Food ‘n Drink

Posted by Sarah

My greenhouse got crushed by a falling branch off the neighbour’s tree whilst it was being trimmed back.

Posted by Sarah

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

Posted by Sarah

I’ve been meaning to update the design on this site for a while, and after trying out a few themes I’ve finally found a nice refreshing theme that I think works well with the site.

I’ve also added in a couple of new plugins, one allows you to edit your comment for up to 15 minutes after posting it, and the other allows you to subscribe to comments on a particular post, so you’ll get an email when a new comment is made. I’ve got a few new sections to add too, which will come in the next week or two.

So hope you like the new theme. Let me know if you spot any problems

Posted by Sarah

Read Part 1 of this series - Garden Preparation.

Regardless of whether you plan to grow plants in the ground or in large pots and hanging baskets (or both!), you need some plants to get started with. These days the garden centres can do the hard work for you and in April/May time you’ll find ready grown tomato plants, chilli plants, peppers, and more, at affordable prices. However, where’s the fun in that? Well, use it as a back up at least! Most salad plants such as lettuce, radish and spring onions, can be started from seed between March and August/September, depending on how long the good weather lasts. Tomato, chilli and pepper seeds should be planted in March/April time, kept covered and ideally in a warm environment such as a greenhouse or kitchen windowsill.

Starting with Seeds

So what do you need to get started? Work out what you want to grow first, especially if you’re short on space in the garden. Go to the local garden centre and have a look in the seeds section for the plants you want to grow. All seed packets will have information about sowing and reaping on the back of them so there’s no guessing needed. Follow the instructions and you should be fine. You’ll also need some seed trays of some sort, seed compost (John Innes No. 1 can be found in virtually all UK garden centres) and a sheltered area to store your seed trays - we have a 3 tier portable mini greenhouse which costs around £17. Substitutions for seed trays include egg trays. The idea with seed trays is that you just use the seed compost in it, place a few seeds (I usually do 2 or 3) per section, cover them over and just keep them watered. Once the seedlings start to appear you can thin them down to one per section. However I usually allow them to all grow (if you can try and space the seeds out a little within the little section then they’ll have a bit more space each).

Re-potting Seedlings

Once your seedlings appear strong and established (eg. they’re about 5cm high on lettuce and radish, perhaps a bit taller for spring onions) then you can take them out of the seed tray and either put them into the ground, if the cold weather has passed, or into a bigger pot with John Innes No. 2 soil based compost mixed with some soil. I personally have hanging basket and potting compost, also John Innes which I mix with top soil as I don’t have any soil available to me in the garden (besides digging up the grass and taking some out from under that!). For repotting you need to determine the size of pot or pots that you’ll need to use depending on how long the plant will be in the pot. For plants that will eventually go into the ground then a small pot should be fine to allow the roots to expand more, providing a stronger plant ready for the garden. However, for plants that you’re intending to keep in the pots for their lifetime then I’d start with a medium to large pot for a couple of weeks until it’s grown a bit stronger, and then move on to a larger container.

Growing in Pots

If you’re not intending to plant anything in the ground then you need to look at using pots and grow-bags. Most salad plants that you continually replace - lettuce, radish, spring onion, rocket etc., will not grow massive roots and so won’t need a great depth of space. You can get about 10cm deep long window type boxes which are about a metre long. These will work quite well for these plants, as will medium sized flower pots. You could also get a few large pots to go out on the patio and just fill them up with standard soil in the bottom, leaving the top 5-10 cm to be the mix of potting compost and soil. If you don’t have pots then look at what else you have. I’ve got empty 5l plastic water bottles at home and will be cutting a few of these up, taking the top off, adding a few holes in the bottom of them and voila, cheap large tubs for growing plants

If ground space is lacking you can also use hanging baskets to grow plants in. Strawberries work quite well in baskets, keeping the strawberries away from woodlice and slugs that have a habit of eating them, and can look colourful hanging down from the basket, ripening in the glorious sun. Treat hanging baskets in the same way as growing in pots.

