Alan's Garden Blog

Yes I know we can grow broccoli and cabbage but I am not the biggest fan of either. So have a look at the snow peas. I have seven flourishing at the moment so I should end up with plenty.

My garlic started to appear after only one week in the ground. It looks strong and healthy already so the effort to heavily compost the soil has definitely paid off. Nothing can go wrong from here? Not sure about disease but with the watersaver garden I can be certain it will not get waterlogged or die of thirst. I don’t intend to feed it any more before harvest, I think there is enough in the soil to sustain it through the whole growing season. Hope so.

The compost I was waiting for finally got to the stage where I was happy with it on the first of March. I planted 34 purple garlic and 4 elephant. The following Wednesday I put in another 31 purple and 11 elephant. That’s when Jaye gave the order to cease planting. A bit late but I am confident that the quality of the composted soil and associated worms and micro-organisms will feed the hungry garlic right through winter and give me a bumper crop. We are still eating the garlic from our last harvest.

Their is a ton of science behind quick composting but I am not one to be out there with a thermometer in the middle of the night. I have been a bit slack and just cranked up my volume of compost for the big garlic planting in a couple of weeks. If the compost is not ready it will take nitrogen away from the garlic in the early stages which is not a good thing.

I already had about 1/4 of a metre of half done compost:

I have some surplus colours that you can have for the price of zinc. One small (1200mm x 600mm) in Cottage Green and Wilderness and one large in Classic Cream.