Sunday, April 09, 2006

Winter's Back and Seed Muncher's Revenge

Yes its been an 0dd week. 88 in the greenhouse yesterday and a short snow shower today - lasted all of two minutes. Forecast is for frost tonight but as it's still raining I'm not putting the fleece out; just hope the onions survive.
No sign of much else outside although there may be a hint that the peas'll be through in the week - hopefully later rather than early with the cold snap projected.
What ever is getting into the greenhouse, god only knows how, is really beginning to bug me. It's had over 40 runner beans, the same quantity of sweetcorn and sweet peas, and to cap it all it chopped off one of the cucumbers, after I'd potted them on, at soil level last night and then ate the leaves off every one of the pepper seedlings. I really can't afford to keep having to resow, especally the cucumber.
Anyway, my potates in their bins go from strength to strength. I've had to add 8" of soil to one bin as the potatoes in it reached nerly 14". Those in the second bin are an inch or so behind so I can get away with leaving those till mid week. It has however been a potatoe planting weekend. The trial Red Duke of York, first early, I planted both in another bin and in a row outside. I've also put in two rows of Maris Bard (remember my rows are only 8' long - the width of the veg patch), and two rows of garlic - my first attempt so we shall see what we get.
In the green house, apart from sealing every hole I could find, it's been pricking out time. I've done the chinease cabbage (primarily for the tortoise), lettuce (both Little Gem and Rusty), Cabbage (Greyhound), and the first batch of Brussels - I only had 9 germinate and three of those are rather weak. I want 16 so I can try the "block" planting technique which seems to be favoured at the allotments where my parents-in-law's allotment is - of which I'm working about a third this year. The wisdom seems to be, throw out the book and plant them 12" apart with a 24" wooden fence about them and a net over the top to keep the pigeons off. We'll see if it works. I've also repotted the courgettes, very carefully, into 6" pots - they'll go directly into the ground once the temperatures rise sufficiently.
With the day time highs, most of what was sown last weekend has germinated. I'm leaving the covers on though until I determine if I've cured the seed/seedling muncher problem.
Down on the allotment I've finished digging over what will be the Brassica bed, and raked two thirds of in into a fine tilth. It'll now have 3-4 weeks to settle before I need to plant anything. My next priority is going to be the potatoe bed. I'm away over Easter so nothing further will get done until the weekend after - I shall try and do what I did this week, get down on the Friday night after work for an hour or so and then, with no birthday party to interupt the weekend, I stand a chance of getting it dug over by Sunday evening - weather, wife, and kids permitting of course.
I almost forgot, as I'm using this as a diary I need to record this weeks sowings. So apart from the replacement cucumber (Prima), Runner Beans (Prizewinner), and Peppers (World Beater), there was also a second batch of Brussels, Little Gem, and Rusty, and 4 of the outdoor bush cucumber Marketmore.

2 comments:

lilymarlene said...

Your problem could be mice.....! I lost all my early sowings of peas and beans in the tunnel to them. I'd put them on the lower shelves in my mini greeenhouse. They dug up every one of the seeds. When I re-sowed them I put them higher up and they were fine.
Unfortunately there is no way I can keep mice out of the tunnel as it is open all round for between a half inch and an inch. I'm loth to block it all up as it needs the ventilation.

Vortex said...

I suspect it probably is. I checked this morning (yesterday morning) and there are scratch marks in the silicon sealant I used to stop up the remaining holes.
I keeping my fingers crossed I've solved the problem.