Click this link to find out how to harvest onions.

Snap off onion flowers as soon as they appear. If the plants flower, the onions will become woody and unusable.

If the onion flowers in it’s first year it is said to ‘bolt’. Instead of producing the onion bulb desired, the plant ‘bolts’ into maturity, flowers, & produces seed during the summer instead of the normal root.

Mark which onions started to bolt (with a lolly stick, or anything handy) and use these first as they won’t store well.

Harvest carrots as soon as they are large enough to use. Pull a few up to see how big they are. If the carrots are left in the ground to mature, the leaves will start to die off, but mature carrots will not taste as good as younger ones.

To harvest carrots:

• use a fork to loosen the soil at the side of the carrot - making sure it does not touch the carrot

• hold on to the carrot foliage and pull

Do not wash carrots before putting them into store.
It is possible to harvest fresh carrots nearly all year round by regularly sowing suitable varieties.

The leeks sown in the nursery bed, have reached pencil size, so ready for planting out.

First the leeks are trimmed at the top (leaves) and the bottom (roots).

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The White Gem Parsnip seed was planted in mid-June, and the young parsnips are now at the 3 true leaf stage.

In the second photo, the two seed leaves can be seen below the three true leaves of the parsnips. Click the image to enlarge it.

The stale seed bed system is paying dividends, as very few weeds are now germinating.

Germination is very slow in parsnips, but the white gem parsnips have come through and are now growing well.

Harvesting the self blanching celery has begun, two months after the celery seedlings were planted out.

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The shallots are growing well and will soon be ready for lifting.

Tradition has it that shallots should be planted on the shortest day and harvested on the longest day.

The beetroot has germinated well and the seedlings add a bit of colour to the vegetable garden.

Click on the image to enlarge & see the red stems.

Farming Friends & TopVeg have collaborated to create a How To Grow Onions growing card. Click on the image below to enlarge the picture of the card.

The card may be downloaded, printed off and pinned to the potting shed wall as a useful reference on how to grow onions. Read More »

The shallots planted in February need a hoe. The hoe will:

• get rid of the tiny weed seedlings
• keep the soil loose on top - so reducing the number of weeds which grow because they find it hard to germinate in loose, dry soil. Also loose soil will be easy to hoe in the future.

TopVeg used a small hand rake as a hoe. It is important to work the hoe in a shallow layer of soil, so that the roots of the shallots are not disturbed.

The shallots have grown well in the last week.

It is a shame that the shallots have grown in an uneven fashion.

Using a hoe when the weeds are tiny, before the weeds start to compete with the shallots, will also make life easier in the future.