Veg Journal 2009:

•  » January
•  » February
•  » March
•  » April
•  » May
•  » June
•  » July
•  » August
•  » September
•  » October
•  » November
•  » December

 Veg Journal - 2009

Welcome to our Veg Journal for 2009! Well, we didn't actually keep a journal for this year, so it's more a summary based on lots of photos and on what we can remember. As a result it's all on this page rather than in seperate sections as for later years.

2009 in Summary

This was the first year we had paid any attention to the area of land at the bottom of our garden since we built the potting shed on it about 10 years previously. During that time it had become covered in weeds, mostly nettles and brambles, not to mention the leftover piles of bricks and bags of sand which had been stacked there from our building work, so it was quite a hard task to clear the plot in the first place. However, by the end of 2009 we had built 8 raised beds complete with paving around them, we had erected the greenhouse, and we had a very respectable crop of vegetables to show for all that effort!

Month by Month

January & February - We have no recollection of doing anything with the plot in the first two months of the year, although there was a huge pile of tree & shrub branches down there which we certainly set fire to at some stage in order to clear them off the plot... with due care and attention to make sure there were no hibernating hedgehogs contained therein, of course.

March - The weather was pretty good at the beginning of the month especially, so we started to clear the area which would become the veg plot once more. We had to chop down all the weeds and trim back the overgrown hedge at the back of the plot. In hindsight, it might have been better to get rid of the hedge and trees entirely, as they now prevent rain from getting to the back 3 beds, but that's hindsight for you. All the piles of bricks had to be moved, but we kept the bags of sand in situ for a while as the sand was used to bed in the paving slabs for the paths. During March the path at the back of the plot was laid, the first two beds immediately to the left of the potting shed were completed and work on the third and last bed in this back row was well under way. At every stage, whenever any soil was dug, it had to be thoroughly sifted to get rid of bramble and nettle roots - quite a time consuming task.

Click on the photo to see a bigger version:

April - The third bed in the back row and the first in the front row were completed in April, with the second front bed underway, and we started sowing and planting as soon as the beds were ready. In the two beds to the left of the potting shed (the front bed and the one behind it), we planted main crop Maris Piper potatoes. In the middle back bed we sowed Savoy cabbages at the back, Greyhound (summer) cabbages at the front, and leeks in between. In the left hand back bed we sowed broad beans at the back, onion sets at the front, and radishes in the thin strip which was left. The radishes were the first to germinate, and it was at about this time when we discovered we had a not-altogether-welcome guest in the plot - a mole! The evidence was mainly raised humps of earth in the beds, underneath the emerging seedlings, which killed some of them as their roots were dangling in thin air. We tried everything to get rid of it, including a battery operated mole scarer, but it continued to tunnel around under the new and old parts of the veg plot all year, finally ending up under the compost heap we think. At any rate, by the end of the year it had gone, and good riddance, quite frankly!

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

May - We ordered and received the greenhouse this month, and as soon as we could confirm the measurements of the base, we started digging out the foundations for the path around the space where the greenhouse would go. This involved removing three ancient compost heaps and lots of roots from a large wisteria, plus the usual brambles and nettles. The second front bed was completed early in the month and sown with runner beans. Everything we had planted in April was coming through and looked to be doing well in the new beds, which was very pleasing.

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

June - We finished the path around the area where the greenhouse would be, and sifted through the soil for its beds. Work on the sixth raised bed (the third at the front) was well underway by the end of the month, and the vegetables were thriving although the broad beans were not doing as well as we had hoped, possibly due to being rather dry. We thinned the cabbages, and planted lettuces, rocket, radishes and marigolds around the edges of the runner bean bed. We were quite astonished to find that the potato flowers were a very pretty purple colour - being white skinned potatoes we thought the flowers would also be white!

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

July - On completion of the sixth bed, we transplanted the leeks into it from the middle back bed, sowed lots of late peas and planted a couple of squashes which we'd been given. We then sowed carrots in the space between the cabbages where the leeks had been, and in the space between the broad beans and the onions in the left hand back bed. But oh dear, the poor cabbages were ravaged by caterpillars to the point where we just couldn't keep them under control, and most were beyond saving in a very short space of time. The foundations for the greenhouse took some working out, as the base required its 6 feet embedding in concrete. We decided to use breeze blocks as the main supports for the base, bedded with mortar on rubble and sand, with cast concrete corners and mid sections, so we had fun making appropriate sized shorings for the concrete and getting the base somewhere near level.

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

August - We harvested the onions this month and also the potatoes, which seems a bit early for maincrops but the stems had definitely died back. We don't remember the actual yield, but there was quite a lot of damage to the potatoes from wireworms, which wasn't unexpected given that the land had been left uncultivated for so long. We also dug up the broad beans when they were over, and I suspect we pulled up the majority of the cabbages, but there were definitely a couple of Savoys left, almost unscathed. The runner beans and peas were doing very well, producing lots of flowers and pods, but there was only one squash plant left as the other one had died. Having completed the foundation for the greenhouse, with the base and interior paths added too, we tackled the job of erecting the greenhouse frame. This was actually quite easy, if a little fiddly, and lifting the frame into position on the base was also surprisingly manageable between the two of us - fortunately aluminium is quite light. The worst part was fitting the glass - it's an incredibly stressful job involving a lot of scrunching glass noises and a mallet, of all things, so a lot of headache pills were consumed over the couple of days it took to complete!

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

September - The peas and beans continued to produce a lot of pods this month although the peas were beginning to be affected by mildew and the runner beans needed anchoring as the support framework wasn't as robust as we thought it would be. We took a break from our construction projects to enjoy the fruits of our labour!

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

October - By the first week of the month the runner beans had finished so we cut them down and removed the cane supports, but we left the marigolds as they were still flowering. The peas were still productive although mildewy and we started harvesting the carrots, some of which had been attacked by carrot fly. At long last the squash was flowering and we harvested the two surviving cabbages. All the empty parts of the raised beds and the greenhouse borders were given their first autumn bucketfulls of compost to improve the soil for next year. The weather was particularly warm for the time of year, and we managed to complete both of the raised beds in front of the greenhouse before the cold & wet weather set in. The fact that we had to move half of the massive compost heap to do this slowed us down a little, but it made the soil in the beds particularly good! Strangely, even though this soil had the consistency of very thick porridge when compacted, it still supports the paving slabs for the path very well - if it's good enough for the railway engineers on Rannoch Moor in Scotland, it's good enough for us...

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

November - The squash plant managed to produce a couple of fruits before the frosts killed it off, and we dug it and the peas up when they had finished. The carrots were still going strong, and we sowed overwintering peas and broad beans in the two potato beds. Unfortunately we were unable to complete the row of raised beds at the front, as the mound of earth in front of the potting shed had been occupied by a wasps nest since the summer. By the time it was vacated later in the month, the weather had turned too cold and wet to do any construction work.

Click on a photo to see a bigger version:

December - Our memories of the month are poor, but we think that we probably finished harvesting the carrots - we certainly began harvesting the leeks - and we pulled up the marigolds, the last vestiges of summer.

 Related Pages: