Growth

I took a few pictures of the growth that's happened over the last few days. First is a comparison of the herbs from ten days ago.

I was given some lettuce plants, which I planted by the apples and raspberries. I also planted the first of my salad plants. They are from an Italian salad mix. You can see them in the second row behind the more compact lettuces.

In the photo below, you can see the salad leaves in their pots (under the radio). You can also see my brassicas (left of the picture), the apple mint (middle) and sweet peas (left). They have hardened off and should go in soon. I'm told that I should protect the brassicas, so I'll have to build a net over them. Luckily I found one in the shed clear-out.

There are blossoms on one of the apple cordons. I'm meant to take them off this year so that the plants concentrate on their growth, but I'll leave them on for a bit to enjoy.

The other fruit has put on more growth (cue another shot of the rhubarb). We've picked a lot of this and it's still going strong.

The quince is looking good, though the cuttings I took are looking a bit sorry for themselves.

Finally, the raspberries have started bushing out. They're not as tall as some of the others around the site, but they're only just in and look bushier than some.

Planting the herbs

We planted the mints in tubs to keep them under control. I'm hoping they'll fill out nicely and share space. Let's see. Here's the garden mint, the black peppermint and the Moroccan mint. We placed the tubs at the end of each path.

All the other herbs went into the herb bed. Some of them are going to be quite big, so I left a lot of room for them. It's quite a sad little herb bed just now, though we did get some golden feverfew (Tanacetum parthenium 'Aureum') and apple mint (Mentha suaveolens) today. Notice that the apple mint is the same species as the pineapple mint we've already planted, but it's not variegated. It's leaves are incredibly hairy.

They are from Rouken Glen, where we went to get a max/min thermometer after the DIY shop had only digital ones that required batteries. There's no point in recording temperatures with a thermometer that can run out of batteries overnight when it's the coldest night of the year, for example. The one we got is the standard mechanical/chemical one that won't run out of batteries.

You can see the bit of the herb bed that is planted so far. The curly wood sage is in the foreground, with the common sorrel and various chives to the back left. The purple sage is to the right, towards the quince's stake. You can see a mint planter at the back.

The view from above shows the bare ground. I'm going to fill that with either lots of annual herbs (basil, etc.) or a flower seed mix I've been given.

Compost bin

On a tangent to the herb thread (which I'll continue in a sec), I built the second compost bin.

I'm attaching old carpet round the sides to exclude light, as some nettles and others are still growing. I've done most of the original one and one side of the new one. The hanging piece of carpet above is for the left-hand side.

I've also added a bit of old compost and some weeds to the new pile.

Starting a Herb Garden

I read an article about Jekka's Herb Farm and thought, "Let's get some exciting herbs and fill the herb bed." Unfortunately I was put of by high postage to bring the plants up from Bristol (and Bristol's warmer, etc). I went on the Internet and found two great-looking nurseries, one on the Ayrshire/D&G border and one in Perthshire. Unfortunately they both opened for the season on Easter Sunday and we couldn't go to both, so we went to Plants with Purpose in Perthshire. The Ayrshire one is Barwinnock Herbs. Hopefully we'll get there sometime.

We had a great time in Perthshire and the nursery was a cool little back-garden operation with many excellent kinds of herbs and medicinal plants.

We got, from back to front, left to right:

• Lemon catnip (Nepeta cataria citriodora)
• Black peppermint (Mentha x piperita vulgaris)
• Sorrel (Rumex acetosa)
• Welsh onions (Allium fistulosum)
• Chives (Allium schoenoprasum)
• Saffron (Crocus sativus)
• Pineapple mint (Mentha suaveolens 'Variegata')
  
• Purple sage (Salvia officinalis Purpurescens)
• Lime mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Lime')
• Horehound (Marrubium vulgare)
• Grapefruit mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Grapefruit')
• Curly wood sage (Teucrium scorodonia 'Crispum')
• Moroccan mint (Mentha spicata var. crispa 'Moroccan')
• Basil mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Basil')
• Lavender mint (Mentha x piperita f. citrata 'Lavender')
• Garlic chives (Allium tuberosum)
  

I've put them all in, which is for another post. To finish, here are some bonus photos of the herb garden in a box.

