A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL READERS
So, there I was busy planting up my shallot bulbs when I tripped over a tray full of water, put my arm out to break my fall and went through the glass side of the greenhouse. The lucky bit is that the only part of me that got in the way of the breaking glass was the fingers of my right hand. The bad news is that the cut to my middle finger is quite bad and I won't be able to do much for a while. The good news is that my retired nurse wife managed to put me back together with assaulted dressings thus avoiding sitting in casualty for hours on end with all the NY walking wounded. Lessons will probably not be learnt!
So, as the picture shows, there's now a bloody (literally) great hole in the side of the greenhouse which needs a couple of new bits of glass. Thanks to my mate Andy, who kindly did a temporary polythene patch up for me. He's back on Sunday to clip in the new glass, as it's unlikely I'll be able to get the clips in place by then. The cost? The glass + several light and bitters!
Obviously, the above mishap meant that I couldn't get much done. I did manage to finish planting the exhibition shallots, which just leaves a few smaller bulbs which will grown purely with the kitchen in mind.
I had a difficult year with my shallots in 2012. True, I won the class at the village show, albeit with quite small bulbs, but that was primarily down to the fact that everybody else had similar problems. Consequently, my plans of being completely self sufficient shallot-wise didn't happen. However, I was fortunate in that I was given a bag of around 30 'Hative de Niort' bulbs of varying sizes. The largest 21 bulbs are now in 3½" pots. I've also planted up 9 'Jermor' bulbs from Medwyns and 15 of the largest of my own stock of H de N and 'Aristocrat'.
For the past 4 years I've started off my onion seeds in heated propagators and once they've germinated they've been moved to my homemade growing chamber. It's a system that's worked well for me, so I could see no reason to change my routine. I'd got the 4 bits of the chamber out of storage on New Years Eve, so it was just a matter of screwing it back together, placing it on my office work surface by the window, and fixing up the light above. Fortunately, I did all this before the aforementioned mishap to my hand.
The onion seedlings are now in the chamber and growing strongly. I'll thin them down to one seedling per station over the next couple of days.
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Hi sorry to hear about your accident today. I hope that it wasn't too bad! Thank you for sharing about your injury as this has got me thinking. Accidents do happen so a first aid kit in my allotment shed would be something to invest in. Please follow my blog so you can check out my updates.
ReplyDeletesorry to hear about your accident it nearly made me cry. (with laughter)
ReplyDeleteyou clumsy southern twat
Thank goodness you are ok, that could have been so much worse. Are you ok for replacement glass? I have a few panes for spares.
ReplyDeleteI like your grow station, I was thinking of making one this year but think I may have left it a bit late. You are sowing chillis now? I had better get moving, it's the first time I will be growing them so I wasn't sure when to sow.
Liz. Thanks for your kind offer of glass. The repair has been completed now, so I won't need any more just now.
DeleteAsa far as chillies are concerned. I find that, here in the South East, chillies can be sown at anytime from Christmas to the middle of March. Certainly, with Indian chillies, particularly those from Assam, the earlier the sowing the better. With the liukes of Haberneros, I've usually sown in March and has a good harvest of red fruits in early September. Many of the so called message board 'experts' will tell you that in order to get a decent crop you must sow around New Year. That is a generalisation that I've found to be true only for the more specialist varieties.