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.