Plot 5

May so far has been taken up with nurturing seedlings, working on the greenhouse and getting things ready for the bean frame…

• Nearly all the seeds sown have germinated which is a great result. The runners, sweetcorn and french beans are all doing nicely in their paper pots, they are outside under a garden table hardening off. Took the cucumbers up to the greenhouse, they are looking healthy too and have started flowering. What I didn’t realise is that the burpless are outside cucumbers so I’m going to have to play God and make the boy flowers meet the girl flowers
• The greenhouse had an overhaul. Levelled the paving down the centre and put gravel around the borders – looks very posh! Found some old staging behind the container on site and repaired it, the greenhouse now has staging down all sides although I’m taking it out now to make room for the tomatoes and cucumbers.
• The first four poles for the ‘munty’ bean frame have been set in the ground, two back ones are 3ft and the two front ones are 6ft tall, there is a 5 foot gap between them which will give the runner and french beans 9ft to climb. Last year we had 3 6ft wigwams with 5 poles on each (90ft in total). The munty frame will have 21 or 22 9ft strings (189ft total) so we are doubling the amount of growing length and using up the same amount of space. In theory the frame should produce more crop, the beans will be easier to harvest and they will all have sun on them all day. Plus I can grow crops below the frame such as salad crops or a couple of courgettes, plus I’m going to grow butternut squash up the 6 ft front poles and maybe even a sunflower or two as well!

Trackback URI | Comments RSS