Weekend Photos - Vegetables

Radishes

The few surviving lettuces

Carrots

Broadbeans

Mangetout - Flowers

Mange Tout - Edibles!

Weekend Photos - Fruits

Some photos of the garden this weekend:

The small blueberry bush

The large blueberry bush

The large blueberry bush - closer to being blueberries

 

First Strawberries to be seen

And some weird looking rasberries-in-the-making

Cherries!  Years ahead of schedule but no complaints :D

Cherry Tree

I love this time of year; it seems that every time you go into the garden something new has happened - yesterday there were just a few sparse blooms on my cherry tree - today it's covered in them.

Don't they look more 'arty' when I zoom in ;p

These little wild flowers have managed to make a home for themselves in my ugly concrete steps... I know that in theory I should be tearing them up and sticking them in the trash but they're just too pretty to harm - I've decided that this year I shall love my weeds (or at least the colourful ones)

My strawberries have definitely started to flourish again, they're putting out new leaves and, just spotted today, starting to set flower buds.

Someone was very interested in my camera but not amused that it was the plants getting all the attention

Planters

Starting with the easy one - this used to be a TV unit a while ago, the TV became a flat screen and moved upstairs so we didn't need it any more and with a few extra nails it has become a nice deep Runner Bean planter (or will next month when the runner beans are garden-ready).

The real achievement of the day is my pallet-planters.  I'm really pleased how they've worked out.  They are about twice the depth of a grow bag so should make my tomatoes very happy (when they finally get big and strong enough to go outside).  The second one will definitely play home to some courgettes and/or patty pan squashes when the weather gets nicer and for the time being will probably make Rob very happy with some quick radishes (which only need a month or so and can be yanked out of the way by the time the squashes are ready to go in)

Unexpectedly the biggest challenge with these planters was filling them - between the planters and the TV unit they've taken 6 of B&Q's biggest (cheapest) 125L bags of compost; poor little car had to make two trips to the shop to get it all and I definitely deserve a nice hot shower to recover from lugging it all around! So final cost of planters = woodwork £NIL, nails £5, liner £10 and compost £42; pretty reasonable I think.

I also treated each planter to a generous helping of blood, fish & bone as I suspect that b&q's cheapest doesn't come with much in the way of nutrients for my plants!  Still, this really was a case of needing quantity not quality so I think it should work out fine.

I had a slight lettuce fail... apparently my lovely grow bag full of seedlings looks an awful lot like a luxury toilet to the neighbourhood cats.  When I was down at B&Q buying compost for my mega-planters I saw some little trays of lettuce seedlings... £1.48 for 24 plants - I'm hoping that as they are a bit bigger the cats will realise that this is not something laid on for their benefit and leave them be... we shall see ;p 

Finally - a close up shot of my brand new Morrello Cherry Tree - this little beauty was my birthday pressie from my godparents (by way of a very nice cheque ;p) and is promising to look absolutely gorgeous when all the buds come into bloom... in all honesty it's pretty stunning already with just a couple out.  It's living in a pot at the moment and the chap at the garden centre said that as long as I keep buying it a new, bigger one, each year it should be happy enough although one day I shall hopefully have a nice big flower bed/lawn for it to live in.

Out in the Garden

We've had such a lovely weekend that it seemed a shame to stay inside so I've been out in the garden for the first time this year.  I moved all the plants back to their regular spots and planted out my little Mange Tout and Broad Beans.

A nice easy one to start - only the mint is new, all the others survived the winter

Mangetout - Before

After

Broad Bean - Before

I hope the Broad Beans like it better than the Strawberries did

I think we'll definitely get to eat some this year

Those teensy green bits = lettuces!

Of Beans and Peas

Now that my little plants are growing well I've been thinking about what do with them so I hopped on the net to look for some guidance.

My first lesson was that just because the seeds like kind of similar it doesn't mean that the plants grow in the same conditions!  I'd kind of assumed that because the seeds are kind of similar and peas are quite like beans that they must grow in the same way and thus I planted them all at the same time.  I should have checked what the bean packet meant when it said to plant 'mid spring'... seems dumb now but that obviously meant April/May not Feb/March!

So the peas should be fine as they like cooler weather, as should the broad beans but I appear to have planted the runner beans about 2 months earlier than I should have!  I'm not giving up on them yet but they may become unmanageably large before it's safe to let them out into the garden... we shall see.  I shall probably plant some more at the proper time; a nice backup in case these fail or an interesting comparison if they don't.

I planted all my peas/beans into the same little modular trays that I used for the tomato seed; in hindsight this may not have been the best plan... I can't believe how sturdy the little peas/beans are; such lovely thick stems... such active root systems.  I've potted them all on into 8cm peat pots today which will hopefully keep them going until the garden is ready for them but I had to do a fair bit more coaxing of roots out of the drainage holes than I expected.

From what I've seen the mange-tout's have fairly delicate stems and put down thready, wandering roots (which built their own network under the modules), they came out nice and easy but left all their soil behind.

Pea Seedling

The broad beans have very thick white roots which seemed to head straight down in a nice neat fan pattern; oddly there didn't seem to be any particular correlation between root length and plant size.

Broad Bean Seedling

The runner beans have crazy strong roots and took all their soil with them when they came, they also tended to put their main root through the drainage hole; longer roots definitely went with bigger plants.

Runner Bean Seedling

Amazingly every single seed I planted germinated; I originally planted loads of seeds to allow for my tendency to kill small things with alarming skill.  I guess it'll be a day or so until I see if I've inflicted any lasting harm on my plants by transferring them into the new pots, hopefully they'll make it but I wouldn't be surprised if a few are a little shocked from the transition.

Pictures from http://www.sciencephoto.com/ as my camera battery was dead!

Year 2

I missed my garden very much this winter; despite all the time it took last year it really was very satisfying to see the little tiny plants growing all big and strong and being able to eat fresh food from the garden.  I enjoyed it so much that I actually looked into getting an allotment... the 5 year waiting list kind of put me off though so I'll just have to stick to pots for the time being!


So that I can get started on the gardening earlier this year I decided to grow my plants from seed - it should let me have lots more plants for the same money and will give me something to ooh and ahh at for the next few months while I wait for the weather to cheer up.


I will probably end up picking up a few more bits and pieces later in the season, probably a fruit plant or two as these don't really seem to come in seed form but for now I've got the following:


Czar Runner Bean Mid Spring May-June!
Aquadulce Longpod BroadBean Feb-Apr
Pattison Blanc' Patty Pan Squash  Apr-May
Tondo di Piacenza Courgette Apr - May
Finissimo small leaved basil Apr - July
Azur Kohlrabi (Cabbage-Turnip... looks like an alien lifeform so I just had to have some!l)
Giant Red Carrot Feb-July
Golden sweet mange-tout pea Feb-May
Red Top Radish Mar-Aug
Latah Tomato Feb-Apr (Early tomatoes)
Legend Tomato Feb-Apr(Proper Salad tomatoes)


I bought my seeds from The Real Seed Catalogue which sells, surprise surprise, real seeds!  Which means that they're not F1 hybrids, GM or any such nonsense and I should be able to collect seeds from the plants I grow and never have to buy any more in the future... meaning I just bought a life time supply of seeds for about 20 quid!