Salad Tubs

Salad tub with spinach, lettuce and pak choi

We have 3 large patio tubs that we're using as salad tubs. They have a mixture of plants for salads including lettuce (Red Salad Bowl and Lollo Rossa), spinach (Hector), Pak Choi (Rubi). They are all good for picking a few leaves here and there to make a salad. Salad can get pretty boring when it's the same things every time, but this way means we get a variety and every salad will be different.

We've had a couple of salads from them, together with the Winter Gem lettuce which we grew in the greenhouse over the winter and planted out a couple of months ago. The missus loves them! The iceberg lettuces are growing and we'll have some outer leaves from them soon too.

The first 3 salad tubs. Crispy spinach in the first one.

The first tubs will need replacing in a few weeks time, so we'll need to sow some more seeds over the next week or two so that we can keep the salads coming all summer.

I must find other leaves we can use in salads. I've had Mizuna in the past but couldn't find any seeds this year.

Sweetcorn at last!

After about 5 sowings, we've finally got some sweetcorn. Only 8 out of the 15 we sowed, but better than none at all.

The first two sowings were eaten by mice - the mice left tell-tale signs of digging and the outer husks of the corns. We covered the next two sowings, but not a peep from the seeds.

We tried one last time about 4 weeks ago and 8 sprouted. I would normally have planted out by now, but they're very late and I'd like them to catch up a bit, so will keep them in the greenhouse a bit longer.

Beans & Mangetout

Runners by greenhouse, French beans nearest camera

I set up the first two wigwams this morning and planted out the 11 beans that have taken. 5 Purple Cascade French beans and 6 runner beans (maybe Red Rum but can't be sure).

I've planted an Iceberg lettuce inside each wigwam. I saw this in an old gardening book with lettuce planted inside rows of bean canes. Beans put nitrogen into the soil, lettuces take it out, so the two should work together. Also, having the lettuce inside helps cover some of the ground and helps to keep weeds down. Well, that's the theory.

It's a bit disappointing that we've had poor results from the beans so far. We sowed about 56 beans, always two to a pot, but only 11 have sprouted. I've lost the seed packets now so can't sow any more. I know I put them somewhere safe ..... I'll pick some more seeds up soon, just in case. I'll need more anyway so I can grow beans up the sweetcorn, if the sweetcorn actually grows.

We've had really poor results from peas this year too - we must have sown over 200 in the greenhouse, but barely a dozen sprouted and all died pretty quickly. We tried several varieties but no real luck. The mice scoffed some of the early sowings, and the rest just didn't take.

Mangetout between beans and Winter Gem lettuce

Mangetout has grown well though. We sowed 24 of them in cardboard pots and about 21 of them sprouted. The poor weather meant we couldn't prepare the ground and plant out, so they stayed in the greenhouse much longer than we wanted. They had all put on good growth, some reaching 8 inches, but had turned very pale, almost white. Hopefully they'll take to the open ground - they seem fairly strong, even though they're pale. I'm not sure how high they'll grow, so might need to increase the height of the netting later.

Toms-a-tumbling

This weekend we've dealt with all the tomatoes. 60 of them.

3 tumbling toms in hanging baskets

I've put the hanging basket brackets up for the Tumbling Toms. Lack of space means one is above the other.










All the other tomatoes have been potted on into the final large pots. They had all been potted on from 3.5in pots to 5in pots and kept in the greenhouse due to the cold weather. Some were only in the 5in pots for a week or so.

Some of the tomatoes in pots outside

All the tomatoes are outside now, apart from the one Shirley, which is best grown in the greenhouse. We'll put a few of the others back in the greenhouse when we've planted out some other seedlings and made some room in the greenhouse.

Most of the rest will be moved to the stepped beds outside the back of the house in 2 or 3 weeks time. At the moment, the stepped beds are still in shade part of the daytime - in a few weeks they'll get full sun all day.

The list is:
1 Shirley (greenhouse)
3 Tumbling Toms (in hanging baskets)
Moneymaker
Belle
Plum
Beefsteak
Gardeners Delight (Cherry)
White Cherry (Cherry)
Sungold (Cherry)
Mr Stripey (Tigrella)
Pomodoro (Beef?)
Harbinger
1 unknown (probably Moneymaker or Belle - we lost the tag so weren't sure)


Most of the big pots are Morrisons flower buckets, 8 for 99p. They don't have holes in them, so I drilled holes around the outside, about an inch from the bottom. The idea is that the holes will still provide drainage, but the bottom inch of the pot will work as a bit of a reservoir to help keep the compost moist. I'm hoping that saves us a lot of watering, especially which is quite important as we have a hosepipe ban.

Heatwave!

