On Thu, 30 Oct 2003 19:20:23 +0000,
(Jim W) wrote:

~Victoria Clare wrote:
~
~ The catalogues have started to arrive...
~
~ What are you growing from seed this year, and why?
~
~
~The ususal, with one or 2 new things thrown in..
~
~Ususal includes Toms, spuds, onions, carrots, 'neeps, courgettes,
~squash, chillies, corn, etc.. Gonna look more closely at cultivars
~known to perform well in our soils location where poss..
~
~Want to make the effort to get better onions, carrots and swede as well.
~And indulge my passion for exotic edible ornamentals.. I may well treat
~myself to a 'UK Pepper' after my visit to the ART research site this
~year.. SPICY, and a damn sght cheaper than buying black pepper in the
~shops;-)
~
~And I see T&M are offering highly priced sweet potato slips..
~/

I'm sticking with some familiar and good cultivars: cabbage minicole,
sweetcorn ovation and trailing green marrows. Out of the (ahem!) six
varieties of squash I tried this year, I'm going to grow butternut, custard
and Gold Rush again. I won't grow the spherical courgettes as they don't
seem to be as easy to do anything with as the normal shapes and grow seeds
faster. Dunno about acorn squash - depends on if I like the ones I have
grown this time (still in shed Will get Defender F1 to replace the
eightball and de Nice a fruit rond.

I will grow more Marshalls New Fen Globe onion sets as I have lots of large
onions but still not enough, and have already planted more overwintering
garlic as the spring planted was pathetic. I will grow twice as many
International kidney spuds as not only are they great tasting, they'll do
as first earlies to early maincrop so you can dig when you want. Beetroot
boltardy suffered with the drought but didn't bolt so there's another old
favourite. Definitely growing Berggold dwarf beans yet again - was picking
them in mid-July to a couple of weeks ago.

Am changing runner beans. Got a bit fed up of strings this year, so Enorma
is getting the boot. Will consult google to see what folk here have in the
past recommended...

Might grow savoy cabbage again - depends on what this year's lot are like
but I won't eat them until January!

And I swear I'm going to make rigid netting frames this next year so I can
just lift them up to weed under! The first one is going to be enviromesh
and I'm going to dig a 6"trench, fill with growbag compost and plant the
carrots in *that* as I'm fed up of throwing away crazyshaped carrots. They
have forks on their forks...

Leeks I'll grow again, same as last year - autumn mammoth Verina (Unwins)
but hope they'll be a little better than the sad ones of this year. Not
enough water for them, either. Year before they were brilliant. Fairly rust
resistant too.

I might just splash out on spaghetti squash after the success a neighbour
had, if I have any room left!!!

Oh, if anyone remembers the tripover apple I shifted back in Feb? It made
it through the season and even grew some smallish apples!


--
jane

Don't part with your illusions. When they are gone,
you may still exist but you have ceased to live.
Mark Twain

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