The Winter Crops Experiment - Final Update

-

I wrote back on the 23rd August how I planned to sow White Ishikura Spring Onions and Carrot Amsterdam Forcing 3 carrots to grow undercover in the greenhouse through autumn and into winter in the hope of having some crops for the long dark months of winter and perhaps even few carrots for the Christmas Dinner fresh from the garden. I also sowed a line of Carrot Amsterdam Forcing 3 seeds in the veg patch outside to compare with those in the Greenhouse. 

Firstly the outside sown Carrots failed, no great surprise as they are not a 'winter hardy' variety and were sown very late. As for the crops in the Greenhouse I didn't manage to have home grown carrots with Christmas Dinner sadly but will be having some this evening, I am very happy to report 😃

Both the White Ishikura Spring Onions and Carrot Amsterdam Forcing 3 are now ready for harvesting; okay a little later than hoped but it's fresh veg off the plot in March that isn't Winter Lettuce or Spring Greens. The carrots aint the biggest, heaviest, straightest or prettiest but I do not care! 

The lessons learnt from this very unscientific experiment? 

Firstly, if I want carrots in containers in the greenhouse that can be harvested for Christmas sow them earlier than late August to give them a good start outdoors in their containers before moving under cover in late autumn to keep them growing in the colder weeks. Secondly, I think the Spring Onions will work pretty much anytime of the year undercover if kept warm enough I jut need to water more regularly. Thirdly, and most importantly, I can do it, and will do it again. 

When I sit down to dinner this evening with my carrots fresh from the garden I will have a big old smile on my face as I bet there aren't many people out there with garden fresh carrots on their plates in March! 

Cheers 🍺

Winter Crops Experiment Carrots

Location: London Borough of Havering, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Planning for the garden in 2024

-
Tis the season to be jolly and all that , and tis also the season to begin planning for the garden in 2024. I have been thumbing through the seed catalogues, a pastime almost as dangerous as Christmas shopping . I always s eem to find something that I had never heard of , but now knowing of its existence , simply now must have! Rarely does a year pass that I am not growing a vegetable or flower completely new to me; for me it is one of the great pleasures of gardening, there is always something new to grow.    I have been busy clearing the ve g beds removing the remnants of the Butternut Squash plants and Runner Beans to be composted and digging out the inevitable Dandelions , trying to get the entire tap root out as I do so. I will be adding quite a bit of compost and manure to the beds over the winter so having cleared and slightly dug over the bed where I grew outdoor Tomatoes this year, I have placed tarpaulin over this bed for now to keep weed seeds out . I will add the
Read more

Gardening through spring 2024 & the wind and rain

-
I have for one reason and another unable to update the blog as regularly as hoped so far this year, all being well usual service can now be resumed.  In my monthly column for the Romford Recorder I have spoken earlier in the year  about how with the somewhat wild weather we have experienced through late winter and early spring a lot of my time in the garden has been spent repairing wide damage to fences and the climbing rose trellis along with retrieving a compost bin lid that had flown two-doors down and collecting various flotsam and jetsam that had landed on my plot! Between the numerous rain bursts earlier in the year copious amounts of homemade compost, farmyard manure and blood, fish and bone were added and dug in across the veg patch beds and a sprinkling of chicken manure pellets was also added.  The soil in the Greenhouse was similarly refreshed again with some fresh compost, farmyard manure, blood, fish and bone, chicken manure pellets and in there potash as well all added an
Read more

Preparing the garden for winter and next year

-
Perhaps it is because I garden and as such become more attuned to the seasons, but I quite enjoy the onset of autumn. The shorter days, the s oftening light, the changes in the garden and the world around us as everything prepares for winter; there is a certain beauty to it. That said, there is plenty to be getting on with readying the garden for the weeks ahead and into next year.    The English Lavender has already been pruned back with the flowers now finished meaning the Miscanthus Indian Summer grasses are now the highlight of that bed. The plan for this bed was for the bronze stems and feathery seedheads of the grass to sit beautifully behind the green/silver foliage of the mounded Lavender plants and it is working I am happy to report and thus far the grasses are withstanding the battering they have received from all the recent wind and rain. It has to be said, though we haven't had it as bad as some parts of the country, the garden as a whole has withstood the storms pr
Read more