Celeriac Strategy

 

I'm giving celeriac one more chance. If I don't get something bigger than a tennis ball this year, then that's it, I will never attempt to grow them again. And while I'm having this one last try, I thought I'd give celery a whirl too. You never know....

So - my strategy is that I'm just throwing everything at it. I started them off in the heated propagator in January, then the best ten seedlings of each got pricked out into their own luxury pot, and given optimum conditions until early April, when I began hardening them off. This has been done quite gradually, a couple of weeks for a few hours a day, then a couple of weeks with a few more hours each day, until about three weeks ago they were left out permanently. By yesterday they had had a couple of nights out in a slight frost, and came through unscathed, so I decided the time had come for them to go out into the great outdoors. I dug two trenches and filled them with compost, manure and water retaining crystals, and in they went. If it looks as if we are in for a drought I will mulch them deeply with straw, and they will get another feed or two later in the summer. They really have no excuse not to perform this time, but as I said, this is last chance saloon.

 

The broad beans are making slow progress. Yesterday I started weeding and hoeing around them, but as you can see, I didn't manage to finish the job.

I am quite concerned about these onion seedlings.... I have been looking around nervously at everybody else's set grown onions, most of which are about a foot tall now, while my seed-grown ones are positively puny. However I am keeping the faith, I have heard several reports of seed-grown onions doing nothing until midsummer, then putting on loads of growth and growing bigger than the sets. We'll see... if I don't get any onions this year then so be it, at least I can say I have tried the seed.

This is quite exciting - I have never grown gooseberries before. Technically I haven't actually grown these, they were already there, but now they are mine.

 

But what's this? Something has nicked the blossom off my cherry tree! I can't have this - I have hastily  draped some netting over it, but I'm worried that the birds (assuming that's who dunnit) will just get tangled up in it and all the remaining blossom will get knocked off anyway. Perhaps I need to try the dangly CD method.