This is the journal of my endeavours to grow a range of fruit, veg and flowers from seed, grow organically, and my attempts to create a personal paradise with 1/2 acre of maintained gardens and 1/2 acre wild meadows. Northern Ireland's average daily high temperatures are 18 °C (64 °F) in July and 6 °C (43 °F) in January. Soil type: Clay

Thursday 27 June 2013

Veg Update (lettuces, potatoes, celery, etc)

Chives are looking fantastic! I've been harvesting radishes 'Scarlet Globe' and some lettuce. Courgettes don't seem to be growing much. I'm having more success with salad type plants this year and most nights I do a slug and snail safari hunt to protect my crops. I'm eager for turnip, beetroot and spring onion to be ready for harvest (to spice up my salads). 
Potatoes 'Charlotte' (First Early) were planted on 24th April. They are in a raised veg box this year and hoping they will produce a good yield. Celery, grown from seed last Spring, was left in the veg box over Winter and is actively growing (as per photo below). I see some nibbles on the celery but think it will give me a good supply.

I thought the rhubarb was finished but it seems to keep growing. I might just get away with another crumble!
In the square metre / square foot 'experimental Veg Box' - most of these plants were bought as plug plants.
There are: Lettuces ‘Bijou’ (5 plants), ‘verpia’ (5 plants), ‘little gem pearl’ (5 plants). Beetroot ‘Solist’ (10 plants), Spring onion ‘white lisbon’ (10 plants), onion stuttgarter and a couple of dwarf bean plants and 2 chard plants.
In the 2nd square metre / square foot 'experimental Veg Box' - all these plants were grown from seed. There are turnip, lettuces, carrots, calundula, nasturtiun and two types of radish Radish'Hilds blauer Herbst und Winter' and 'Red Meat'. The red meat became stressed (probably planted too close together) and set seed so I pulled them out and have planted mizuna salad seeds. Some of the lettuces are too close so I will have to harvest some young plants for salad.

Copyright: All words and photos are property of Kelli's Northern Ireland Garden.

10 comments:

  1. Hi, I'm a new follower.
    You have a lovely garden.. your vegetables are looking good. I especially love the chive photo, they do have such pretty flowers.
    Julie :o)

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  2. That box is certainly crammed full - I will be interesting to see what sort of yield you get.

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  3. That Veg Box is certainly looking very prodctive! Interestingly, that is what I would call a Raised Bed. To me a Veg Box is one of those weekly cardboard boxes of (usually organic) vegetables delivered to your door! But what's in a neme, eh? :-) It's good to grow lots of different things, because every year some things will do well and others won't. Like you, I reckon 2013 is a great year for salad plants. My lettuces are huge.

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  4. You've certainly packed plenty in and it's all looking great. I just love chive flowers, as do the bees.

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  5. Celery and potatoes look great. I thought you would have problems with space in veg box when you wrote about it the first time... It certainly looks great but I think you won't be able to have big vegetables(lettuce heads) inside :)

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  6. Your vegetables look fresh and will be delicious.

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  7. Hi Kelli, I love the blooms on chives! I planted some, but they haven't bloomed yet...I hope they do. It seemed that they didn't want to grow for a while, but finally caught on. Maybe they needed more moisture and finally we are having afternoon showers. Your celery, lettuces and potato plants all look very promising for big harvest! Good work!

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  8. It's looking good!

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  9. Hi Kelli, great post. Your photos are lovely.

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  10. Hi, I just came across your blog and I love it. So it is possible to grow veggies in co Antrim? I'm glad to know! I love the fact you eat flowers too!

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