Showing posts with label English. Show all posts
Showing posts with label English. Show all posts

Sunday 14 June 2020

How to Plant Leeks


How Long to Keep / Best Way to Store Leeks — Fresh, Raw | StillTasty.com - Your Ultimate Shelf Life Guide:
Leek culture
-Sow leeks indoors in late winter for fall harvest. Start more leeks in August for spring harvest.
-Grow them in soil that has plenty of compost and nitrogen.
-Don’t let leeks lack for water.
-Once leeks start growing, hill them up every 2 weeks to get more of the white part.

Watering well is important. I soak my beds twice a week. Leeks that suffer from lack of moisture grow unevenly, and have a stronger taste and pithier texture.

Отсюда!
И здесь!
Sow: Staring sowing indoors in February.
Continue outdoors in April, 2cm deep.
Soil: Work in plenty of well-rotted manure the previous
autumn.
Sun: Full sun.
Grow: Harden off well before planting out, when 20cm high.

Saturday 16 May 2015

How to Grow Asparagus.

Just 100 grams of asparagus contains 2.2 grams of protein and at least 900 units of vitamin A and beta carotene, a component that many people feel has great potential as a cancer preventive.
I bought and ready to plant!

How to Grow Asparagus - Vegetable Gardener:
"Plant crowns early.
Crowns should be planted while they are dormant.
That can be as early as late winter.
They should be planted when the ground is workable, between frosts.
As long as the crowns are covered with about 2 in. of soil, they won’t suffer in hard freezes.
They can be planted as late as mid-spring, if plump, healthy roots are still available."

- Asparagus Cultivation:
White, Green and Purple Asparagus.

White asparagus is green asparagus which has been grown in the dark, usually by mounding the beds to cover the crowns with some eight to twelve inches (30.48 centimetres) of light sandy soil so as to exclude light from the developing spears.
It is highly esteemed in continental Europe.
White asparagus is generally peeled before being eaten as it has been grown underground, but with purple asparagus varieties this is not necessary.
Optimum planting density is a little lower for white asparagus than for green.

Purple asparagus is a variant of green which originated in Italy.
It turns green if boiled, but retains its colour if steamed.
Purple varieties of asparagus have a sweeter flavour and are less fibrous making them superior to green cultivars for eating raw.
The original purple variety gave low yields and was very susceptible to disease, but modern purple hybrids have gone some way towards addressing these problems.
It should be stressed that the lack of fibre in the stems means that purple asparagus is less weatherproof and should be avoided in exposed situations.
Purple asparagus is particularly suitable for eating raw.

Cropping Season.
The traditional season for UK asparagus starts on St George's Day, 23rd April, and ends on 21st June.
The season can be extended earlier by growing forcing varieties under protection, and later by planting suitable varieties.
Under cold glass, early asparagus varieties can be cropped from mid March.

- How to grow asparagus plants:

- How to grow Asparagus: A complete guide to growing Asparagus in beds, allotments and large containers:

- How to plant asparagus crowns - Projects: Video projects - gardenersworld.com: "Watch Monty Don's video demonstration of how to plant asparagus crowns, with advice on the soil preparation, aspect and aftercare."
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Tuesday 17 April 2012

Growing peas.

BBC - Gardening - Gardening Guides - Techniques - Growing peas:
"About peas Peas come in two varieties: shelling and mangetout. Shelling peas mature at different times. Earlies take around 12 weeks, second earlies take 14 weeks and maincrops take 16 weeks. Shelling peas come in round and wrinkle-seeded varieties. Choose round seeds for hardiness and early sowings, and wrinkled for sweetness and summer sowings. Peas require a sunny, nutrient-rich, moisture-retentive site. Dig over the soil and add plenty of compost or well-rotted manure - this will help to improve the soil's moisture-retaining ability in hot, dry summers."


Monday 16 April 2012

Тысячелистник агератум - Achillea ageratum, Mace.

Тысячелистник агератум - Achillea ageratum
- на кухне. Веточки т. обыкновенного используем при засолке и мариновании огурцов, грибов, кабачков.
Горьковатые и терпкие на вкус листья и цветки добавим как приправу к жирным блюдам (гусиному жаркому, свинине, колбасе), в салаты в качестве специи - они приятно пахнут, и способствуют перевариванию пищи, и даже, говорят, помогают бороться с ожирением.

Кто-то, как Пульхерия Ивановна из гоголевских «Старосветских помещиков», высушенные веточки добавит в водку, которая мало того что приятна на вкус, но «если у кого болят лопатки или поясница, то очень помогает».
Когда-то пивовары заменяли тысячелистником хмель. И пиво, сделанное таким образом, по мнению Линнея, пьется легче.
Чай из тысячелистника, как считалось, помогал от меланхолии и вылечивал простуды и лихорадки.

