Musings from a Stonehead | Tag Archive

Tag Archives: Gardening

Harvey, our Border Terriers, scampers through sunlit saplings on the croft.

It’s February, isn’t it?

2 February, 2012 by Stonehead 13 Comments

The media may be proclaiming a Siberian freeze—or an Antarctic freeze for that matter—but I spent most of the day working outside, sans jacket and woolly hat because conditions were so mild and sunny. In fact, it was was sufficiently warm for the soil to be worked as only the top inch or so was [...]

Crofting, Farming & Smallholding

Crofting, freeze, Gardening, postaweek2012, Smallholding, snow, Weather, winter

A single Westphalian kale plant in the the vegetable patch.

Growing kale

30 January, 2012 by Stonehead 4 Comments

Crofters have long depended on kale, as well as its brassicae cousins cabbage and neeps (turnips), as it thrives in the Scottish conditions. Ann Dean, in Foudland Slate Quarriers and Crofters refers to the slate crofters who once worked the hills just up from us as living largely on a brose of oatmeal and greens, [...]

Vegetables

brassica, brassicae, Crofting, Gardening, Hungry gap, kale, postaweek2012, sowing, vegetable

Growing potatoes

24 January, 2012 by Stonehead 11 Comments

Potatoes are one of the staples of our diet. They also grow well in the acidic soil and the cool, damp climate of north-eastern Scotland. However, potatoes are not necessarily one of the best vegetables to grow, particularly if space is limited. Potatoes are relatively cheap to buy in large quantities for the table, they [...]

Vegetables

Crofting, Gardening, how-to, Phytophthora infestans, postaweek2011, potato, Smallholding, vegetable

Growing carrots

27 August, 2011 by Stonehead 13 Comments

We like carrots, eat them in abundance and plant many to meet our needs but, as with many vegetable crops, they can be a little tricky to grow in our conditions. Our topsoil is poor, stony and acidic, we have hard frosts from November through to April, the growing season is further curtailed because our [...]

Crofting, Farming & Smallholding, Vegetables

carrots, Crofting, Gardening, How to…, postaweek2011, Smallholding, Vegetables

Let the digging commence

20 February, 2011 by Stonehead 15 Comments

As I was growing increasingly fed up with a complete lack of progress on the vegetable garden, pruning and tidying apart, I decided to throw caution to the winds and start digging some of the beds. Normally, I aim to dig muck into a quarter of the beds in November and have another quarter forked [...]

Vegetables

Crofting, Gardening, postaweek2011, Smallholding, Vegetables, Weather

Older Entries