Asparagus harvest

At last my asparagus plants are stepping up their production, I picked about 5 spears today, enough for a portion for 1 person. Now I think only one of the plants is dead, all the others have at least produced 1 spear so far so I'm not so worried now. Just in time as my back up supply (a local farmer who sells bunches by the roadside for £1.20!) has stopped selling.

What to do with them? grill, steam, eat raw? I tend to throw all the spring veg in together in stages to stop them becoming overcooked. I do this as it's the way my dad would cook young vegetables until there was enough of each type to warrant serving individually.  The other day I had a chicken pie with Jersey royals, peas, my asparagus, my spinach - all tossed together in butter and mint. It was lovely!

First harvest from Furnace Lane

Today I harvested 6 spears (very spindly) of Asparagus and three radishes, and now I'm full up!

 

April muddle

It's at this time of year I tend to get terribly confused at what needs to be done by when, and usually get in a bit of a tizzy and miss out some essential jobs. This year I'm determined to do little and often with regards to hoeing, watering and sowing seed, which sounds like such a basic list of things to do, but they can so often go neglected by a few days and suddenly you have a glut of jobs to catch up on. Today I was feeling a bit low (pregnancy wise) so decided not to work hard at anything. Instead I enlisted my kind husband to fill up my water butt for me, with a water sack I bought ages ago which is slightly leaking, but needs must. This meant I was at least able to water a few seedlings and not worry to much about things withering. To cheer myself up a bit, I brought my seed sowing kit indoors tonight and crossed off a long list of plants that needed to be sown. They are as follows:

Cucumber spacemaster
Dill
Basil
Tom Thumb lettuce
San Marzano Tomato
French Bean Neckar Queen
French Bean Cobra
Swede Marian
Beetroot Boltardy
Beetroot Burpees Golden
Queen anne's lace
Calendula Indian Queen
Larkspur

The last three are cutting flowers, I am experimenting with a few this year as well as the usual wildflower mix which seems to love my poor soil!

I am growing so much from seed as so little seems to germinate well on my plot. Even the lettuce sown 12 days ago has failed to come up yet, and that's usually a failsafe. I know some of the things hate being transplanted, but if I don't plant relatively big plants, they just don't make it. For example, in a row about 2.5 metres long of parsnips, only 3 have germinated. Either they don't like the soil, or the slugs have polished them off, hard to tell! On a plus note, my asparagus has not given up, there were three new spears appearing this evening, so if they have gone tomorrow, I will know something is definitely chomping it. I can't wait till May when everything gets more established!

Asparagus!

My much eagerly awaited first spear of Asparagus has sprouted! Yipee, not long before I will be steaming a big pile of those juicy veggies and soaking in butter, schlick.

Slow progress

Today was clement enough to visit the plot for a spot of digging. Even though in retrospect I achieved quite a lot, looking at the plot it seems like slow progress. It's times like these that I realise how big the plot actually is and how many weeds have managed to take root over winter!

Today I:

1. Dug the area behind the asparagus, making a new herb bed which will also house my strawberries.
2. Make a timber surround around asparagus and infill with compost. Same with the herb bed (see below)

3. Weeded in the potato bed
4. Planted strawberries
5. Cleared out compost bin (being used as tool storage)

At this point a friend turned up with a flask of tea and biscuits and production inevitably slowed! Still got quite a bit done. Although didn't get around to planting onions and broad beans this time. Not sure what to do with my onion sets as they are sprouting already, keep them cool or plant them?