Для лекарственных целей используют в основном т. обыкновенный, который собирают в момент цветения, в солнечные дни, когда он обладает наибольшей целительной силой. Отметился тысячелистник и в магии, использовался для гаданий, ворожбы и даже для наведения порчи (потому еще и дьявольская трава, игрушка дьявола). Эфирные масла, которые придают тысячелистнику специфический аромат, входят в состав отдушек для травяных ванн. Тысячелистник - прекрасный медонос.
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Mace, English Achillea ageratum (decolorans)
English Mace forms clumps of narrow, aromatic leaves with white flowers in summer. A good culinary herb; use in soups, stews and potato salads, it is also great in chicken dishes and complements other herbs well. Height 5ins (14cm), 18ins (45cm) when flowering.

Achillea ageratum.
Also known as English mace, this aromatic perennial will grow almost anywhere, in any type of soil and looks statuesque in a large terracotta pot. Young tender leaves are best used in soups and for flavoring rice and pasta.
Height: 24–28 inches
Spread: 24–28 inches
Hardiness: Fully hardy plants
Soil Preference: Well-drained soil, moist soil
Sun or Shade: Full sun

Thursday 12 April 2012

For lazy gardener.

Ethelind Fearon's The Reluctant Gardener.
The Reluctant Gardener, the short and easy ways to good husbandry, you can play with vegetables to save yourself work and avoid growing more than you need.
Gardening, like entertaining and cooking should be done with whimsy and joy.
Use of mulches and irrigation channels to conserve water (and effort), home-made liquid manures and she comes close to no-dig gardening.
You would be surprised how much of the grim toil undergone by the allotment holder is unnecessary.
a. That half the things you sweat over are better bought than grown.
b. The ones that are better grown can be grown much more easily than you thought.
and c. Quite a lot of them will serve two purposes, thereby cutting out one operation, one ache, one moan.

1. Don't toss the compost out the kitchen door!
2. Better to grow Welsh onions which have authentic onion flavour but are no hassle as they will grow anywhere and right through winter. Self-generating, when the clump gets too big you can split them which is why they are known as 'everlasting' onions.
3.Growing potatoes- a shortcut method.
- Dig a little so the delicate roots of the potato can 'run about'.
Cut out a trench, keeping the soil on one side and place the your seed potatoes on the floor of it.
Fill the trench with compost, and when the potatoes grow through, earth them up with the soil you dug out from the trench.
By growing them in 'soft luscious compost' you will get nothing but 100% perfect potatoes, and none 'baffled and battered' as they try to push through inhospitable soil.
4. Calabrese and turnips produce roots in summer and 'greens' in winter (though not from the same plant). There are ornamental kales, good to eat but which can be used for flower borders or arranging as 'widely used by our most famous decorators.
5. French beans are a case in point as they can be eaten as green beans (haricots verts), as flageolets (when they are eaten like fresh peas) and as dried haricots for winter.
6. Not a chemical control, but my Father used to have a lot of trouble with carrot root fly until he started using old coffee grounds a couple of years ago. He collects the spent grounds from the coffee shop in his local Sainsburys when he's shopping - just leaves them a clean bucket when he goes in and collects it, full of grounds, on his way out. Then liberally spreads the grounds round the carrot plants, it seems to work very well - now that I've got myself an allotment I'll be trying it too.

My neighbour gets a paintbrush and splashes (sprints?)* paraffin along the rows when he thins them out.
From!

Tuesday 10 April 2012

Beans: How to grow

Beans: How to grow - Telegraph:

 "earliest sowing date outside for French beans is May 15. To speed things up, I put both runner and French beans on a damp kitchen towel in my warm kitchen and keep it moist. After a few days, the seeds swell before producing a tiny shoot. I then sow these in the ground (about two inches deep) or in polystyrene plant modules in a cold frame.
They sit outside my sunny, sheltered back door for about five days before they are finally planted out next to the canes.
 'Celebration', a rosy-pink flowered variety from Thompson & Morgan - are the most decorative varieties"
PS
We planted our beans outside straight into the ground today, we did the same last year and had no problems.
Я посеяла сегодня в землю на огороде.
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Tuesday 27 March 2012

Coriander.

Sow coriander every three to four weeks, in situ, for a continual supply. Sprinkle seedsover compost and cover with 1cm of compost before watering well. thin out seedlings to around 5cm between plants.
Coriander - Lazy Allotment:

'via Blog this'

Tuesday 13 March 2012

Lettuce.



