Strawberries & container planting

I planted the six strawberries we got last weekend. Also cleared some more weeds from the bed.

If this can be called bed.

I was also reading a couple of articles (1, 2) in RHS and decided to plant a few things in three large-ish pots I found in the shed. One has 4 types of onions, another two types of chard, and another low peas Karina. I would have sworn I bought some carrot seeds recently but I cannot find them...

I put compost from the bag on the bottom, a little cow & chicken dried manure, and seeding earth on top. The pots are in the kitchen now.

Sowing on raised bed

Last year the sweet onions were devoured from below in a few days, so I'm trying something else this year.

We got a cheapo willow raised bed in gamma (1x1m) and 200l of potting soil. I put it at the back on the driest and sunniest spot in the garden, added two small scoops of dried cow and chicken manure, mixed, watered and sowed:
At the back all along the back, a mix of dill and cucumbers for pickling (Lidl), in ribbons. I didn't separate the three bits (dill-cucumber-dill) not sure it was meant to or not.
A bit further two rows of sweet onions, one of red and one white (Aveve), in ribbons.
Next a row of chard, on the left a packet from Brico (Central Park), on the right some I bought in Spain (Batlle).
On the very edge I spread some basilicum (Central Park).
All of these, larvae, slugs and snails I'm sure would be happy to devour again. Hoping the location, bed and new soil will be a deterrent, we'll see.
It's probably too sunny a spot for the chard and basil, though. Possibly the dill as well. The bag inside the bed has handles, but doesn't look like it would be easy to move once full.

(Poor) Notes for 2013

This is all from memory. If I remember I'll go though the seed packets at the house and check labels.

Last year we planted a few vegetables, but didn't have time to do nothing much in the garden (which will probably be the case this year as well).

With little to no attention, all of the tomatoes -cherry, some fat ones from a Spanish packet of seeds, a hybrid and a beef tomato from the garden centre, and a rogue tomato that popped out on it's own- did really great, so great that we found out we had planted them all way too close to each other. We planted them against a sunny wall, covered by some perforated plastic.

The pattypan squash did great as well (although we didn't find it of culinary interest).

 

The artichoke was the absolute favourite of the slugs, who would have thought?

The courgettes were also devoured, but to a lesser extent, we could eat two or three.

The leek and the spring onions were devoured from below by some unidentified grubs, the celery refused to grow (perhaps lack of water, too much sun?), and the collard greens were obfuscated by the pumpkin: planted too close.

The radishes did great; so did the peas, but they were low plants, this year I'll go for pole seeds. The beans were all devoured or duds, only one popped up, and that one did really great. That was a pole bean.

Lettuce in container did... psé, we neglected it too much.

The mint was in the less sunny spot of the trench we dug, but it was still too sunny, I think. Too dry as well. It was a bit better for the chives. All together a raging success compared with any herb I ever planted in a pot indoors...

We got a bunch of strawberry plants from Pim's parents, because theirs had reproduced too much. They were in a bit of a shock after transplanting (due to no planning whatsoever they spent a whole night and half a day drying out in the driveway, but nearly all survived. We got to eat a few strawberries. The snails also ate a few. Or perhaps birds.

We planted a raspberry and two kinds of red currants (I LOVE redcurrants). Only to realise the jungle at the back is mostly redcurrants and raspberries (and some stubborn blackberries), but it is too much of a shady mess to give much to eat, or even get to it.

I thought the three bushes we planted had died, and the raspberry most definitely did, but I've seen signs of life on the redcurrants this spring!

I also planted a Jonagold apple tree, that I want to train against some sort of wall that isn't there yet (we'll see), and a white peony. Both look allright (I should have protected the peony for the winter? but the winter turned out to not deserve the name: two nights of light frost...). And some annual flowers which were not too good, and two foxgloves that I hope will get nice and big on their second year! they did get some great nice leaves last year. I planted delphiniums and my father thought they were weeds too close to the tomatoes... off they went.

Except when noted, and the radishes and peas, we only planted one plant of each.