We are planting some midwinter broad beans today, before the ground gets too hard. Frost is forecast, and the frost freezes the soil making it too hard to dig.
Midwinter broadbean seed
Midwinter broad beans are an ideal variety for planting in January.
Aldis are selling packets of vegetables seeds for 39p – how cheap is that! A good excuse for trying out something new!
Click this link for details: Aldi seed packs
Courgette ‘Black Forest’ is a climbing Zucchini; an F1 Hybrid, latin name Cucurbita pepo.
This climbing Courgette is an ideal variety for growing in containers on the patio. As it grows upwards it saves space and is more ‘controlable’.
The long stems are tied onto a trellis or netting to help them grow upwards.
courgette black forest
Courgette Black Forest:
Click this link to buy some seed of the climbing Zucchini Courgette Black Forest.
Save £20 off your order with Thompson & Morgan when you spend over £100 on products.
Why not take this opportunity to
Enter Offer Code: AF10928
Enter code in the box labelled “Enter catalogue or newspaper code:”
Offer cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer code and is only valid with orders placed online at www.thompson-morgan.com.
OFFER END DATE: Midnight Wednesday 30th November 2011
There are still a lot of jobs to do in the garden in November, particularly in this mild weather; there are seeds to sow, crops to harvest & there is the general tidying up of the vegetable garden.
Sow in November:
broad-bean-rows-seedlings
Plant in November:
November Harvest:
fresh-celery
big-sprouts-below
Other gardening jobs to be done in November:
dig
Seed Tapes are a clever invention that definitely make vegetable gardening easier. Sowing small seeds at the correct spacing can be difficult particularly when you are ‘all fingers & thumbs’!
seed tape
Seed Tapes contain pre-spaced seeds in a tape. A seedbed has to be prepared as normal but then the tape is rolled out into a groove on the soil. The tapes are ideal for outdoor vegetable growing.
The advantages of using seed tapes are:
SeedTapePackFront
We have been given this packet of perpetual spinach (leaf beet) in a tape which we are going to ‘lay’ today.
SeedTapePakBack
The carrots sown in a tape last year were very successful.
The big disadvantage of seed tapes is that they are expensive, but they do make for efficient gardening and will be a useful tool for those vegetable gardeners who are short of time.
The craze for growing mammoth onions continues. In fact the size of the ‘biggest’onion is increasing.
In 1975, the world’s heaviest onion weighed 4lb 15oz. The record onion in 2010 is 16lb 8oz!!
William Robinson started the craze 100 years ago when he began developing giant vegetables on his father’s nursery. He prefixed all his large vegetables with ‘Mammoth’. Onions were one example of his mammoth veg. The seed company grew and W Robinson & Son still sell the mammoth seeds, including onions, all over the world.
We left a flower of rhubarb on the plant in the vegetable garden so that it could develop into a head of seed.
rhubarb-flower
rhubarb-seed-head
rhubarb-seed
The usual way to get a new rhubarb plant is to replant a piece cut off the crown (or root). It will take a long time to establish a useful rhubarb plant from a seed.
Seeds for leafy Brassicas are usually sown into a small patch known as a plant bed, and when the seedlings are strong enough, they are transplanted into their final position. So growing leafy brassicas is a two stage process:
Sometimes gardeners miss out the first stage and buy the young plants in.
Leafy brassicas include brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower & brocolli. Root brassicas, such as turnips and swedes, are not transplanted. The seeds of root brassicas are usually sown on the site they will grow for their lifetime.
preparing-to-plant-seeds
making-seed-row 
creating-seed-row Sowing Vegetable Seed
* *only place a few seeds in the hand
* *pinch a few seeds between finger and thumb and work them out
* *try to get them dropping singly, not in a bunch
* *take plenty of time, as it is worth the result
* *make a mark in the row, before taking another pinch of seeds from the hand, as you loose sight of the last seed
* *avoid sowing doubles
seed line *Cover the seed with fine soil. Then put a few small cobbly bits on top & gently firm in. These lumps help to keep the soil open and prevent capping
*Water the vegetable seeds in.
Planting brassica seeds carefully will allow them to develop into good, strong plants.
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