Insane weather

The weather here has been completely foreign. Literally, no one here remembers when this country had such good weather for such a solid amount of time. Its been almost 2 months of solid sunshine, only a shattering of showers in that time. Today it is grey and raining and most of us gardeners are sighing with a little relief. The grass was dying without watering it. How bizarre.

Due to this weather everything has been going crazy in the garden and on the windowsills.  I cannot recommend Icelanders to grow their own salad enough. Apart from watering there is basically no maintenance. The limp tasteless crap that we can buy in supermarkets is entirely pointless.

In on my windowsills I have aubergines, paprika(pepper), and 12 varieties of tomatoes and 12 varieties of tomatoes. This week I ate my first tomatoes. All of the plants are producing loads of flowers and some of the tomato plants are heavy with fruit and I am just waiting for them to ripen.

Also waiting to ripen are my strawberry plants. All of which were purchased last year. Some were from blómoval but the plants which are strongest and are absolutely weighs down with fruit were bought in Ikea of all places. They survived outside through the very long and brutal winter we had and are the biggest thickest plants I have ever seen.

Other plants which are doing well and were from last year includes my spring onions. I was amazed that these survived the winter, but they did and have been keeping me in supply whilst this years crop is almost ready. Nothing is as amazing as the taste of a home grown spring onion. Everyone who appears at my house gets one shoved in their face with me ordering "Taste it, just taste it". The response is always startlement that it tastes so good.

The heat has destroyed a few crops too though. My pak choi and swiss chard skipped straight from young plants to going to seed. I pulled them up and replanted because at least both of these crops are fast growing.

I have handed over the last of my extra young plants which needed rehoming this weekend and now everything is ready for the rest of the year. I have concentrated on summer crops this year as I will be away during mid September to mid December. The exceptions I will/am making is spring onions and cabbage family which generally look after themselves. I rehomed some broccoli and brussel sprout plants from my friend Ben and I planted alot of Kale which generally makes it through.

May this weather stay good all summer long, I have alot of squash plants and am trying with baby sweetcorn again. I will literally do a victory dance if these crops do well.

This month I have been eating:

• Beet leaves
• Japanese spinach by the ton (I strongly recommend the variety Mikado F1 its amazing)
• Corriander by the mountain
• Geovese Basil
• Purple Basil
• Peas
• Mange tout
• Chilis
• Tomatoes
• Rhubarb
• Spring onions
• Cos Lettuce
• Red and Green Salad Bowl leaves
• Corn Salad
• Chives
• Thyme
• Rosemary
• Mustard leaves

Promised photos

Here are some images I promised I would upload. 

My tomato plants have started fruiting, this is incredibly exciting. Well, to me at least. There seems to be a neverending supply of things to repot at the moment. I think for workload reasons I won't sow any more anything which requires potting. Just keep to new batches of spinach, lettuce, spring onions etc. Its time to eat things now. These weeks of unnaturally good weather have done wonders, even though it now promises to get cooler for a while, I can forgive it.

Overdue

Long long time overdue. I had my month in China during April and my housemate was incredibly dulleg and kept all of my seedlings alive. Since then I have repotted and hardened off various plants.

Early May provided an unseasonably warm week followed by a reminder of where we live with below freezing temperatures and even a sprinkling of snow. This royally terrified almost all plants and trees which were excited by the sun. It almost killed all of my courgette plants. I had 15 out in my cold frame, 5 varieties and now I only have 4 plants left. At the very least I can share the fact that the variety Cocozelle seems to be to most frost hardy with all of the 3 plants surviving.

Almost all of the rest of my plants are doing incredibly well. I sadly dropped and destroyed my iphone so have no way to take digital photos currently. I took a large number of photos on my film camera which I will get back in the next day or so and upload on here.

Descriptively though, most of the salads are 'baby plants' as my 2 year old calls them, the pak choi is almost pickable and the peas are about 15cm high. Inside my apartment every windowsill is rammed with tomato plants. I am growing no less than 11 varieties of tomato and 9 types of chili. In addition there are 2 types of aubergine and 2 of pepper. I am going to try and keep these indoors for maximum crop this year and use my darling plastic greenhouse and new plastic cold frame for squashes, baby sweetcorn, herbs and more. I have also invested substantial effort in flowers this year, something I have never really done previously. My focus has of course been on edible ones. I have 6 different types of nasturtium, 3 types of sunflower, camomile, cornflower and lavender. There are also a few flowers for flowers sake including sweet peas, aster and forget me nots. The weather has been epic the last week and is supposed to continue for another week at least. Its brilliant.