Lettuces to grow-
Cos Lettuce: Little Gem - 'Little Gem' will do well from an early sowing and certainly is always worth finding room for in the garden, 
Lobjoits Green- 'Lobjoits Green Cos' is a better cos, much bigger, rather slower to develop and with a shorter season, but probably the best lettuce that you can grow or eat,
Rouge d’Hiver- 'Rouge d'Hiver' is a cos that will grow in cooler conditions (although not really over winter).
Butterhead Lettuce: Tom Thumb, Merveille de Quatre Saisons.
Looseleaf: Salad Bowl, Red Oak Leaf.
Red Lettuce: Red Salad Bowl, Aruba.
Iceberg: Mini Green.
Winter Lettuce: Winter Density, All the Year Round -  'All the Year Round' is, as the name implies, hardy and adaptable enough to crop most of the year, and while not the best you can grow, it's a lot better than almost anything you can buy, especially in that spring gap when there is precious little else in the garden.
.


Mistakes:
Dont plant too many seeds all at the same time and far too close together. 


Lettuce pray.
Lettuce germinate at surprisingly low temperatures; many will fail to germinate once the soil temperature rises above 25C - which you often get from mid-June to August. This can lead to a dearth of lettuce in August, as mature plants suddenly go to seed and there is a lack of young plants to replace them, because germination has been poor in the previous month. There are ways around this. Sow in the afternoon so that the vital germination phase coincides with the cool of night. Sow in seed trays and put them in the shade, and cover with glass or newspaper to keep them cool until the seedlings appear. And if the seeds are showing no signs of life after a week, put them in the fridge for 24 hours. In fact, late August- and September-sown lettuce do very well because the nights are getting cooler.


If you are sowing directly into the soil (something I never do nowadays, as slugs attack the very young seedlings in my garden), water the drill before sowing to cool the soil down. And make sure you sow into a shaded part of the garden.


Lettuce needs cool temperatures to germinate, and may become dormant if the soil is above 20 C. They like a rich soil with good drainage.
Most lettuce is best sown in drills about in deep as thinly as possible. Water the drill before you sow the seed. Flick the soil back over the sown drill and mark it. Thin as soon as the seeds can be handled, leaving an initial inch between seeds, then use the young lettuce alternately until the final crop has 4in space between each plant. I now sow all my lettuce individually in soil blocks or plugs in a cold frame or a greenhouse and transplant when they are a few inches tall (they resist slug attacks).
The following have a good selection of seed: Simpson's Seeds (plus nine rare organic lettuce from France), 27 Meadowbrook, Old Oxted, Surrey RH8 9LT (tel/fax             01985 845 004      ); www.naturalhub.com/index.html- an excellent lettuce page; The Veg Finder (£5.99, The Henry Doubleday Association), 20 pages of lettuce; Ryton Organic Gardens, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Coventry (            02476 303 517      ) has a huge range of salad crops growing under different organic conditions; Heritage Vegetables by Sue Stickland (£14.99, Gaia Books Ltd) is an excellent introduction to rarer and more interesting vegetables, including 20 lettuce.




DIY - Spiral Planter.


The Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint.

Here’s what you do:


- Choose a sunny spot and hammer two stakes into the ground to make a row.
- Attach parallel wires between the posts, one at the bottom and one further up. Push canes into the soil every nine inches or so and secure them to the wires.
- Plant one sweet pea in front of each cane – the Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint has actually colour-coordinated his along the rows, but you might choose to mix the really highly scented varieties like the grandifloras amongst the others (the Spencer varieties usually have bigger flowers but less scent) to encourage the pollinators who will be drawn by the fragrance and then travel around the rest of your plot.
- Let the plants grow to a foot tall and then select the strongest shoot and remove the rest – painful, but necessary if you want really strong flowers.
- Tie this shoot to the cane and regularly pinch off side shoots and tendrils – this step means the plant gives all its strength to the flowers rather than dissipating it in side shoots and climbing growth. You will need pea rings or horticultural tape to keep tying the primary shoot to the cane.
- When the plants have reached the top of the canes, untie them and lay the stems on the ground, parallel to the row.
- Now re-tie stems to a cane further along the row, so the tip of the plant reaches about a foot up its new cane.


This is why so many people grow sweet peas on the allotment rather than in the garden at home - it's just too much to be expected give up so much garden space for a single plant, but on your plot you can extend the cane row as far as you like without losing much in terms of space.
Allotment Blog: The Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint: "The Sweet Pea man of Hurstpierpoint"


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Monday 12 March 2012

Sweet Peas.

