The Growing Challenge - Post #6

Along with every other gardening and growing blogger i'm celebrating the springing of Spring and all the joy and lightness it brings. No only are the vegetables getting a move on but the flowers and the blossom in the garden are adding beauty into the mix and the leaves are finally appearring on the European trees, which do well in this area and dont need watering as the creek feeds them well.










I feel a bit of a cheat doing a weekly post for The Growing Challenge hosted by Melinda as im not really doing anything; nature is just doing its job without me.

The horseradish have sprouted and this year i hope to do more by preserving some of it but my favourite is definitely fresh grated horseradish. Does anyone have a good recipe for horseradish cream?



The peas (my second planting, having lost the last lot to the snails and slugs) are looking strong.

Like other bloggers, i resorted to toxic bait as the the natural methods, coffee grounds and beer traps, were just not proving tempting enough.

The parsnips have been located! They are a good 3 weeks behind the beetroot which surprised me as they were such a shallow planting and a very fine seed but they are getting ready to shoot some secondary leaves.



The potatoes and beetroot are looking happy and healthy and i planted up a secondary crop of potatoes today as i just love the taste of organic potatoes.




The rocket is rocketing along and is almost ready for a first small harvest, but the cabbages you can see alongside the rocket didnt fare to well, about half the crop failed to germinate so i replanted some of these today too. i think the surface of the soil was a little compact in areas and they just couldnt burst through, or they may have been a bit waterlogged. the soil surface in areas was a little mossy. I will have to improve this bed next year with even more friable compost.


the rainbow chard is looking beautiful and the companion italian parsley is thriving
and the thyme is going crazy, spreading well and flowering profusely The first mesculuns planted are a few weeks away from some small scale picking but the ones i planted out from punnets and didnt sow from seed are ready to have some leaves removed for salad.


Im waiting for the boybean to go to bed and then im out in the sunshine to construct some structure for the beans and to plant them up. Im sowing a 'purple king' climber and 'redland pioneer' bush. And finally, the pistachio and hazelnuts are budding.