Fruit and veg growers of 2023

[Evoluzione]

IanA2 said:

Evoluzione said:

XCP said:

I am returning to gardening having bought a house with a garden including a raised bed and a greenhouse! I shall be planting some spuds in the ground and some onion sets and carrots and French beans in the raised bed. Tomatoes in the greenhouse. Nothing too adventurous to start with. All frozen solid at the moment obviously.

Beds or bags for tomatoes?
Be aware carrots are 'special needs' veg so be careful.

They are, but surprisingly Chantenay are not too problematic....

Not a carrot I would grow personally, but they're great for getting around the problem of stony soil and you don't want to improve it, or use raised beds.

[IanA2]

Evoluzione said:

IanA2 said:

Evoluzione said:

XCP said:

I am returning to gardening having bought a house with a garden including a raised bed and a greenhouse! I shall be planting some spuds in the ground and some onion sets and carrots and French beans in the raised bed. Tomatoes in the greenhouse. Nothing too adventurous to start with. All frozen solid at the moment obviously.

Beds or bags for tomatoes?
Be aware carrots are 'special needs' veg so be careful.

They are, but surprisingly Chantenay are not too problematic....

Not a carrot I would grow personally, but they're great for getting around the problem of stony soil and you don't want to improve it, or use raised beds.

Tasty though :-)

[NMNeil]

Evoluzione said:

It's how we learn, i've had many cock ups!

What you've put there raises a useful point though and that is 'Hardening off'.
This is what we do when taking a small plant from one environment (indoors) to a different one (outdoors). At this point it can shock the plant and it can suffer in one way or another from death, to just pausing for a while looking a bit sick.

So we perform something called hardening off, it's like breaking something in gradually. This is to carefully introduce the plant to it's new slightly harsher environment. It's normal at this point to take them out of the house or greenhouse and put them outside during the day, but bring them back in at night. Do this for as many as you can, a week at least and keep a careful eye on the forecast. Try to lengthen it's time outside a bit more every day if possible until it's finally ready to live in its new place without crapping itself at the sudden change.

Please note the place you are moving them to has to be just a bit different from where they are coming from and actually able to let them live! It won't work if you're taking a plant from a warm sheltered environment to outside if it's too cold, snowing and it's a tomato or whatever.

Edited by Evoluzione on Monday 13th February 18:36

I agree on the hardening off, but I start that process when my soil temperature is about right so I can transplant straight away. Even if you get a cold night, not frost, just cold, as long as the roots are warm they seem to survive with no issues.
I aim for a soil temperature of 50F for cool weather crops and 70F for warm weather crops like tomatoes.

.

[Evoluzione]

IanA2 said:

Evoluzione said:

IanA2 said:

Evoluzione said:

XCP said:

I am returning to gardening having bought a house with a garden including a raised bed and a greenhouse! I shall be planting some spuds in the ground and some onion sets and carrots and French beans in the raised bed. Tomatoes in the greenhouse. Nothing too adventurous to start with. All frozen solid at the moment obviously.

Beds or bags for tomatoes?
Be aware carrots are 'special needs' veg so be careful.

They are, but surprisingly Chantenay are not too problematic....

Not a carrot I would grow personally, but they're great for getting around the problem of stony soil and you don't want to improve it, or use raised beds.

Tasty though :-)

Probably quite sweet?
I was in Sainsburys earlier and noticed that while normal carrots were 50p/Kg, organic carrots were over £4!
They were also a bit rubbery.

It's something which is worth discussing and will be more relevant as we harvest our veg, that is storage and how long it lasts. Everything is different, but I read sweetcorn needs cooking immediately after being picked and found in the past that homegrown radish doesn't last 24hrs once pulled. By the next day they're like rubber balls, carrots don't do much better.

The supermarket carrots I noticed were still in a large torn open plastic bag with the instructions printed on in very large letters.
They advised to keep the bag sealed until just before sale, this is because they're packaged in an inert gas, usually Nitrogen I believe, similarly radishes and probably many others. The interesting thing is when you've opened a bag of radish they last over a week so it's good stuff.

There are a few different methods of keeping home grown products fresh, some more effective than others, but don't pick too much at once without considering storage first.

[NMNeil]

The gods must hate me.
Rototilled my veg garden, added compost and rototilled it again, spread wood ash and a high nitrogen fertilizer and rototilled again.
Marked out 1 meter wide beds with 1 meter wide paths betweeen, put down the drip tape and covered it all with plastic mulch. Transplanted broad beans, kale, Swiss chard and onions, sowed various snap and regular garden peas. Sat back to await the growing, but instead got 82mph wind gusts that trashed it all.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQUNoCtScdw

Oh well, as Churchill once said, the definition of success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm.

