Bloody weather!

One week after I plant the parsnips and all of a sudden we get a horrible cold spell. Well, let's hope everything survives. Once the weather lights up a bit I'll dig up the rest of the yard and make everything a bit more presentable. The tomatoes have been potted as well and they're standing comfortably upstairs with plenty of sunlight. In a heated room.

Something I forgot to put in by the way:

Our yard is located in the eastern part of the Netherlands. That should give you some indication of weather and climate. No clay soil here though. Just regular plain old sand.
I am going to fill in the raised beds with this sand, then put in the potatoes and beetroots. Then I'll top them off with garden soil. I'll probably have to fertilise the beds every few weeks as well. I'll look into what to use for that over the coming weeks. Compost, maneur, etc. Time to figure out some crappy facts!

Right! The parsnips are in! That would be the bed on the right. The other two I already placed as I had the space anyway after digging away the soil to create a sort of level surface. The top left one will be potatoes and the bottom one will be the beetroot.
I'll dig away the sorry excuse for a lawn and use the soil to fill the beds. I'll add one more bed later on. Since the taters and beetroots won't be planted until the beginning of april I'll do that then. No need to create a big mudhole when it isn't needed yet.
Once the beds are all in place and the lawn is gone I'll fill in the rest with gravel. That way we can sit in the yard and enjoy the sight of our veggies growing.

That was hard work!

This will be my first attempt at growing vegetables in my own backyard. How did I come by this idea you might ask? The inspiration came mainly from friends who have moved to Sweden a few years back. They grow almost all their own food and raise some pigs for slaughtering as well. I know I can't get enough out of my meagre few square metres of backyard, but I can at least get some.

The vegetables of choice are two kinds of potatoes, 'Blaue Sweden' and 'Blaue Congo', beetroot 'Chioggia Guardsmark' and parsnips. I figured I can buy regulare potatoes and beets in the supermarket, so I might as well grow something special at home. The potatoes are black skinned, with the Congo having purple coloured tubers. The Sweden has white tubers.
The beetroot has a white/red alternating ring pattern.

These veggies will be planted in raised beds. The beds I 'made' out of pallet collars. I hammered some sheet plastic on the inside as well as it seemed like a good idea. The advantage of using pallet collars is that I can easily store them during winter. Another reason is that I am going to try to grow my potatoes in towers. Yes, the dreaded potato towers. I'll be curious to see wether this gets me a decent harvest.

Aside from the bedded veggies my girlfriend will be growing strawberries and tomatoes in pots. She will sow the tomato seeds in small pots and keep them inside until they are big enough to go into the yard. The strawberry plants will be bought a bit later in the season and will go outside as well. We also have a blueberry bush and a redcurrant in the yard.

In this blog I will post pictures of our yard in progress with descriptions of what we have done to get it there. The ups, the downs, good and bad times and hopefully a bountiful harvest.