Growing in the Ground

If you’re planting out in the garden then make sure that your plants will get the sunlight they need, keep the ground watered (do this at night to allow the water to seep deeper into the ground), if there’s a risk of cold weather or even frost then you’ll need to keep your plants covered. You can make a mini polytunnel with some corrugated plastic curved over the plants (use some canes or sticks to hold the plastic curved), and cover up the ends with some flat plastic. This will create a mini greenhouse over the plants which is great when the sun isn’t so warm. Also if the sun gets too hot (unlikely in the UK but it can happen!) then you may need to cover your plants with some fleece or covering that blocks out the hot midday sun. Also, be careful to not have water droplets on your lettuce leaves if the sun is out, else the leaves could burn.

Posted by Sarah

Seeing as I’m not doing much gardening myself this year I figured I’d just write more about it! After chatting to a few friends both offline and online, I’ve noticed a lot of people in my age range would like to try out growing their own fruit and veg but don’t necessarily know where to start. I’m pretty lucky in that I have my Dad on hand to ask all of my questions to, plus my parents gave me The Complete Gardener by Monty Don (a celeb TV gardener in the UK) which is a pretty good read.

Anyway, so I figured I’d start a few posts on setting up a new garden, what you need to do, think about and where to start, along with when to start planting your seeds etc. The timings on this are designed for people in the UK (and will probably suit Europe), but the information should apply to most people.

Getting Started

Okay so first off you need to look at what you’ve got to work with. Don’t let the lack of a garden put you off gardening. A sunny windowsill is all you need to get started, of course the more space you have the better. So you need to decide how much you’re going to do or how much you have the potential to do.

1. Growing in pots on a sunny windowsill.
2. Growing in pots and a grow bag or two outside on the patio or clearing.
3. Digging up the ground, growing larger plants in the ground along with smaller plants in pots.
4. You’ve got the space in the garden for every gardener’s dream. A salad garden here, a strawberry patch there, plenty of space for all your favourite foods plus a fruit tree or two.

Depending on which level you intend to garden at, some of this info won’t be relevant however I’ll cover all aspects as best I can.

Garden Preparation

For those who are going for the actual gardening aspect, and are ready to attack the ground in their back garden, then you need to determine what you’re going to do and grow there. Also, what type of soil do you have, what areas catch the sun and when. For most plants you’ll want them to get the morning or afternoon/evening sun. The midday sun is usually the hottest, and in the peak of summer a lot of plants won’t like the midday sun, especially your salad plants, but if you can cover these over then it shouldn’t be so much of a concern.

The best garden is a south facing garden. This gives you maximum sun exposure on at least 3 sides of the garden. You also then need to think about what will sit best where. The west facing side will get the morning sun, however once the sun goes off that side, it will start to cool, and if it gets too cold over night and then a strong sun on them first thing in the morning this could cause the plants damage. This side is better suited to plants that are happier in cooler conditions and that can perhaps withstand the potential colder temperatures such as garlic (the colder the temperature the stronger the garlic) and potatoes.

Your ground will also need inspecting. If it’s clearly not been touched in a while then you may need to give the ground a dig through, check for any rubbish (plenty of builders and non gardeners will happily dump and bury rubbish, bricks, empty plastic cannisters etc.), and also inspect the type of soil you’re dealing with. If nothing’s been growing in the ground or if the ground seems in quite a bad state then it would probably be a good idea to dig in some compost or farm manure. You don’t need to dig very far down. Also if the grounds seems fairly solid with clay, you’ll need to build up the soil with manure and perhaps some top soil to give the ground a big of drainage as clay will hold water when it rains and dry out and crack when it’s hot and sunny.

A good idea can also be to build your beds up by setting up an additional barrier around the garden bed, a length of wood on its side held up with pegs in the ground. This allows you to raise the bed above normal ground height, so that rather than digging too far down into the ground you can skim the surface and instead add the new decent soil and manure on top.

The ideal time to get your garden ready is now. Any plants grown from seeds won’t be going into the ground just yet, so this should give you a couple of weeks to start preparing your ground ready for when the spring and warmer weather hits.

If you’ve already got some plants in the ground such as raspberry canes, strawberry plants, fruit bushes, herb plants, then obviously you don’t want to dig these up to dig any nutrition into the soil for the year ahead. Take your compost or manure and add this onto the top of the soil around the bottom of the plants. This is known as mulching and should be done in either October/November time and/or in early spring (so… now!).