Sorting the Garden out
Today we got some decent weather so I finally got around to repotting my Strawberry plants. The plants have sat in a non-draining shallow box since last December when I dug them up from my old garden. They’ve sat sodden in water, very little soil around them, but are still producing new leaves and shoots. Good hardy plants strawberries! I mixed up a bucket of about 1 part farm manure to 2 part top soil (as I don’t have any normal soil available to me!) and replanted about a dozen plants in large pots plus 4 went into a hanging basket. Whether we’ll get any fruit off them this year, who knows, but they should be fine for another year to 18 months so we’ll get fruit next year hopefully. They seem to have survived so far so I can’t see them dying off now they’ve been given a new home.
I also got my greenhouse set back up but realised I’d finished all of the seed compost last year so I need to get some more before I can start on planting some seeds. My plants for this year are
Strawberries (if they produce any fruit)
Chilli Peppers (another attempt, I’ve got Jalapeno and Tokyo Hot)
Lettuce
Radish
Spring Onion
Tomatoes (courtesey of 2 plants from my Dad)
I’ve also bought a portable tomato greenhouse which will take the two plants in a growbag plus maybe a chilli plant inbetween, and it’ll keep the rain off them and allow me to control their watering. After last year where my tomatoes suffered blight from all the rain, I don’t want to suffer from that again! This cost me just £17 in my parent’s local garden centre. It also means that if it does get very hot (it’s rare but it happens in the UK) I can easily cover the plants over during the high heat of the midday sun.
I can’t wait to get back to eating our own fresh food from the garden 
- March 30th '08
I agree entirely about eating fresh food from your own garden – nothing like it. For years I missed out on this because of living in a London apartment but for the last few years we’ve had a garden and life has changed!
My real passion with food is making homemade ice cream, so using fruit straight from our garden is brilliant. Strawberries, raspberries, blackcurrants, apples and pears are what I’ve managed to grow successfully – and use in my ice cream recipes.
Strawberries in particular are well worth the effort so I can appreciate your persistance in trying to get a good crops. Our first year of strawberries was not so good but after a bit of replanting and some good local manure we got a great batch. Last year I also took a tip from our local garden centre chappy John and used some ’strawberry netting’ to protect them from the birds who tend to sense they’re ripe before I do! The netting is cheap and easy to peg in place and it worked wonders. We got such a bumper crop that I’ve still got strawberries in the freezer from last summer.
Growing them in a hanging basket is not a bad idea – my friend Jan is trying that this year with her herbs which didn’t survive the winter. I’ve just replanted some of my herb patch – I find rosemary is the hardiest and survives best.
I’m trying for the first time to grow blueberries – John tells me have to be grown in pairs so they’ve been planted in a special patch of their own. I really hope they flourish because I’ve got an excellent blueberry ice cream recipe which the family love but so far have always had to buy from the greengrocer – and at an extortionate price. I’ll try and revisit with another post if and when they bear fruit!
I hope your portable tomato greenhouse works out. I don’t think I’ve seen one of those before. Post a photo if you can so I can learn something new!
Hey Shelagh, I’d love to make my own ice cream then again I’d probably eat far too much of it (not that I don’t already!).
Out of my herbs since moving, my Rosemary and Chives died. Luckily I can get more plants from my Dad’s garden and start again.
Good luck with the blueberries and I’m just about to post up some photos including the tomato greenhouse