This week in your Kitchen Garden.

[sheothebudworths]

Hmmmmm....any ideas on what I could use to support my melons (LOL) in my plastic greenhouse?

The frame is plastic and pathetic (undoes itself at the slightest hint of wind etc ) so there's no chance of me using that...but nowhere for me to fix some trellis either, so I need something that would sit along the back and act as a sturdy solid frame that I could fix strings or trellis too instead.

I think the width (between the shelves) is about 90cm....it's one of these...

 

[gentlegreen]

If it's sensitive to wind, I would get that sorted at the same time or it could end in tears.
Guyropes and tentpegs.

As to a suitable framework ...

I have a similar dilemma with my cat-proof salad cage. 15mm copper pipe quickly gets expensive.
Almost any tubular or stick-like material is pretty good in compression. So whatever you can get - bamboo and cable ties perhaps. ?

I was for a while hoarding fruit nets to support fruit in the greenhouse. Doubtless women today still have drawers full of tights and leggings they never wear.

 

[sheothebudworths]

Sorry - didn't make it clear - it's sat on concrete! Which is why I haven't been able to stake it! It's fine with the door closed, I just can't leave it open if I'm out cos any sort of half decent gust blows the cover off (and therefore the plants/shelves off too ). But that's also why canes etc would be no good iyswim!

My book says you can just trail them over the ground instead, but I presume that's if the pots/grow bags are sitting on soil (just because it suggests something similar for squash, but then says that that means they can just root into the ground instead), although maybe not! Maybe I should just give that a go instead?

 

[gentlegreen]

It's way too hot for someone getting on in years to do what needs doing in the garden, so I cycled down to the garden centre for something to quickly cover my north-facing trellis , but I ended up with some African-style daisies instead.

Lost a couple more pea plants in the front garden last night thanks to neighbourhood cats, and my neighbours' one is digging up any bare bit of soil round the back - including in quite small containers. I'm always torn because I love cats.

 

[gentlegreen]

Sorry - didn't make it clear - it's sat on concrete! Which is why I haven't been able to stake it! It's fine with the door closed, I just can't leave it open if I'm out cos any sort of half decent gust blows the cover off (and therefore the plants/shelves off too ). But that's also why canes etc would be no good iyswim!

My book says you can just trail them over the ground instead, but I presume that's if the pots/grow bags are sitting on soil (just because it suggests something similar for squash, but then says that that means they can just root into the ground instead), although maybe not! Maybe I should just give that a go instead?

That's more of a challenge then.

Temporary traffic signs and bollards are weighed-down with sandbags.
You could carry it through the house in manageable amounts.

Training things vertically is favoured because it saves valuable ground space and exploits sunshine higher up. So most gardeners will grow upwards if they can.
Planting directly in garden soil saves you some of the effort of watering them.

Melons definitely benefit from protection - unless you have a magic sun trap.


If it was my concrete, I would be drilling holes in it and putting in eye bolts. You really don't want to spend months carefully tending plants only to have a sudden gust blow them away.

Is the tent not near somewhere you could run rope and / or struts from ?

 

[sheothebudworths]

No.

And it's not my concrete either!

I could afford the floor space in the cloche/greenhouse (currently the growbag is under the cloche, then the big pot in the greenhouse) if it would be ok to have them sitting directly on the concrete though?

 

[sheothebudworths]

Oooh - have just read the seed pack and it says that to avoid rot, you should AVOID them being on soil and have them sitting on tiles etc instead! So, prob ok! They're Minnesota Midgets, btw - so SMALL canteloupe melons (if that makes a difference!).

I have another question now!

I've got some kind of pellety grow more feed things, which you apply just once or twice in the growing season....is there anything this wouldn't do for? For eg - would tomatoes and strawbs still be better with a weekly liquid tomato feed?

Squashes, courgettes, melons, aubergines, beans etc? Should I just put it on the bed (dwarf peas, caulis and parsnips)?

I feel another trip to B&Q coming on (I'm almost out of compost again anyway).....

It really is TOO BLOODY HOT, eh! I've got a manky old towel out there to mop up the sweat (niiiiiiiiice!) and have to keep popping back in to cool down!

 

[gentlegreen]

So those slabs are concreted in. What a pain.

If it was me, I would start by assembling a wooden frame on the rear wall - anchoring it where I could - with bags of sand or concrete blocks.

You would need to be careful relying on the downpipes, but you have a corner you might be able to get some grip on. Where you can't clamp, you could wedge a structure horizontally between two walls.

Probably 3x 2 lower down, 2x2 elsewhere.

