I have some time off this week so i put in a few hours tidying things up and getting ready for the new season.
I've started planting potatoes, getting in one row of Estima. I also put in several rows of onions, hopefully they'll do better than last year. Varieties this year were Silver moon and Stuttgarter Giant. I also planted one bulbs worth of garlic cloves in a container.
I dressed the soil with chicken manure pellets, threw alot of blood fish bone around, and brought over from the greenhouse last years growbags to add into the soil. Today i also turned over the compost heap to get that started again.
The raspberries are looking healthy and i managed to get it properly wired up to support the canes, and weeded amongst the strawberries too. The purple sprouting broccoli is looking okay, a few look weak and small but mostly they look like producing some shoots. I also put in some wire to support the pea netting, and planted half a row of kelvdon wonder.
I need to look into comfrey plants still, my one is looking healthy now, the comfrey 'tea' is was making probably needs diluting which i need to read up on to get the strength right. I also need to propagate from it some new plants.

Digging has commenced.

First photos of work from this year.
We went down a couple of sundays ago and got to digging the bean trench, quite straight too! We then started removing the old beetroots, parsnips, chard, and carrot still decomposing in the soil after the winter snow. As i dug the kids used their wheel barrow to transport them and put into the trench.
 The majority of the purple sprouting broccoli seem healthy, hopefully cropping in a couple of months. Jobs i need to do soon are planting the onions and garlic, cross posting the raspberry end posts and wiring them up to contain the canes.
Today we went back and finished removing all the old strawberry growth, and did a bit of weeding. The kids wanted to sow something so they threw in some old mange tout seeds from last year i had in my pocket. If they grow I'll just use them as green manure and dig them before they flower.

new year, new post

Yes i know i have not posted for a while, got out of the routine, plus when the rainy weather hit i was not going down with little to report, plus i was ill for some of september and unable to get down also.

anyway, enough excuses.
Quick review of last year - okay year.

More info?? okay then.....

potatoes were pretty poor, very poor in fact, one row barely gave up a dozen spud's.
pea's were also poor, the mange tout grew big and flowered well but not great cropping.
Onions, i give up on red onions (again!), white/brown onions were  not good, and i didn't get round to planting the autumn sets so spring ones it is again.
Good - swiss chard, beetroot, parsnips, swede, sweetcorn, pumpkins, beans - french and runner, strawberry's, raspberries, lettuce. Courgettes were okay but i'll use another variety next year.