Nadine and The Star Flower
May 13th, 2007 by Chris
Rob planted the 23 Nadine potatoes given to us by Wayne’s dad. They were shop bought potatoes that had sprouted so we are keeping our fingers crossed that they are ok. He has put them in Keith’s old bean trench along the bottom of plot 18.
Whilst watering in the lean to I noticed that something had been nibbling at the aubergine seedlings so I have moved them and the peppers out into the small plastic greenhouse on a high shelf. I did find rather a healthy looking snail in there. Almost all of the tomatoes have been potted on now and the left hand side of the lean to is quite full. All this heavy rain had showed us how leaky the roof is in the lean to so we shall have to put that right soon. We shall need to harvest the lettuce from the right hand bed as the cucumbers are almost ready to go into their large pots and that was where I wanted to put them.
I sowed a few seeds of Borage, (Borago officinalis) the star flower, into small terracotta pots.
Borage is a hardy annual and is essentially a wild flower. Once established it will self seed and pop up year after year. Borage is a useful companion plant to strawberries and tomatoes as a natural form of pest control. It is also highly attractive to blackfly and can be planted as a decoy close to fruit and vegetables. http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A18718824
I sowed a row of Lemon Coriander seeds in the fourth quarter of the salad bed. Lemon Coriander leaves have an lemon fragrance and flavour. They can be used as a garnish in a salad or in stir fry.
All the other seeds in the salad bed have germinated now so I shall have to work on my thinning out skills.
The disaster of the day was that the leeks and onions are starting to go to seed. There are only a few leeks left so we shall just harvest them but it seems we have made a fundamental mistake with the onions. There are about 200, planted last year, and we were expecting to harvest in June. However, I have read today that we should have bent over the stems as soon as the leaves started to go brown, which was about two weeks ago, and harvested before they went to seed. Perhaps as they were so close to harvest time we should have watered during the recent dry spell to fatten the bulbs up and then folded the stems down ready to harvest. They are getting plenty of water now any way as the rain is ceaseless. I think the plan will be to cut off the flower stems and harvest as soon as possible.