 

[gentlegreen]

In an ideal world, we would all have amazing, gutsy garden soil the roots of plants could get down into and a lovely, leisurely crop rotation where one crop leaves it perfect for the next.

As soon as you're in containers, eventually you have to feed. In the early days, repotting keeps them supplied. Slow release fertiliser is not something I've used much, but this year I've been seeing good results from some "organic" pellets I bought in Aldi. Dug in, and just scattered over some perennials.

Any containerised plants that are growing well, drinking gallons, and fruiting well, give them liquid tomato (high potash) feed. But you need to look at the plants to judge how hungry they are - too much and you may see the tips of the leaves getting burned. Tomatoes may need a magnesium supplement.

I usually use Chempak feeds, but I will probably try to find something "organic" for my tomatoes and peppers this year.

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

I'd put egg shells and coffee grounds around my dwarf beans and they'd done the job for a while, but obviously they get washed away from watering after a while and I didn't bother replacing them.

You don't need THAT many and if you have kids (as LMHF does!) who like eggs etc, you do end up with easily enough to do odd bits and pieces that'd be too fiddly to cover with net etc!

I also have four chickens..... I just wash the egg shells and smash em up and sprinkle. 6 eggs easily covered the bit where I'd planted 8 bean plants

am having lettuce from the first lot weve grown for tea no other salad ready of course but yaaay to home grown dinner

GG what about getting a wormery for fertiliser??? The liquid produced makes an excellent organic feed so Im told.

Also should I have loads of flies coming from my composter when I open the lid?? It seems to be going great guns, esp in this weather, the worms are going nuts in it.. the flies were a bit disconerting thats all

 

[sheothebudworths]

I have those flies too! If you mean the horrible little ones that zoom into your face as soon as you lift the lid if you don't stand back in time? I hate them but have never seen compost without them, tbf! I just give it five minutes for them to disperse a bit before turning!

Cheers, GG! Will check to see if the other stuff I have is a high potash one (presumably it'll say somewhere ...it's all so confusing sometimes! ) and grab a bottle of the tomato feed from somewhere if not!

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

yeah thems the beasties... thats cool then so long as they are meant to be there, its my first crack at composting so wasnt sure what was normal

 

[sheothebudworths]

My mum used to drive us to the city farm before we went on to her allotment (Kentish Town to Finchley - not THAT nearby ) and pick up shit loads of bags of horse manure, which I'd have to sit in the back with till we got there. It wasn't so much the smell (she reckoned the smell was nice ) as the FLIES, which were EVIL, millions and millions of those little ones trapped in the back WITH ME (she had a fucking MINI, too ).

 

[sheothebudworths]

I have thinned out the romanescos....back in for another break ....then going to do some more dwarf bean seeds chives and coriander. Oh and more peas for pea shoots, too.

Btw, gg - meant to say before - Alys didn't use maincrop peas for the pea shoots! She DID use the sort of dried peas you buy in the supermarket!
However, not sure hers were quick soak like mine ....which have produced a couple of quite tough looking shoots but certainly nothing you'd want strewn over your dinner!

Thing is, she did hers much later on than I did iirc, so I'm still not sure that it won't be worth giving the batchelors ones another go rather than wasting the more expensive maincrop ones I have left (assuming they'd be ok for next year that is). Might give them another go and see what happens!

 

[gentlegreen]

GG what about getting a wormery for fertiliser??? The liquid produced makes an excellent organic feed so Im told.

The thing is, living alone, I don't produce enough material to keep worms fed, so I chuck whatever I have in my bottomless compost bin and various organisms including worms come along and chew it up.

They would be starving at the moment, there's been a lot of cardboard going in recently ...

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

I need to get digging over my beds but cant afford any more compost til next week, IM brassicc Gah

a mate of mine suggested putting netting over the patch where ive sown the peas and then when they come up using the netting to train them up suspended on some poles and wire.... better get onto that at least. My beans are doing ok but something is still munching the lower leaves like mad... ants perhaps?? I havent seen anything else and one of the leaves literally looks like a sieve, only the veins of the leaf left and everything else between it made to look like netting. I dont want to use pesticides if poss

 

[sheothebudworths]

Yeah one of mine is basically fucked now....also one of the pots with another three has spider mites on...the fucking cunts!
Have moved that to its own, solitary spot now (((( lonely pot )))), but means I'll defo do best to do some more seedlings....I'm just a bit tired of seedlings now, though.

Netting has been very, very successful for me where I've used it though - so would definitely recommend it!
Just stick it over and secure the sides with sticks - a bit fiddly to do that bit, but not too difficult to get rid of gaps if you have loads of sticks (and anyway, some gaps are still better than no netting at all, iyswim).