Simply by being late every season, I have discovered that what works best for me is to sow the seeds in a rich but well-drained potting compost in late February. They are ready to plant out by mid-May and will grow away strongly. It might mean we do not get flowers until midsummer, but what comes late stays late. We pinch out the growing tips when the plant is about 6in tall and still in pots, which makes for bushier growth.
If you want sheer scent then the best are the original 'Cupanis' or 'Matucanas'. Both are bicoloured, as is the pretty pink and white 'Painted Lady'. Unless it is described as having a strong scent then look beyond the most common Spencer varieties and go for the grandifloras Eckford developed, which will make up most of any so-called 'Old Fashioned Mix'. As I have said, in general I like the richer colours, such as 'Purple Prince', 'Black Knight', 'Midnight' and 'Black Diamond', as well as the red 'Gypsy Queen', 'Violet Queen', the magenta 'Annie B Gilroy', 'Henry Eckford', which is bright orange, and good scented whites like 'Dorothy Eckford', 'Royal Wedding' and the ivory 'Cream Southborne'. Finally, I do grow one sweet pea that is to all intents and purposes scentless - the species L chloranthus, which is only 5ft tall but an essential acidy yellow-lime green that we use to lighten up a dark corner.

Sweet Pea - 'Monty Don'
Sweet pea suppliers: Peter Grayson, 34 Glenthorne Close, Brampton, Chesterfield S40 3AR. Unwins Seeds, Histon, Cambridge 

 Roger Parsons Sweet Peas - Links: 'via Blog this'
Sweet peas prefer cool, damp conditions, so a regular soak is essential in a hot summer. 

Friday 2 March 2012

Sowing.

Planting: Fruit tree - 25 feb 
Chitting Potatoes: 28 feb


Sowing:
- Leeks
- Celeriac 
- Early Peas (grown in situ)
A good tip for broad beans and peas is to sow a short row every three weeks between now and April, providing a constant succession of crops between June and October. For the first sowing of peas, choose a wrinkled pea such as 'Celebration', a delicious petit pois type, or try sugar snaps or mangetouts. A real beauty is 'Carouby de Mausanne', a C19th French mangetout with the added benefit of great good looks with lilac flowers.


Under Cloche:  radish, lettuce,  dill.


Parsnips -  come up, digg up.


Vegetable seeds

Friday 18 November 2011

How to extend the raspberry season until October.

We also tried a novel technique known as 'double cropping' on our raspberries. This allows you to harvest raspberries from the same plants from July to October. We were impressed with this new technique and think it’s a great way to get more fruit from the same space and plants. Not all varieties performed as well with double cropping, though. The best in our test were ‘Joan J’ and ‘Autumn Treasure’.

Double Cropping Raspberries

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Growing A Companion Vegetable Garden

Growing A Companion Vegetable Garden: "Planning A Companion Vegetable Garden"

'via Blog this'

Carrots.

The earliest crops are best, with Amsterdam-type cultivars that have narrow, cylindrical roots with smooth skins. These are delicious eased from the soil, swished under a tap and munched while holding on to the feathery foliage. They are also the most suitable to consider sowing between now and early spring - but only under glass, or at least cloches. Nantes types are generally bigger and can be grown both as early- and maincrop. Chantenay, berlicum and Autumn King types are all best for maincrops that you would expect to harvest in autumn, and can have the biggest roots. You can have carrots with round-ish roots, yellow carrots and every shade of orange. But all of them should have that sweetness and slightly musty aroma that you instantly absorb when you spull a baby carrot from the ground, but which seems to be almost totally lacking on the supermarket shelf.

Carrots do best in light, slightly alkaline soils that have not been freshly manured. They taste better in rather dry conditions, although a very dry spring will harm germination. I used to sow my carrots in rows and then thin them by hand to allow an inch or so between each seedling. But for the past few years I have broadcast them, simply scattering the seed over an entire square bed or in loose rectangles approximating to rows. These are never thinned except by random harvesting and seem to do just as well, without the same risk of attracting the dreaded carrot fly.

Carrot flies can apparently smell a carrot from half a mile away and are irresistibly drawn to it to lay their eggs. This does no harm. But when the maggots hatch they tunnel into the carrots. Early in the year this can make little difference to the crop, but by autumn it will encourage rot and can reduce each root by half. The answer is to prevent the fly from laying its eggs, by masking the scent with strong-smelling companion planting, such as chives, in and around the carrots - or simply by screening the fly off. The latter works well, either by pegging fleece over the growing carrots, lifting and replacing it when you harvest, or by putting up a 3ft (the flies keep low) screen around the bed. The fleece option is rather more practical.

Early:
- Amsterdam Forcing, small cylindrical roots but very early;
- Nantes 2, blunt ended, early and sweet.
Mid season:
- Chantenay, wedge-shaped, fast growing if sown into warm soil;
- Flyaway (F1), good all round carrot, especially raw and extra carrot fly resistance; Parisier Market 4, round-rooted carrot with good flavour.
Late, main-season varieties:
- Berlicum 2, long cylindrical root for harvesting September to Christmas;
- Rothild, stores very well and good for juicing;
- Flakee,
- an Autumn King type with conical roots that keep well in the ground over winter.

Monty Don: Home truths | Life and style | The Observer