[UTH]

Bloody hell, it's March tomorrow. I better start thinking about getting my seeds. And re-learning what to do!

[toastyhamster]

I had a bit of a revelation last week when somebody pointed me at "budgetseeds", I'd just spent 7 quid on a couple of "3 for 2" deals at the local supermarket which I was quite pleased about, but that online shop is another level of tight fistedness. Seeds were despatched next working day and arrived yesterday. 8 packs of seeds and 75g of Red Baron onions for 7 quid including postage.

I suppose the proof will be in how many germinate but I've got a few hundred extra seeds to start the season with than I usually would have!

Chucked my Marshalls catalogue in the recycling

[Evoluzione]

The Gods are punishing you NMNeil, it's for not practicing no-dig gardening

Yes I'm thinking it's time to get tomato seeds in over the next couple of weeks too.

Good to read about cheap seed deals, I couldn't resist getting some from Lidl when I was in, they're such good value for money considering what you get out of them. I got some Mange Tout peas and marigolds, the latter to go with the toms as a companion plant.
On the packets of my PremierSeeds ones it says good till Jan 2025 so I need to do more research on storing them, I know what I currently do (leave them in the greenhouse) is bad and I believe putting them in the fridge is good, but no more than that yet.

The peas are coming on well:




As are the Blueberries:





Seriously, the gutter peas made good use of the Feb sun and mildness and are just poking through:



Compare those to the four which went in the propagator in the house:



This current cold snap will slow them down a lot and the potatoes I managed to get in won't do much either until we're through it:



The peppers are doing ok and out of the propagator now:



You can see how many didn't make it.

They've been replaced by Syphilis sorry Physalis which apparently has a long germination period.

Apparently February was 3'c above normal average temps which saw the over Winter veg pick up too:







Shame those lettuce aren't a bit bigger, I could probably get £5 ea for those right now

[Evoluzione]

A decent weekends weather gave me a few hours to spend in the garden. One of the compost heaps set up last Autumn had gone cold, presumed 'dead', but then it warmed up again recently. I think this is down to the fact it's not insulated in any way, just made up of old pallets tied at the corners. I think the extended cold snap must have shut down any microbiological activity and then in the milder Feb it got going again. Either way, it was time to turn it anyhow so I forked it all over into a newly erected bay next to it.
I'm hoping it'll get going again, but the cold weather is working against it now. If you held off trying to grow anything delicate too early I bet you're as relieved as I am looking at the (albeit unreliable) forecast now.
If it does get going again I'm going to try use it as a 'hotbed', this is where you seal the top with something clear and use the heat to start seedlings off in it.

The only seedlings i've dared start off so far are either Winter hardy or very slow growers. Winter lettuce and Broccoli, the latter being Syphilis and Pepper.
I think i'll get Toms in soon in the hope that this cold snap will have cleared by the time they're big enough to need the unheated greenhouse.

As said before to be successful you really need to understand what soils and composts you have. There is a very general rule that if what you harvest is underground then either steer clear of or be mindful of Nitrogen rich soil/compost. This is because Nitrogen is needed for good leaf growth so is good for stuff like cabbage, lettuce and the like.
I'm really short on decent soil here so am making 'growing medium' to grow in. Officially soil is soil, what we make is compost. You can grow in either, but it's better to add compost to soil. As i'm doing a bit of everything here in desperation i'm calling it all 'growing medium' - GM.
I've been putting potatoes in bags and containers and keeping them undercover. I'm aware my compost is Nitrogen rich so can't really plant taties in it as it is. I'll end up with loads of leaf and small taties.
An interesting thing is that mixing un composted woodchip/mulch into GM sees it robbing the Nitrogen from it to help it decompose.

Here i'm sieving some well rotted woodchip:



The fine stuff is used to cover seedlings. The coarse was then mixed in with more fresh woodchip/mulch, some average soil and compost. The hope is that all that combined with be ok to put the potatoes in.
Some plants don't mind lumpy/stony soil, some do.

If you've got some new planters to fill and they're deeper than the roots will reach - ever, or in 12 months plus you might be wondering what to fill them with. The answer is lob anything organic in the bottom; wood, old plants, old compost, poor soil, grass clipping, green kitchen waste, manure etc. Anything which will eventually rot down can be put down as a base layer so you don't need as much expensive GM at the top for the plants. Brim it as it'll sink as the lower layer decomposes. One day it'll all become one good GM

Here i'm filling this old trough to put some lettuce in:



I've lined the bottom with Soft Rush as it's what we have in abundance here so I crop it and compost it, but for arguments sake we'll call it old straw.
Then home made compost on top, then seeds, then the sieved fine stuff on top. Lettuce don't have huge and deep roots.
In Autumn i'll tip the lot out into the compost heap, it'll then make new compost.