Hopefully I'll get to visit Jekka's Herbs at some point when I'm down south.

Seedlings

I pricked out a few brassica seedlings and put them in individual modules. you can see them on the bench in the photo below. The mass of seedlings at the back are the ones I didn't prick out. I'm going to give them away at the swap day in a few weeks, as well as save some just in case.

You can see my sweetpea seedlings at the front-left and salad seedlings at the back-left. One of the nicest surprises was to see the sweetpeas I'd planted in the open ground next to the raspberry posts have germinated. I really stamped the ground there, so I'm very happy they are managing.

Laura sowed freesia and hop seeds two days ago and we've got herbs seeds sown, as well as a couple of courgette seeds for in a tub, tomatoes, chillies and sunflowers. I also have some thyme seedlings, which I'm quite proud of.

Shed, inside and out

I worked a bit more on the path to the new compost bin and replaced the random bits of sandstone with some bricks that had been abandoned by the front door of the allotments.

They are very flat on the sides and a bit rough on top. I think they were used in a driveway or pavement with the smoothe sides up and were thus quite deep. I took the easy way out and used the largest surface area as my path. It's flat enough to walk on and use a wheelbarrow on, so suits my purpose fine.

I found the green netting when clearing out the inside of the shed. It was in a plastic bag filled with water, so I left it out to dry.

I gutted the inside of the shed and repositioned the benches. I now have lots of space to put seedlings and seed trays so they are near the light. As it was, as soon as something germinated, I didn't have anywhere to put it.

I'm going to build shelves under the long bench on the right to add more space. With the new benches in place I've moved all my seedlings down from the flat. I'll chat about them next.

Growth and spring

Time for some more photos of growth. First off, the strawberry trough and pots on the patio.

The strawberry trough looks excellent, but I think I might put the bulbs elsewhere once they are done because the strawberries might suffer from being shaded by the leaves. That would involve disturbing the strawberries though, so I'll think on.

The flower patch is looking good now. I still need to plug gaps with the potted bulbs. Some flowers have overflowed into the first path, which looks quite nice, so I'm going to leave them for the moment.

The rhubarb patch is looking excellent. Not long now. Actually, I think some are ready.

The sticks in the nursery bed are budding better than anything else in the garden. That could be shock from being cut off and rammed into the ground. I hope that they take. The quince cuttings are certainly much further ahead than the tree they came from.

Finally, the garlic is going very well. I'm very proud of it all.

We've also got a line of radishes and a line of spring onions where the leeks are going to go alongside the raspberries. The radishes (French Breakfast and Munchen Bier) have germinated. No sign of the spring onions yet.

Water collection

One of the more urgent items on my to-do list is guttering to collect water and direct it into my water butt (collected from Polmadie dump and is my best find). The water butt by itself collected about a centimetre of water over two or three weeks, which is fairly pathetic. No wonder as its surface area is less than a square metre.

So I rigged up some guttering to flow round the shed from the compost bins, round the back and then back along to the water butt. You can see the end of it below.

There are little holes to be plugged where nails have been bashed through the guttering at some point and a join that's not water-tight, but it's working. It's not rained for a while, but over the course of a day or so of wet weather it collected 10cm or so of water. It's not rained since of course, but that amount has got me through more than a week of watering seedlings and seeds.

I raised the butt up so that I could get my watering can in.

The final touch will be connecting the down pipe to the end of the gutter. That will guide water down, rather than rely on gravity (that's not so good on windy days when mini water falls can be blown off course). I also need to add a lid to keep detritus out, or so the books say. That's low on my list.