Food ‘n Drink

So we’re mid way through August, and despite us having a fairly wet summer, again, the garden has been flourishing quite well.

Tomatoes

Both tomato plants have fared a lot better in their greenhouse this year, although they’ve probably gone without water a bit more than they should have. The downside to having them covered is that they don’t get watered when it rains (besides through the 3 air holes at the top of the greenhouse). However we’ve had half a dozen juicy red tomatoes off them so far and about another dozen or so to come.

Lettuce

My attempts at lettuce so far haven’t been so great. Our first lettuce were seedlings from my Dad, and these grew great, however the next attempt started well but just died off. I’ve now bought some new seeds (as my others were a few years old) and currently have a tray of small seedlings, plus some slightly larger ones from my Dad again so these are already in the long window box.

Chillis

The most successful pot plant so far this year! We’ve got 6 Jalapeno plants and a Scotch Bonnet plant. All of the plants have chillis on, the Jalapeno plants are in full swing with over 50 chillis in total. A couple of the plants are about 2.5 feet tall!

Strawberries

The strawberries are over for another year but we had a great batch from the various plants we’ve got. Having them in pots kept them away from the slugs and woodlice, although my hanging basket seemed to suffer from the strawberry beetle and none of the strawberries in the basket were any good. Next year I’ll put in measures to protect against this.

Radish

The last crop I tried of Radish, some came up great, some just grew the leaves but no radish. Again, old seeds so maybe they need a lot more than a window box can give them. However Dave’s got plenty of radish now so I probably won’t grow any more of that this year anyway!

Romano Pepper

I had a sweet pepper plant in between the tomato plants in the grow bag, and whilst it started off great, it seems to have hit a wall in improving. I’ve now dug it out and put it into its own pot to see if it fares any better, however I’m not expecting much from it. None of my pepper plants have ever done too well, besides just the one pepper (almost black and tasted horrible!) from a plant that was in the ground a couple of years back.

Aubergine

My Dad’s given me another Aubergine plant, however a couple of years back I had one from him that just took up a lot of space and did nothing! He got a few off a couple of plants, but I think it’s too late in the year and it’s in too small a pot for it to really do much. Still, there’s no harm in trying!

Courgettes

I’ve never grown courgettes before, however after seeing Jem’s posts about how she’d got courgettes off her enormous plant, plus seeing that I could still sow the seeds at the end of May (when I was nosing around the garden centre and spotted a pack of seeds. So I planted 4 seeds and 3 grew to small plants in the tray they were in. I separated these into individual trays once I saw how big they may get, and they just carried on growing! So a couple of weeks ago I took two of them and put them in a grow bag, and took the other plant to my Dad (see I give him plants too!).

My two courgette plants are quite large now and covered in a few flowers and lots of tiny little courgettes. I certainly can’t wait to start getting courgettes off these plants, and it’ll certainly be a permanent fixture in my choice of plants in future years.

Other Salads

My attempts at other salads hasn’t gone so well this year. Whether it’s down to the age of the seeds, or just the lack of decent weather, who knows. My spring onions have never grown too well anyway (I blame that on the lack of sun).

So all in all, the garden’s done quite well for being in pots, and it certainly proves that it’s possible. However, I do still miss having my own garden. Maybe next year.