After 6 weeks or so of cold wet weather, we now have a heatwave, temperatures hitting 27C outside and considerably higher in the greenhouse.

The prolonged cold weather meant that many seeds simply didn't sprout, and most of those that did sprout were still quite small. They simply weren't big enough to survive the sudden heat. The greenhouse heater came too late to make much difference to the small seedlings.

We've lost our pumpkins, our 3rd sowings of cucumbers, most of the sweet peppers, some of the chillies, half our brassicas and probably a lot more too. Most of our veggies are outside now, but still in pots.

The cold wet spell made it difficult to dig the ground - not that we had much to plant out anyway. Now we have the heatwave and it's far too hot for me to do much digging or planting out. I can manage a bit early morning and a bit more late evening when it's much cooler.

We also have the hosepipe ban. We've had no rain for a week and the water butts are mostly empty now. Most of the veggies are in pots still, so need daily watering. Carrying buckets of water down the garden is hard work, but it's keeping me fit! I'll get the soaker hose set up this week. Of course, this is only any good if we get the rain to refill the water butts.

The weather forecast for next week looks better - it'll be warm and we should get some rain, probably thunderstorms. At least it'll save me a bit of watering.

Summer Is Here

At last! Temperatures due to hit 21-26C daytimes, 13C overnight for the rest of the week. No rain due this week.We're going to be very busy in the garden for the next few weeks.

We spent the weekend catching up on some odd jobs. We tidied the front, cutting out the elderberry growing through the hedge and getting rid of the weeds on the drive. Loads more weeding out the back, especially the stepped beds that we're filling with pots this summer. We put the hanging basket brackets up by the front door (for flowers) and back door (for tumbling toms).

Last week I potted on about 40 tomatoes into 5in pots. Loads more are still in 3.5in pots. I didn't want to put them in the full size pots just yet as there isn't room in the greenhouse and was still too cold outside. We'll be doing a lot more potting on over the next couple of weeks.

We finally have some sweetcorn showing. Runner beans and french beans are shooting up in the greenhouse - I'm hoping to get them planted out this week. Mangetout is desperately in need of planting out. Still a poor show from peas, but a few newer ones are showing now. 

We tidied up the berry beds. Raspberry canes had shot up everywhere and hidden the strawberries. Now that the strawberries have light again, they have perked up. It looks like 12 strawberry plants, all flowering. The white strawberries from Wilkos are doing well. One has flowers, a couple more have sent out runners. I'll plant them out soon. I'll actually plant them closer than I did with the reds to help keep out the weeds. The gooseberries are packed with fruit. I still need to get underneath to remove the grass and weeds.

Not much action from the courgettes and squashes, so we resowed them last week. Pumpkins are doing very well though. We now have cucumbers showing too.

Brassicas are doing ok, but as always, some have cooked in the greenhouse. Seems that it doesn't take much to kill them off. I prefer to keep them in the greenhouse until they're big enough to survive pigeon attacks. However, I do have a gazebo frame without a cover, so will use that with fine netting to cover the brassicas. Hopefully that'll keep both the pigeons and the butterflies off the brassicas this year.

Salad veg are doing well. The salad tubs are really taking off now and we'll need to plant out the 4th tub in a couple of weeks.

Herbs are doing very well. The missus picked up a couple of herb plants to fill her planters as the herbs we'd sown were doing so poorly, but now we have loads of herbs. We'll make up a couple of large herb tubs soon.

Jobs for this week - fairly urgent things that need to be done before the weekend:
Set up wigwams and plant first beans
Set up mesh for mangetout to climb up
Finish digging onion bed and plant out remaining 160 onions
Finish digging over the brassicas bed, set up frame and netting, put brassicas seedlings inside
Set up posts for raspberry cane supports
Clear weeds from gooseberries
Pot on tomatoes
Plant out white strawberries
Clear and level more of the stepped beds ready for tomato pots

Parsnips

I've never had any real success with parsnips and never really been bothered because I don't like them. However, the missus loves them, so we grew them this year.

Snips in taller 6in pots

We sowed them in a small trough of compost - the veggie beds are very stoney so anything carrot shaped grows all wonky in the ground, and weeds are always a problem. Sowing in troughs or pots gets round both problems.

Unfortunately we forgot to put holes in the trough so the snips were waterlogged. A couple of weeks in the greenhouse to dry didn't help.

Then I had a brainwave - we have a lot of taller pots that we weren't using, just the right size for big fat parsnips - so transplant the whole lot. There had sown a lot more than we thought and didn't have enough pots, so we used a large patio tub as well.

9 parsnips in a patio tub

Two days later they're looking fine. Hopefully they'll stay that way and keep on growing!

