Showing posts with label Lettuces. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Lettuces. Show all posts

Wednesday, 21 November 2007

Strawberries In And Update!

I haven't been up to the allotment nearly as much as I would like over the last few weeks. It has been half term, followed by one thing and another. The latest has been marking - it takes priority over most things.

Today however the strawberries arrived, with instructions to put into the ground immediatly! And so I went to the allotment this savo with the mission of putting the strawberries in. I have put them into the bed that had the failed potatoes. I am a little worried that there may be a few baby potatoes in there even though the plants didn't grow too well. Every now and then I come across some teeny spuds. I hope they don't grow into 'weeds' next year in between my strawberries.


Here is a picture of the strawberry plants as they cam from Suttons in the post this morning. They look very bare and small. Let's hope that they know what they are doing and they grow up big and strong.


The leaflet says that I should remove all flowers for the first year. What! No strawberries next year? I want strawberries! Boo Hoo..... (I think I'm going to be a bit naughty and let a few flowers through....)

In other news.......

The lettuces are still strong, although the frost has taken it's toll. I think the time has come to dig them out. Still, I'm pleased at how well the raised bed/copper tape worked at at stopping the slugs.

Talking of copper tape, on the strawberry bed the tape is hanging off in places (see the strawberries pic). So I definately need to do something to make it stay put.

In the background of the letttuce bed is the onion bed. Can you see a few onions sticking up? Yay - the onions (or at least some of them) are growing. As well as lots of grass. I tried digging up some of the grass, but it looks like it is a little tuft on the top, attached to a huge couch grass root underneath. I think I need the onions to be more established before I have a proper go at digging it all up......


That's all for now, Folks!

Monday, 1 October 2007

Lettuces


In late August/early September I put my first raised bed with copper tape in. I have planted this with little gem lettuces on one side, girly1's Wall flowers in the middle, and some mixed seed lettuces on the other side. The mixed seed lettuces are supposed to be cut, and then they grow back again.

The lettuces are my first venture into my copper tape trial, so I'm hoping the lettuces don't get munched! So far so good, as I now have a lovely crop of lettuces! My second success of the year!

The mixed lettuces said that they could be cut at 2-3 weeks, and then every 2 weeks after that. I think that's a little ambitious, as they were still tiny at 3 weeks. At 4 weeks I thinned the little gems, but the seedlings were too small for munching really. Last week I thinned again, and had a lovely lot of leaves to munch on!

Note for next year - the seeds go in very thinly to save on thinning later on..... Still on that learning curve!