Wednesday, March 26, 2008

Veg plot - day 5

I didn't get to sleep until gone 5am this morning, so didn't get up til a delivery bloke woke me at 1pm.

He delivered... seed potatoes! And garlic! And two wildflower mixes, one for birds/butterflies, the other a woodland mix.

I was a bit worried yesterday that I might have overdone it with the soil - it's so hard to tell with the fibromyalgia because you can feel fine, when in actual fact you've done too much and it'll bite you on the ass a couple of days later. Today I feel okay, some tired and tight muscles in my arms, shoulders and back which are a bit achy, and I decided to have a rest day.

So all I've done is easy stuff. I set out the seed potatoes in trays to "chit" (or "sprut" as my dad would say) - for the uninitiated that means leaving them in the light so they grow little shoots about 4cm long, that way they grow better once you plant them.

There's 1kg each of five different varieties which mature at different times. In order of harvesting - Charlotte, Orla, Ambo, Desiree and Arran Victory. There's probably more there than I want to plant, to be honest, so I might give some away.

Maybe later I'll start off some lettuce in fibre pots.

4 comments:

  1. Ed freaks out at sprouted potatoes. He also can taste the sound of a knife sharpening against a steel, and can't wash a rolling pin though.

    I on the other hand hate things with little holes - like when you cut the pineapple skin off and there are neat rows of holes under it. Shaargh.

    Are we all odd.

    (I have big bloody garden envy - we have a balcony. Or whatever you call a balcony when it's on the ground floor.)

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  2. Got to say I hate sprouted potatoes too, and although I'll eat them if they're not too bad, someone else has to break the stems off. Yuk.

    Tasting knife sharpening? Wow. I can feel that almost in my jaw just below the ears.

    I'm full of little things I can't stand. Probably the silliest one is, you know when you open a jar of jam or similar that has a label on the lid with a strip that attaches to the side of the jar, that breaks when you open it for the first time? When I put the lid back on the strip HAS to match back up again. I've been known to check the cupboards in case Michael's put any back like that. How OCD.

    We're all a bit OCD, mostly because a little OCD is advantageous in an evolutionary sense, like hand washing and so on.

    Wonder if your thing with holes has something to do with spoiled food? Like maybe causes people to avoid things infested with maggots (yuk yuk yuk) or something? Interesting.

    A terrace? That's what I'd call it.

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  3. I just got caught up on your gardening adventures! You are quite ambitious. What are you going to do the sides of your beds with? Your back yard is lovely and big! My grandparents had a tiny little garden for flowers out their back door, and leased a plot in a community garden for growing vegetables. When my grandmother died, the lease was passed down to her daughters.

    I'm envious of your garden. I think that when we take the pool out in a couple of years, I will also try the raised bed gardening. Mom and Dad have had some pretty good success with it - I hope you do too!

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  4. I know Sayre, I've been blogging like mad!

    The big garden was one of the things that first attracted us to the house. My last house had a tiny garden, really tiny, but I used to grow some stuff in pots, like herbs and tomatoes. A big garden's a lot of work though.

    I'm still working on the plan for the actual bed construction - it may well change as we put it together, because I'm not great at planning in my head. Should happen this weekend.

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