You don't need to throw anything away, just keep on recycling it ad infinitum.

The lady who runs the stables just messaged to say she has loads of manure so that'll be tonight's job fetching it all over....

[CharlesdeGaulle]

The broccoli strain you've referred to as syphilis doesn't sound very appealing.

[Evoluzione]

See previous post for an answer to that

[Peanut Gallery]

Looks at the window at snow, with ice forecast for the next week, and wonders how my compost heap will be doing.

Friends have started stuff indoors, I will be starting some soon, probably next week.

[otolith]

I've grown Physalis once, very successfully. Vigorous plants, good harvest. More berries than I knew what to do with. Think I ended up making them into chutney.

[wombleh]

I tried growing in some old gutters in our old garden but struggled to stop them drying out when it got hot, even with some bottles set to drip feed.

[Big Stevie]

What varieties of 'cut & come again' lettuce have people had success with? I fancy growing some this year.

[NMNeil]

Evoluzione said:

The Gods are punishing you NMNeil, it's for not practicing no-dig gardening

If the gophers would practice no-dig of my vegetable garden I wouldn't need the rototiller

[NMNeil]

Big Stevie said:

What varieties of 'cut & come again' lettuce have people had success with? I fancy growing some this year.

My preference is for Red Romaine, but any Romaine type will work.

[Bill]

Wife does the growing in our house and the window sills are starting to fill up, and I've finally been persuaded to get power to the greenhouse for propagation mats. Winter lettuce is doing well in the greenhouse, still have leeks and beetroot in the ground from last year, kale is doing well too.

She also bought some 1 year heritage plum trees bare root. We were expecting a foot or two high, the package was 8ft long. So I set to and apparently she's planted them as cordons...

[Evoluzione]

wombleh said:

I tried growing in some old gutters in our old garden but struggled to stop them drying out when it got hot, even with some bottles set to drip feed.

The gutter is just for starting them off inside, once it's warm enough outside you prepare a bed and slid them out into it.

---

The Syphilis are starting to show, they're so delicate i'm sacred if I slam a door they'll blow over. Cape Gooseberry as they're also known are a throwback to my childhood days really, my dad used to grow them and I haven't had one since. I thought they were as exotic now as they were back then until I noticed Sainsburys are knocking them out 10 a penny

Bloody hell it's cold at night now, as soon as the sun went down it dropped to -1 and will go further tonight. The only seedlings i've dared leave on the wrong side of the curtains are the broccoli and anything in a heated propagator.
Tomato seeds are in now. Looking forward to the end of the month now and the clocks changing, woohoo, daylight until 7.
I think the good thing about making compost is you can't not make it, all you can do is fail to make it quickly. As long as you've got a load of organic matter in a pile in the garden and it's wet enough it'll make compost - one day.

I was browsing the FB ads when a pile of 'soil' for free came onto my screen:



Looks pretty much like composting territory to me....
I'm well aware that people on FB often have no idea of what they're selling and found it odd a bowling green had soil to give away and not compost, but figured either would do for me so went over with shovel and bags.



It was sandy, very light, crumbly and like loam, definitely not soil, the guy had no idea and I was a bit bemused too.
I remembered my dads idea of compost, it was nothing but 'greens' - tons of lawn clippings and some kitchen waste. You had to cut it like Christmas pudding the next year because that's what it was like, not in the slightest bit crumbly like decent compost should be.
This stuff in theory should have been like that, but it wasn't. The answer came from the gardener when he came over for a chat. Apparently it was grass clippings, but also loads of long soil pellet things in it. They use some kind of hollow spiked tool to aerate the green and throw the waste product on the heap with the grass clippings. I was looking around and there were lots of deciduous trees around the green, I'm guessing lots of leaves and a few branches got thrown on the heap too.
The whole lot had been there for over 7yrs, so apart from the sand which you can still see it was some kind of light fluffy compost.

My shovelling attracted some visitors:





I ran out of bags near the end so grabbed some of theirs:



Yep, they're giving away perfectly good organic soil conditioner/compost and buying in plastic bags of it to replace it

Nevermind, if it's not too rich it'll make a good carrot growing medium for me.

[otolith]

Hmm, hopefully they don’t use too much selective herbicide on the bowling green!