This week I have been eating:

• Demon Red chilis
• Pak Choi
• Corriander
• Spring onions - white and red
• Chives
• Basil
• Rhubarb
• Sorrel

Spring is in the air

Spring is definitely here. We have had some sunny days which were actually warm, and now drizzle days which aren't really cold. Crocuses are popping their heads up everywhere around town and daffodil leaves are poking through. The Rhubarb is also being brazen and poking through with enough force that when I come back from trip I know it will be harvestable. This is particularly exciting for me as its plants I grew from seed last year and had to leave alone, unpicked until this season.



The trip I am going on is to China for arty stuff. Its all very exciting and you can read about it on my other blog if you are interested. The main issue for me gardening-wise is that I will be away for all of April. This is a critical seedling month and I have been thinking ways around it as much as possible.

I decided to be brazen with the outdoors. I planted many different edible crops in the last weeks in containers. Concentrating on special - and often oriental - varieties of things which are more hardy in the cold. Different types of chinese spinach as well as perpetual, japanese onions, pakchois, kales, radishes and many types of salad leaves - focusing on winter types and hardier plants such as mustard leaves and rocket.

I also layered raised containers with stones at the bottom and a strawy mulch on tope so that they will be warmer and also not waterlogged - with the exception of watercress, which I need to be soaked constantly. With these I hope to see at least their heads poking up when I come back - or better still, edible leaves.



Indoors after much toing and froing and threatening to exile her, I have left 150 prospective seedlings in the care of my house mate. I planted only half of each variety figuring if they are not alive when I return I can try and do a second batch and hope they catch up. The poor girl hasn't got any experience in plant care so I hope my written instructions plus demonstrations pull through. Its quite an intimidating batch.



Other than that, my chives and spring onions are actually edible now and my 2 tomato plants I managed to overwinter are showing flower buds, as is my 3 year old chili plant. I did have 2 3 year old aubergine plants and some other chili plants but sadly last time I went away, the aforementioned housemate didn't realise plants need more than a sprinkling of water when they are in a window above a radiator. I did grieve, especially the aubergines. But bless her, she didn't even realise they died. Even though all the leaves fell off and only brown sticks remained....

I was very excited about having early aubergines and chilis but next year I will take more plants in to overwinter. This is the only way to get mega early crops and as soon as the chili flowers are out like now, I know spring is here.

Von / Hope

Well after landing back in Iceland the weather has mostly been snow, slush, snow, slush, rain. But last wek I announced to my housemate that no matter what the weather would be the day after, I would commence gardening. At the very least a little clear up.
I have been twitching!

Lo, I awoke the next morning, all the snow gone, no wind and a sunny day. I spent 6 hours out in the garden, clearing up old pots, cutting back dead plants and pruning roses and fruit bushes.

I discovered rhubarb, chives, mint, thyme and spring onions already bidding themselves life in the first days with proper light. In addition I discovered my experiment at overwintering carrots seemed to have worked! I harvested 20 or so carrots. Probably 10% were lost to frost but the rest survived. I planted them in a 50cm high plastic container which had very good drainage in the form of stones plus straw at the bottom.

The biggest surprise was that I dug up a bucket full of potatoes that I simply hadn't gotten around to digging up at the end of the season. Best bonus to keep my enthusiasm up whilst the weather plays its wet hand again.

Finally, its going to start again

Just bought these, I am in the UK for a holiday, as soon as I get back preparation starts! I have no less than 142 packets of seeds and aim to go absolutely crazy in the garden this summer!

More here soon!

In the thick of it

Ok, maybe I am a tad too busy to update this properly.


This month my enemies are:

* Greenfly. Dear lord, so much of them. I have been proactively encouraging spiders who have helped a lot
* Powdery Mildew. I left my greenhouse closed during my 3 week stay abroad and my housemate was very good at watering everything very well, but sadly the weather was warm without sun and the humidity has gotten to all my tomato plants in the greenhouse. Luckily I have about 15 plants in other locations. But for now I removed the worst hit and stripped all the leaves from the remaining ones and left the door open to dry out the greenhouse.

This month I have been eating:
* Tomatoes like they are going out of fashion. Any of my friends who taste them explode with joy
* several lettuces
* spring onions - red and white
* sunflower seeds
* Jalepeno chilis
* Demon red chilis
* Mange tout peas
* Rocket
* Chamomile (tea)
* Pak Choi
* Courgettes
* Spinach
* Swiss Chard
* Baby carrots
* Strawberries
* Baby kale
* Nasturtium
* Corriander
* Thyme
* Basil
* Parsley
* Mint

Things I see being picked by the end of the month:
* More of all of the above
* Potatoes
* Aubergines
* Peas
* French beans
* Runner beans
* Baby corn

I really would love to spend at least 2 days a week doing this and have the most amazing garden.