After returning from my vacation I was glad to see that most of my tomato plants survived despite me not being there to regulate the temperature in the scorching (for Denmark) weather.
I took all the ripe tomatoes as well as those I’d harvested previously and made a large portion of sauce of them, to save for winter.
My tomato harvest
Separating the stringy bits from the sauce
The day was spent moving everything I wanted to keep out of the back garden, since construction work for expanding my neighboring motorway from 4 to 6 lanes is supposed to start tomorrow.
It’s going to be interesting to see when, how much and for how long it’ll actually be fenced off, since from the plans it looks like the working area will be flush up against my back wall so I’ll be unable to walk all the way around the house.
I did get a little gardening done so in between bouts of moving I got the white head cabbage (var. Ditmarsker and Copenhagen Market) planted to replace those plants that froze to death during the winter. The red cabbage (var. Roodkoop) will get to grow a bit more before I plant it though.
The roses had sustained a lot of frost damage so I had to cut the two small bushes almost to the ground, luckily the New Dawn was mainly OK so regular pruning was enough for that one.
The Sargent’s apples (Malus sargentii) I have growing as a hedge got all the branch ends pruned to trigger more vigorous growth and more branching, I think they’ll have grown together in a whole when this season’s done.
The other apple trees got cut as needed for their various intended forms, two as regular dwarf trees, four as various espalier forms.
The tomatoes are still doing well in the greenhouse, though they haven’t started growing much yet.
The garlic I set has started sprouting like mad, while the red onions are still sleeping.
I got the pear tree and fruit bushes pruned today, the pear only as much as I could reach from the ground.
The fall-bearing raspberries now has little shoots peeping up beside the old stems, so I cut the old ones all the way down to the ground where they won’t be in the way.
The summer-bearing raspberries were planted last fall and still have a year to grow before they’re ready to produce.
The tomatoes seem to survive translocation to the greenhouse, so I hope to get plenty out of them later this year.
For cabbage, it currently seems to only three plants survived the harsh winter, so I’ll be sowing new ones of those.
Instead of buying of making new boxes, I ended up lining the old ones with heavy plastic and will see how that works.
Following that fix I replanted the tomatoes in the boxes.
The compost from last year was put on the potato bed, where it will hopefully release the nutrients slowly enough that they don’t get washed out and go to waste.
The work season has finally started.
The day went by fast preparing for spring cultivation and getting a few things in the ground.
Newly washed grow boxes
I cleared the greenhouse and finally emptied and washed the last grow boxes. Unfortunately 3 of them were leaking so I’ll have to invest in new ones, which isn’t good as they are rather expensive.
I have begun to consider whether I can cobble something together with rectangular 65-liter tubs. As 3 tubs only cost a little more than a single grow box there will be plenty of money left over for what else to use, especially if I end up with a more robust solution than the polystyrene the bought boxes are made of so I don’t have to replace them so often.
Newly grafted apples planted where they'll live the next year or two.
The ground is still very wet and heavy, so I only put something in two beds today.
The first was one of the small beds which had leeks last year, they were planted quite late so they didn’t get very large but they had still survived the winter, so the remains is in the kitchen where they are waiting for inspiration.
This bed has the newly grafted apple trees.
The second bed had heart cabbage last year, again planted very late so they didn’t get big enough to eat before the winter, this’ll be for Alliaceae this year, so I set a couple of bags of red onion and some garlic I had left hanging outside over the winter. There are still plenty of room to set more onions and leeks so I am considering whether it’s getting to be the time to also sow those.
Back in the apartment several of the tomatoes are big enough to be replanted to pots.
At least big enough to move some of them to pots.
Since tomatoes were originally creeping plants grew along the ground, they’ll grow new roots fast if the stem is in contact with soil, so I always plant then deeper, in order to encourage more roots to develop.
The apples have arrived and naturally that happened while I have a guest over from England and the ground is still frozen.
I ended up grafting the apples right away and heeled them in in a couple of bread trays with peat and put them out on the balcony.
This year I decided on a more limited range of varieties, based on which gave the most last year, so this time I’m only making Hellfrucht, Green Zebra, Tigrella, Matina, Brandywine, Estonian Yellow, Bellstar, Roma VF and a brown striped cocktail tomato which doesn’t seem to have a real name.
I planted the cabbages in next year’s cabbage patch, each of them in its own little greenhouse made from half a cola bottle.
Its a bit of a gamble, I’ve done this before where the winter turned out fairly mild and all the plants survived, but if the winter’s bad they’ll likely die.
I think it’s worth the gamble, because the plants will already have a month of growth when the spring comes around so they’ll be ready to eat earlier.