, I succumb.