I decided to plant some of my curcurbits today. These are all members of the pumpkin, squash, courgette and cucumber family. I have only just realised that the spooky thing is that it was on 18th April 2008 that I did the very same thing last year! I intend to plant them out towards the end of May when it will be certainly frost free and the ground will have warmed up some more.
Here I have planted some lovely
'Rouge Vif D'Etamps' pumpkin,
Delicata squash,
Yellow Straightneck squash and a '
Tiffany' all female F1 cucumber. I have left some spaces in the seed tray as I am hoping to receive some
'Queensland Blue' squash seeds from a fellow blogger in the next few days. I really love this seed-swapping lark with bloggers. If I have given seeds to someone it is such a thrill to know that they have grown them, and I really look forward to seeing pictures of them posted on other blogs.
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I took a bit of a chance today in that I planted out just a few of my hardier tomato plants. It is still a bit early, but with some cloche protection I hope they will be OK. I have plenty of spares in the greenhouse still in case of disaster.
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Which reminds me.... keeping free range chickens on the vegetable plot is not to be recommended. Whilst digging a big hole with a spade in which to plant my tomato, those two chickens just jumped into the hole to search for creepy crawlies and I nearly chopped one in half. Pesky critters!
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Just a quick note on strawberry plant maintenance. They are growing well now, and earlier in the season I gave them a mulch and a feed of wood ash. It is important
not to water strawberries at all until the fruit starts to swell. Strawberries have a very, very fine root system which hates being wet.
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You can see here that the strawberry flowers are forming nicely and should be opening any day now.
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And just look at these little gooseberries! Looks to be a very good year for soft fruit. I might just put those two chickens around my gooseberry plants just to scratch and peck for sawfly larvae.