Added 22/5/12 - foxes have had a dig around in the large tub, 2 parsnips have gone. Foxes seem to love rooting around in pots, probably looking for slugs for lunch ....

Bonus Potatoes

Bonus spuds - a mix of Charlotte and King Edward

Whenever you plant potatoes, there's a chance that you won't quite dig them all up. The brassicas bed this year was the potato bed 2 years ago. While digging it over, I dug up enough spuds for a dinner. Bonus!

From checking back through older posts in this blog, these spuds are a mix of Charlotte (salad potatoes) and King Edwards (maincrop) - they were found at opposite ends of the bed and I kept records of what was planted where. I suppose I should really have thought to keep the two varieties separate when I dug them out, but it won't make any difference now, they'll all get eaten this week!

Last year's potato bed is this year's salad / legume bed. I've only dug up half the potatoes from this bed so far.

Potato bed - King Edwards & Desiree

I've also uncovered the potato bed and sacks of spuds. The spuds are looking good. The weather forecast yesterday didn't show any risks of frost, so I removed the sheeting that was covering them. Today the weather forecast has changed and is showing temperatures could be down to 4C tonight, so I'll pop down and recover the spuds tonight.


The pots of Swift were planted 12 weeks ago. According to various websites, they should be ready in anything from 60 days to 100 days. That's only likely to happen in ideal growing conditions.

Potatoes in sacks. Green sacks planted Feb, white Apr

Our Swifts were started in the greenhouse but had to move outside to make room for more in the greenhouse. It's been pretty cold over the last few weeks, so I'll give them a bit longer. In any case, we're not in any hurry for them - we have plenty of others to use, plus half a bed of spuds to dig up.

Must remember that the white sacks are salad potatoes so won't take very long. Guess we'll be eating a lot of salads this summer anyway!

A Glimpse Of Summer

A proper sunny weekend at last .... spent most of it in the garden. It's been a long time since I spent that much time in the garden in the sun, and I'm aching all over .... totally worth it though.

We popped out to get more compost. The missus found some more seeds that she wanted so we got them too - she's really loving this home growing lark!

I finally dug the strimmer out of the garage. The grass and weeds along the fences were nearly 2ft tall, but all gone now. I hate strimmers. The grass was cut a bit shorter than last time. Still a lot of holes and dips in the lawn from where my son used it as a football pitch for years, but we'll get those filled in time.

I shifted the big pile of slabs from the patio to the veggie patch. I sorted my son's football goals to get rid of them on Freecycle. The chicken coop is now in pieces along the fence so that I can clean it all properly. I dug my way through weeds and brambles to the old shed and got rid of the old lawnmower. I spent the rest of the weekend weeding, digging and generally sorting the veggie patch.

The missus spent most of the weekend potting on and sowing more seeds. The greenhouse is full. We really do need more decent weather so we can start planting out!

A New Look

I've taken advantage of the cold wet weather to give the blog a bit of a facelift. The old blog looked so bland ....

It's looking a bit nicer now, maybe a bit too girlie for me, but I'll find a better background when I get round to it ...

Heating The Greenhouse

The last 5 or 6 weeks have been pretty cold and wet. Most veggies in the greenhouse are doing fine, although we've lost things like cucumbers - seems it's just too cold for them. I'm sure the veggies would have done much better if the weather had been warmer. The temperature outside is only 7C today and it's not much warmer in the greenhouse.

Lit with one wick and small flame

Today I picked up a parafin greenhouse heater from freecycle. It's in pretty good condition and worked first time.

Parafin heaters are fairly cheap and simple to run. The wick soaks up parafin from the tank at the bottom. Twisting the knob on the front determines how much wick is showing - the more wick showing, the bigger the flame. The flame heats up the chimney and it's the heat from the chimney that warms the greenhouse. We're testing with a small flame, maybe 2in high. 

Parafin heater lit

Parafin heaters apparently also have an advantage over electric heaters - they give off carbon dioxide too, which plants love.

It's probably a bit late to make a huge difference right now, as the weather should warm up soon, but it'll definitely help over the autumn / winter - we want to be 99% self-sufficient in fruit and veg from this summer/autumn onwards.

Wettest April for 100 Years

According to the Met Office, this has been the wettest April for over 100 years. It has rained almost every day since the hosepipe ban was introduced. We had 5 inches of rain in the last 10 days of April. The old boy over the road has been keeping rainfall records for years so I must ask how much we had last month.

Apparently it'll take 3 months of continuous rain to return water levels to where they should be and we've had a warning that we might need to use standpipes this summer.

And it's still raining, although not quite as much - more on/off. It's set to continue all next week.

All the rain means not much action in the veggie patch - it's just too wet to dig. But we've been making wine instead ...