I have learned a few things this year which I will be taking on board for next year’s gardening activities, and I thought I’d put them in this blog because that way, I’ll be able to find the list! So, here goes:
1. When it comes to planting tomato seeds indoors, don’t do it too early. Early to mid-April will be fine – it’s only people who grow their tomatoes in a greenhouse or conservatory who can get away with doing it earlier.
2. This year, I am really kicking myself for growing the Gardener’s Pearl variety of cherry tomatoes as opposed to Tumbling Tom, as I did last year. Although the Tumbling Tom seeds were humungously expensive, the fruit were DELICIOUS. The Gardener’s Pearls are OK, but bland – better for cooking than eating.
3. Use big containers for courgettes – buckets with a 14 or 15 inch diameter, at least.
4. Two varieties of courgette which seem to be happy with container living and give nice yields are One Ball and Golden Zucchini. I don’t know if the fact that they are both yellow has anything to do with it. Just mulch ’em regularly with home-made compost and water them generously.
5. Boot fairs and charity shops are great places to buy cheap plants if you don’t want to grow everything from seed.
6. Order a bulk lot of compost early on – litre for litre, it works out half the price of the titchy little bags.
7. Planting dried peas in a container (yes, those dried peas you get in supermarkets) gives amazingly good results – a small but steady supply of pea shoots and tiny mange-tout.
8. A top tip from a man I know who lives around the corner and also grows veg: plant nasturtiums near your runner beans. Any blackfly will eat the nasturtiums and leave the beans alone. EDIT: don’t bother with this one – he reckons that the nasturtiums were what encouraged the blackfly in the first place, and has since got rid of them. Result: no more blackfly.
And finally, here is a picture of Lottie standing guard among the elephant garlic:
| The first of the Gardener’s Pearls are ripening, as you can see. They taste OK but nowhere near as good as last year’s Tumbling Toms, which were out of this world. Fine for cooking though. The first Brandywines are appearing, ditto the faithful Gardener’s Delights. Soon be time for home-made tomato sauce, mmmmmm. |
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Step 1: use a big enough container. That’s the conclusion I’m coming to anyway, ‘cos so far, we’re doing quite well on the courgette front. OK, so a few of them have succumbed to the dreaded blossom end rot, but the majority are ripening into nice, healthy looking fruit. The buckets I’m growing the Black Beauty and Golden Zucchini in are 14 inches (35 cm) in diameter. Of course, there are other things I’ve done differently this year – like buy young plants from a shop, rather than growing them from seed. So you can’t really call it a scientific study lol. As far as yield goes, the Golden Zucchini is doing much better than the Black Beauty and Golden Ball. I will definitely be doing Golden Zucchini again next year.
I was on my way out yesterday morning when my neighbour from a few doors down stopped me and said, “Would you be interested in a mini greenhouse? I bought one for myself but I won’t be using it now and I thought you might like to have it.” Strangely enough, I had been thinking about getting a mini greenhouse but had been reluctant to actually go out and spend the money, particularly as most mini greenhouses you buy seem to consist of flimsy metal shelving covered with a giant plastic bag. Anyway, when I got home, our new greenhouse was waiting for us! As you can see, it’s a considerable step up from the giant plastic bag type of mini greenhouse. It will do very nicely as a winter home for our strawberries and will hopefully allow me to extend the cut & come again lettuce growing season a month or so further. But it will really come into its own next April/May, when the tomato season comes round again!
| The “grow them in big pots” policy for my courgette plants seems to be enjoying a measure of success, at least it is now that the weather is getting a little warmer. The pots in question are really buckets that started life as containers for industrial/catering quantities of golden syrup. If you spend 15 minutes poking a heated metal skewer through the bottom to create drainage holes, you have a superb container for growing courgettes and runner beans (three bean plants per bucket seems to be about right). Speaking of courgettes, I’ve decided to combat the dreaded blossom end rot by removing the flowers once the courgettes have reached about three inches in length. The one on the right is quite impressive – it’s two Golden Zucchini courgettes that have fused together early on, to give this double yolked beauty! It’ll (almost) be a shame to eat it. |
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| I was reading a magazine the other day and its cookery section extolled the virtue of something called Steve’s Leaves, bags of ready-to-eat loose leaf salad which you can buy on Ocado apparently. I was curious to know exactly what was in the bags so I duly headed to Ocado and found that it consisted of 60 g of pea shoots, baby spinach and baby chard. For £1.35. Given that I’ve been picking the equivalent of this at least every other day for well over a month, I feel quite smug! Pictured right is Lottie and a bowl of baby chard, parsley, oak leaf lettuce, rocket, pea shoots, Welsh onion, baby spring onions, red mustard leaves and chive flowers. BTW, the red mustard is starting to bolt so in future I shall be sowing it half a packet at a time rather than using a whole packet all in one go. |
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Categories:
crops Tags:
baby spring onions, chard, chive flowers, chives, oak leaf lettuce, parsley, pea shoots, red mustard, rocket, salad leaves, welsh onion
The other day I finally admitted to myself that using my home-made compost (lovely though it is) and buying the occasional 20 litre bag of compost from the local shops wasn’t really a very satisfactory way of going about things. I have a whole load of plants that are crying out to be potted up, and it’s just not fair on them to make them wait!
You might be thinking “why doesn’t she just hop in the car, go to B&Q and buy compost in bulk like everyone else?” The trouble is, I don’t have a car. Buying compost when you don’t have a car is a nightmare. Plus those 20 litre bags are expensive – about £3.00 a go. So when out shopping one day in Birchington I popped into the hardware store (Brills, which also does seeds and other gardening supplies), and ordered three 70 litre sacks for £10, plus £5 delivery (if you do the maths that works out at less than half the price of the 20 litre bag, litre for litre). The sacks arrived on Monday, and I’ve already used one of them!
| As you can see from the picture, the answer to the question is “yes”, but perhaps a more pertinent question is “Is it actually worth growing globe artichokes in containers?” Given that after three years of gradually potting up this particular specimen (it now lives in a pot that’s 14 inches across), it’s managed to produce ONE artichoke, then I’d have to say the answer is “no”. It does look nice though. And we will be eating the artichoke with due ceremony when it grows to full size. On a more prolific note, we do have some nice strawberries coming along – we should end up harvesting enough to fill a half pound punnet… just not all at once LOL. |
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As you can see below, the giant red mustard that I planted in early April is now coming along nicely – it’s already featured in several of my stir fries and mixed salad lunches. As the plants grow bigger, I just keep on thinning them out and when they no longer need thinning, I’ll just treat them as you would any cut & come again salad crop. Next to the giant red mustard is a container full of pea shoots, grown from a handful of Morrison’s dried peas which cost all of about 40p! Tip: if using pea shoots in stir fries, don’t fry them (it makes them go all fibrous and lose their lovely delicate flavour) – just cut them up raw with some spring onions, and sprinkle on top.
…are the varieties of the three courgette seedlings I bought at a local charity shop yesterday – I will be planting them in suitable containers this week, with a mulch of home made compost! I told the man who sold them to me of my singular lack of success when growing container courgettes in the past. “What size container did you use?” he asked. I made a gesture to indicate 12 inches or so. “Ooh no, that’s not big enough”, he said. You need something really big for a courgette. Really big it is then. See if that makes a difference.
