Last year I meant to keep track of how long it actually takes to grow vegetables, and the different stages/problems. Last year I forgot to make adequate notes. So then – if you’ve ever wondered how long it takes to grow peas or potatoes, here’s your answer. Continue reading Growing: Peas and Potatoes – Completed
Category Archives: Gardening
Gardening Update
Ok – so this isn’t the most interesting thing I’ve ever posted, but if anyone wants to know how my garden is progressing, here’s some pictures.
I meant to do this last year and forgot, really.
This year, am trying to do things a bit more professionally. I’m following the RHS’ iPhone app as close as possible about when to plant indoors or out, when to transplant from one pot to another, etc. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, as it gives me regular reminders to do something (I tend to forget otherwise, and things can be a bit hit and miss as a result). Continue reading Gardening Update
Parsnips + Cat = No Parsnips
I may have discovered why my parsnips don’t seem to be growing as well as everything else in the garden, despite being in a mix of good soil and compost, left in a place that gets plenty of sun, and watered regularly. Continue reading Parsnips + Cat = No Parsnips
My Triffid is Growing Nicely
It’s still a little on the small side, but one day, all the power (and runner beans) will be mine.
Just needs to grow to maybe this size, first:
(Picture from BleedingCool.com)
The Sunflowers Are In
Actually, they went in last night. I did them after I took all the pictures and did the last post. Here’s what they look like right….NOW.
Currently keeping warm in a seed propagator. I’m hoping to top last year’s efforts, which looked *exactly* like sunflowers, but were only 4ft tall.
(My) First Gardening Day of the Year
I used to do a lot more updates about gardening, but I haven’t done one for a while, as it’s been winter.
It’s definitely spring now, so I’ve been watching Gardener’s World, testing out some iPhone apps and fixing some problems in my garden. Continue reading (My) First Gardening Day of the Year
Cold. Very cold.
…Pretty though.
Bright sunflowers
On the 11th July, I planted some sunflowers. Here’s how they did.
Ok, so some have been eaten a bit, and the tallest one is only about 4ft tall. They’re not going to win any prizes.
But, considering all I did was stick a couple of seeds in a plastic waste paper bin I got from Ikea, the extreme winds we’ve had (they’ve fallen over many times), several periods of torrential rain, they’re not bad.
Carrots, sunflowers, beans, and sweetcorn.
Apologies. This is just more pictures of the plants in my garden.
On the same day I made that flowerbed, I also planted some sunflowers (very much later in the year than they should have been planted). While some of my neighbours have ones over 6ft tall, here are mine at the moment:
Not bad for 3 weeks growth, though.
I also planted some carrots into a potato planter the same day (I was busy that weekend):
You’re meant to thin them by taking out the weaker ones, but I don’t know where to start as they’re all looking about the same.
Some of my plants are doing better than others.
No idea what’s happened to my runner beans:
They were doing quite well, but then started getting eaten, and have now withered a bit.
Have started again in a different area, with different plants:
.
Maybe those will last better (although something has started eating the leaves on the right already, and they’ve only been outside for about a week).
I think the runaway success is the sweetcorn.
Check this shizzle:
It’s big, and leafy.
And look what’s hidden under those leaves:
If you got some kind of gardening book, and looked up what sweetcorn should look like while it’s growing, that’s what you’ll find. Perfect.
The flower bed
For those of you who haven’t seen any of my “building a pond” video series, you won’t be aware of how frustrating my garden is.
It’s nice to live in the city, and it’s nice to have a garden while living in the city.
It’s also nice to have a friendly landlady, who will let you dig up her garden and plant things.
What isn’t so nice, is that when you start digging, you find a couple of inches of soil, then bricks, rubble, old bits of guttering, and any other crap the people who built the house couldn’t be bothered to take away with them.
There’s a tarmac road off one side of my garden. But if you dig pretty much anywhere in the garden, you’ll hit tarmac pretty quickly.
Today I started looking at a patch we’re not utilising. The patch between the pond and the back fence. Here it is:
That pond was hard work. Even with wet soil, it required a pick-axe to get through the rubble. The flowerbed on the left is actually only there because I couldn’t dig deep enough at the edge to put the pond there, due to a seam of solid immovable rock I hit.
A few weeks back, I rather stupidly suggested we dig the area between pond and back fence.
I had a go at this today, and the combination of poor soil, and severe lack of rain lately, has left it absolutely rock hard.
So, thought I – why not just build a raised bed?
I found a thing on Sainsburys’ website, which looks pretty good.
That’d almost exactly fill that space, but leave enough room to get to the compost bin. Perfect.
I’m impatient though, so I drove to Sainsburys, only to find they don’t stock them in store.
Then I went to B&Q, but they don’t have anything remotely like it.
I looked at some plant pots, but that just confirmed my fears that plant pots are either:
a) Expensive
b) Too small
c) Cheap-plastic-looking
d) All of the above.
So in B&Q, I picked up one of these liner sheets, for carrying things without getting your car boot dirty.
That was £1.
Next, I got some compost. Two of these 70 litre ones.
They were £3.98 each. Seems good value – I don’t buy compost often enough to know though.
Then I laid the boot liner out in the garden:
Problem is, it was really windy.
I guess with potato planters, and the Sainsburys product, that there is some sort of structure to keep it standing up straight.
I mean just look at it:
That maybe needs a little help to stay in position.
Luckily, I have some old bricks not doing anything, that I discovered while building a pond.
Much better.
Now I filled it with compost.
(Ok, it was two types of compost. I had half a bag of a different sort left over.)
At this point I realised a couple of things.
1. It still isn’t that sturdy
2. Boot liners don’t have holes in them. They’re designed to keep plants, compost, muddy shoes away from your expensive car’s carpet on the other side.
To solve both of these issues, I cut a bamboo cane into bits, and after using one piece to make holes in the bottom of the plastic, I hammered them through the liner and into the ground at various points.
Ta-da:
Ok, so it’s a bit like a sandpit that’s gone very wrong.
Maybe it needs a few pots around it to hide the plastic nature of it.
And it’ll look better once it has some flowers growing in it. Maybe.
Update: 15th July.
Check me out.
After only 5 days, I’ve got shoots popping up out the flower bed. Not bad, considering I didn’t follow any of the instructions at all regarding propagating on window sills or anything. I literally just threw the seeds in, and watered them.
It functions.
And my girlfriend liked it, and said (without me even mentioning it), that it’ll help kill the rubbish grass underneath it (when we dig it out properly at a later date).
Update: 31st July.
Nearly 3 weeks since I did this, so thought I’d do another update.
It seems I have a slight issue, in that my soil has started to turn a bit…green, and the consistency of something you might find in a shady forest.
This could be down to insufficient drainage in the boot liner. There’s not that many holes in it really. I may attempt to make some more.
Plants looking fine though, except the ones on the left which have been nibbled by something.