More Seeds Sown and Sea Buckthorn

Today I managed to sow a row of Spring Onions, Pak Choi and Chinese Kale in the main vegetable bed. Another job that needed doing.

Pak Choi (Shanghai)

I'm not too sure whether the Pak Choi will work outside unprotected but like everything it will be an experiment. I've no idea about the flavour but if Tesco's are selling it then it has obviously become more popular and is supposed to be good in salads and stir fries and I think maybe a good addition to the vegetable patch as it'll give us some variety since I have normally stayed away from  growing "foreign" veg but if we are to move into being as self sufficient as possible then we need as many things as possible that can be grown all year round.  I've read different names for Pak Choi and there appears to be various different varieties but often it appears to be called Bok Choy or Chinese Cabbage with some saying it needs to be grown under cloches and others saying it is easy to grow with no other mentions of care.

The seed packet says that it needs to be kept moist otherwise a dry spell will cause it to bolt but it also says that you can and should pick the baby leaves to encourage growth and goes on to mention that it can be cut up to 4 times and will re-grow. I don't know if this means the leaves you pick will re-grow or wether it will re-grow if you pick all the leaves in one go. Time will tell I'm sure.

Spring Onions (White Lisbon)

Spring Onions have always failed when I have tried them. I presume something eats them or maybe I forget they are Spring type and leave them to become big Onions but hopefully by writing what I have planted and where I'll remember this time. It says on the packet that these are quick growing and if you sow them in October they will be ready by March/April - that doesn't sound quick to me. Anyway, another vegetable for a stir fry or salad and sandwiches. I have sown these in between the rows of Durham Early Cabbage simply to cram a bit more out of that bed.

Chinese Kale (Kailaan)

Something else I've never grown before but once again the packet says the flowering stems and buds can be used is salads and stir fries. The larger stems need peeling and cooking. Other thing tried for variety and once again sown within the Durham Early Cabbage and White Sprouting Broccoli to make more use of the bed. Sowing was supposed to be up until early autumn but it is still mild and worth a try.

I think I'll try sowing a few of each in the greenhouse as well later today.

Bedfordshire Champion Onions

I had found an old seed packet, pre opened and 5 years old. It says to sow in Spring but I've sown 3 seed trays worth in the greenhouse just to see what happens. If they grow then I may be able to transplant them outside in the spring. I've bought a new packet of these ready for the Spring so this opened packet wasn't doing any good just sitting in a box so it has to be worth the experiment.

Lambs Lettuce (Corn Salad, Valerianella locusta) 

I have sown 2 medium sized pots of Lamb's Lettuce since when reading loads of other people's blogs I keep coming across it. Apparently it has a nutty flavour and can be grown all year round although it is an annual. It has many nutrients and goes well in a salad.  According to Wikipedia it has been commercially available in the UK since the 1980's but has been eaten, or foraged, for centuries before and is popular with the French. Good enough for me then.

I have read that it can be very invasive and in the Spring when I sow some outside I think it may be a contender for being confined to a small raised bed.

Cauliflower

Cauliflower has to be one of my favourite vegetables and I don't remember growing it before so a couple of seed trays were sown in the greenhouse. The packet said it could be sown in the Spring or indoors during October. I'm hoping I can grow enough of these to freeze a load so we can eat them during the year.

Mizuna Lettuce

Another one I've not tried before but it said can be sown in the Autumn and has a peppery taste. It follows the salad and stir fry theme I seem to have today and will hopefully open my eyes to yet another variety. 

Sea Buckthorn

 I was reading Deano's blog post http://sustainablesmallholding.org/diploma/project-7/ about a Chicken scavenging design  and in there a comment someone made mentioned Sea Buckthorn being something chickens liked to eat and since one of my duties as a Wildlife Trust volunteer is to help manage the Sea Buckthorn I thought I'd pinch a few tiny plants when we had to remove them from an area. Normally the bushes are burnt but I pulled 4 or 5 tiny plants that came off of runners and have stuck them into pots of compost. Hopefully they have enough roots on them to take if they are kept well watered. It must be the wrong time of year to try this but if successful then I was hoping to grow them on a bit before adding them to the chicken run. Hopefully the chickens can supplement their diet, save us money on chicken food and give them a more varied environment. Deano had commented that his soil wasn't right for Sea Buckthorn but I think if they take then I will dig a patch and make the soil right, which is light well drained and sandy.

Sea Buckthorn can be a very invasive bush but if it did grow too well and try and take over then all that is needed is cutting back or digging bits up which isn't the end of the world considering the field would benefit from this pretty bush plus the branches and leaves are very good at fire starting so I could even get a supply of kindling.  The Buckthorn has male and female plants so fingers crossed I have some female plants, if not I'll have to try again in the Spring.