It was just hard to do with those three bean plants in the ground cos they're in the flower border, so I hadn't bothered.
Have done so now though and no further damage!
You only need the cheapo mesh style stuff....B&Q do 4mx2m for £3 or £4, but I'm sure you'd get it cheaper in bigger amounts.

I've just found another bag of compost out the front, so am ok for that for a while at least!

 

[LilMissHissyFit]

Ive got the netting from home bargains... I think it was about £1
Ive got some branches from a mate which Im going to use as poles because I think they look prettier than canes, more rustic
Ive just found this

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/advice/pests_and_diseases/

VERY useful! as I suspected its probably ants according to this

 

[sheothebudworths]

Good buy for the netting!

And ace link, too! Will go through it methodically later!

 

[Strumpet]

I haz just repotted my strawbs. I hope they dunt die

 

[gentlegreen]

I haz just repotted my strawbs. I hope they dunt die

I can hear them stretching their roots into the lovely new compost from here.

I rashly agreed to supply my brother with sweetcorn and cauliflower plants, so that's another tray going in the seed cabinet - the okra which I probably won't actually eat has gone out to the greenhouse. Who knows, I might get a taste for it.

It's going at the end with one aubergine and one cucumber - the one of my two plants which actually has female flowers on it with teeny cucumbers behind - though it, too has started producing only males ...

I'm not fantastically keen on aubergines. I once grew some miniature white ones which were pretty grim - for all the promise of them being ideal for stir-fries.

 

[sheothebudworths]

I like aubergine, but only roasted/griddled/fried in a shit ton of oil ....and I've ended up with about 20 of them....


They're still not looking all that though, tbf - so hopefully they'll just all die.

 

[sheothebudworths]

Say if I had some tomato plants, which were finally 'thriving', but were still very, very small.....say, for example , a couple of inches - are they still likely to bear any fruit?

With an Indian summer, maybe? </hopeful >

 

[gentlegreen]

So long as you have the space, I reckon all you'll need to do is pinch the top of the plant out earlier than you might otherwise and accept a smaller crop.
Amazing plants tomatoes - it's actually a perennial. Commercial hydroponic plants can be ginormous.

It's a shame you don't live nearer. I have predictably ended up with a lot of spares ...

 

[sheothebudworths]

When do I pinch the tops out then?!?

Do I need to do that to all of them - or just to the smaller ones to concentrate their energy on the lower leaves? At what height/number of leaves do you reckon?

I do have two bigger ones (from the pound shop) and a few more I grew from seed (which aren't much bigger, tbf), so should still get a few but am not assuming they'll all survive as it is.....and my son LOVES tomatoes, so yeah - could have done with a better result - but still be happy to get any crop at all from the smaller ones!

 

[gentlegreen]

You don't pinch the tops out until there are a certain number of trusses of fruit set and you reckon that's it for the year - in a greenhouse it's more or less when you've run out of height.

If you pinch it out now you'll end up with an espalier or something.

So, depending on the variety it's only the side shoots you pinch out for the next few months.

The other factor is diminishing returns if you pack more plants in a given space ...

 

[sheothebudworths]

So, depending on the variety it's only the side shoots you pinch out for the next few months.

The other factor is diminishing returns if you pack more plants in a given space ...

Hang on, hang on, hang on!

So I should be pinching the SIDES out of the bigger plants? Now?

And the second bit - I take it you mean smaller pots = smaller crop? Not...lots of pots in a greenhouse as opposed to less pots?

 

[gentlegreen]

There are basically two kinds of tomato.

Cordon or "in-determinate"
Bush or "terminate"

Most varieties are cordon types and need help to get the best out of it, by growing it tall - up a stick - taking out the sideshoots - not the fruit trusses that grow straight from the stem. Most tomato growers have green fingers in summer. BUt be careful if you roll your own cigarettes because tobacco carries a virus that can infect tomatoes.

Bush varieties are bred for field-scale production and you more or less leave to their own devices.

As to planting density versus yield. The seed packet will give you the correct spacing - usually 18 inches.

I will be putting six plants along the back of my 10 foot greenhouse.

 

[foamy]

i've got one tomato and lots of flowers on the plants so far - should i pinch off the branches below the flowers to help the toms grow?

I've planted up 2 bags'o'spuds at my mums (she's babysitting them ) so have to remember to get some more compost to scatter over them.

 

[gentlegreen]

I strongly advise going to look at some youtube videos for training cordon varieties.

Assuming they are cordon varieties

What varieties are they ?