The berries are very popular with birds which will help make the field a wildlife haven plus they can be used for food so they seem like a good plant to me.

Jobs that needed doing

Jobs that needed doing

One of the jobs I've been meaning to do for a while is finish digging the main Autumn vegetable bed and move a Raspberry plant as well as plant an Apple Mint that we picked up in a local community market. One of our biggest problems when buying plants is that they stay in their pots until it is too late. Recently we have taken the decision to be more systematic about planting things out as keeping them in a pot means watering gets forgotten and the plants normally die. At some stage I end up putting the pots outside the greenhouse with the good intention of planting but they get eaten by rabbits or fall over in the wind. Not any more - hopefully. The Apple Mint went into a hole cut in the grass and left to go as rampant and wild as it wants. I did the same with the Raspberry that was in the vegetable bed. 

The bed I wanted to dig also had a tomato plant in that I put outside because the pot it was in was far too small. The plant was about 1ft tall when I moved it in about June and it flourished amazingly well. It was a plum variety and I didn't expect it to do well outdoors but we have been picking ripe tomatoes from it for ages and a fair few but it's vines had gone along the ground, around each other and made a real bushy knot. I knew there were still a few ripe tomatoes on it so I picked them, and ate most of them there and then, but amongst all the foliage there must have been 100 or more green and semi ripe tomatoes. You can see the pile I made with them, plus a load, may be 30 or more that fell off which I left to dig into the bed plus a load more still on the plant which will go into the compost heap. I intend weighing the bag of green tomatoes and will leave them in the greenhouse to ripen. I think there must be around 2KG of ones that seemed good enough and big enough to keep. That's just off of the one plant.

Something I will definitely do next year is try and plant many more tomato plants outside but next time I must make a cordon for them to grow up.  

I eventually double dug the bed over and tried to protect it from the Rabbits - spot the professional fence. Although no dig may be the answer the fact is our soil is such heavy clay that it needs breaking up so I took the decision that I would double dig every bed, adding manure, sand etc the first season and then I'll have the option of trying no dig in the future. The beds are approximately 24" deep with big drainage channels around them. The channels are for 2 reasons, 1 being it is a weed block and the 2nd is that the soil that comes out of the channel goes into the bed which then raises it. Double dug raised beds. It seemed like a good idea. These were exceptionally difficult to dig in the spring and summer, so much so I couldn't get enough dug for the number of vegetables we wanted to plant so I'm hoping to do much more digging during the autumn and winter after rain since it may be messy but so much softer. Broccoli and Cabbage and Spring Onion will go into this last bit of the main bed.

 

Durham Early Cabbage

This Cabbage is supposed to be about the earliest large cabbage you can get, that's the claim, and although I'd like to say I chose it I didn't. It's all the Garden Centre had left yesterday so I bought a dozen plug plants and have managed to get them in the ground. My own cabbage was decimated by the Small and Large White Butterfly.

 

White Sprouting Broccoli

Nigel Slater wrote in the Guardian a few years ago about how good the White Sprouting Broccoli was so once again I'd have been happy if I chose to buy these but once again I didn't. Small Whites etc got my Purple Sprouting Broccoli. Out of all the veg as plug plants the garden centre had this and the Durham Early were all they had and so I bought a dozen of both.

 

Green  Alkanet

Green Alkanet

In the Spring I scattered many packets of Wild Flowers over the banks of the pond. I of course didn't write down what was in the packets but around 30 different flowers is what I seem to remember. Only a few came up, maybe 6 or 7 different ones but I do remember there being Forget-me-nots although I didn't think they came up and also they are supposed to be biennial. I was expecting, if they had worked to perhaps show themselves next spring but today I think I found a few, shown in the picture. I thought that they flower in April / June time but hey-ho.
Update 25th October
These turned out to be Green Alkanet and not Forget-Me-Nots as previously thought. Another Wild Flower learned :) 

 

Unidentified Flower

I am trying to learn how to identify Wild Flowers but today I found one that I can't find a reference to on the Internet and it doesn't appear to be in my Wild Flower books. I have no idea what it is although it's very hairy and has 4 petals with it's sepals well extended. Purple blue in colour with a white centre. The flower is where I shook all the Wild Flower seed so it is unlikely to have come from anywhere else. Before the pond was there it was simply a field which was well trampled by a horse for 14 years. It must have come from a packet of seed.

Any ideas? Clicking on the photos will enlarge them.
Update 25th October as per the comment below these have been confirmed as Borage for 2 reasons, firstly, a second person said it was Borage but secondly Borage does do this as is shown by the fact another flower opened on the same plant but with 5 petals :) It's hard enough for me to identify Wild Flowers as it is let alone when they don't know themselves what form to take!