This week in your Kitchen Garden.

[The39thStep]

Strumps - had a read up about raised beds and you'd be good to go (raised beds can even go on a HARD surface) but let me know if that IS what the plan is cos I was WRONG about filling up *just* with compost (thought I might be! )....


Now - QUESTION! Last year I grew strawberries from seed - got a small crop and left the plants in, which are all looking reasonably healthy at the mo - but I've just read that I should have sheared the old leaves 'anytime after cropping' leaving just the new ones and the crown - well I did no such thing I had already removed any dead ones (like errrrr....last week) but should I do it (and/or something *else*) NOW? Or just leave them? Have I fucked it all up for this year?!

Shearing the old leaves ( I do my bed with a lawn mower) etc is supposed to encourage growth for he next year. As they are first year plants they won't need to much encouragement anyway so i would be happy to leave them, just scatter some growmore over them this month or early April.

 

[The39thStep]

My neighbour could build me a large box thing (no lid) with tiers to do my planting in. Apparently, ANy thoits vey hard ground here and the earth doesnt go deep. Any thoughts?

Depends what you want to grow. Jon Yeoman reccomends making conical holes in hard soil filling that with compost and then (after marking where they are )putting the raised bed on top. That way you have some selective depth

 

[8115]

Just been and got my compost and some seeds. Going to grow beetroot, salad leaves and some potatoes in a big pot. All container gardening as our back garden is entirely paved.

 

[tendril]

Cleome (tall, for the back of borders)
Himilayan Blue poppy (perennial)
Schizanthus (to dot around the garden)
Sweet pea (for container/hanging baskets)
Marigold (good for amongst the veg)
Nasturtium (for the hanging baskets)
Rudbeckia (again, tall, for back of the veg plot)
Petunia (hanging baskets)
Coleus (for colourful foliage)
Lobelia (for containers/hanging baskets)

Update

Lost my marigolds to the frost (forgot to bring them in from the greenhouse during the most recent cold snap). have planted up more today along with more nasturtiums (which didn't germinate too well - old seeds) and plenty of sunflowers. Have planted some veggies and have had sproutage.

Some pics:

Himalayan Blue Poppy (apparently difficult to grow so we will see)

Coleus and a single cleome

A geranium cutting that has taken. Beautiful fluorescent pink

My lobelias are now off and running

Petunias

 

[tendril]

Tomatoes and cucumbers are up

Rudbekia have been a success so far

Runner beans and courgettes sprouting

Sweet peas and schizanthus

My sunroom now looks a right mess!

 

[The39thStep]

very early for runner beans!

 

[tarannau]

Envious of the sun room mind. Makes my little assortment of stuffed windowsills look inadequate.

Made the most of the gorgeously rare sunshine yesterday with a few hours down the allotment. More weeding and clearing around the fruit bushes really, followed by some horticultural lining around to hinder further weedery. And more slug traps laid around the remaining greens. Will clear out greenhouse and sort out the herb patch next weekend in preparation hopefully

 

[tendril]

very early for runner beans!

Gonna get them out first week in april, hopefully start croppin early.

 

[geminisnake]

Envious of the sun room mind

Innit!! It looks bigger than my living room!!
Tendril, ime the himalayan poppies are VERY favoured munching for snails and slugs so I would do something to keep them safe if you can

 

[sheothebudworths]

Shearing the old leaves ( I do my bed with a lawn mower) etc is supposed to encourage growth for he next year. As they are first year plants they won't need to much encouragement anyway so i would be happy to leave them, just scatter some growmore over them this month or early April.

Oooh GOOD NEWS - phew!

Thanks!

 

[The39thStep]

The overwintered onions took a battering in the freeze we had before Xmas but what is left of them ( about 60%) are sprouting if weedy looking. the garlic is doing well now and their are leaves on the gooseberries and buds on the currant bushes. I found some scorzerena that I had forgotten I had and some small parsnips that must have been left when i dug up the big ones.

The nettles and wild garlic are growing now so in perhaps a fortnight I will be making wild garlic and nettle soup which is one of my favourites.

 

[Funky_monks]

Garlic is a good 8 ins high now - I planted about 80 odd cloves this year, I figure you can never have too much garlic., shallots are peeking through, the Japanese overwintered onions are straggly but shoots are a good 4-6 ins. Broad beans just germinating after I re-plated in pots cause the mice ate the ones in the ground. Just planted 6Kg of spuds (Pink Fir and Arran Pilot) and a row of peas (Hurst's greenshaft). I have parrafinned the buggery out of them due to the earlier mouse incident with the beans.....Carrots soon...still got a polytunnel to put up, mind.

 

[Melinda]

Popped into the 99p shop and did my first buy of the season- bargainacious!

4 packets of seeds for 99p- beetroot, mixed rocket, parsnips, sweetpeas
1 bag of onion sets
1 butternut squash kit (12 seeds)
1 basil, coriander parsley kit
1 thornless blackberry (decided against black currant and gooseberries)

I was inspired by tendril to cram even more flowers in the garden.

Picked up two more climbing roses
Plus rudbekias and echinacea coneflowers (proper deep pinks).
(Ive decided against the cool blue palette close to the house, I want to mix things up with drifts of hot gaudy colours.

Still to buy: broad beans, peas, french beans, borlotti beans, first earlies and spinach.

 

[The39thStep]

Free seeds!

http://www.getintogardening.co.uk/getprizes/competitions/

 

[Melinda]

Pink Fir apple are really great tasters but they are lates and as such are succeptable to blight. They are also quite slug prone. i think they are best grown in tubs. Allernatives: Belle de Fontenay, Roseval,Anya but my favouite is Charlotte. They are all waxy sald potatoes with a nutty/chestnutty taste.

You can grow sweet potatoes but they are a really long growing season , do better under polythene and don't know where you are but they need some warmth. The returns outside a re disappointing. if you want to have a go then you buy them as 'slips'.

You could grow some nutty sweet squashes instead. I have some Red Kuri squash seeds if you want some:

Can I take you up on this please? Ive cleared the decks and Im ready to get started.

I'll happily swap for some of my F1 butternut squash seeds!

 

[tendril]

Have potted on my courgettes, beans, cucumbers and beef tomatoes (after giving some of the juveniles away to a friend). I am experimenting with a coir based mix recommended to me by a friend who works at Kew. 45% coir, 45% humost, 10% loam based John Innes with a little organic fertiliser thrown in. Makes a lovely dark mix and is totally peat free so gives me plenty of green bonus points

Have planted more marigolds as I lost the last lot to the frost when I was too lazy to bring them in from the greenhouse last week. Had variable success with my nasturtiums and my chilli's got mold as soon as they germinated so am trying seed from last year's crop. Fingers crossed. Need to go get some well rotted horse manure to put under the veggies when I plant them out and am hoping for a bumper crop this year

 

[8115]

I'm thinking about planting outside seeds but I think it's probably just too early. Seed potatoes are chitting. The lovely man in the shop got really excited at the variety I was buying. Awww.

 

[Placid Casual27]

I left a tray of red pepper seedlings out in my lean-to, uncovered (no cover on the tray) and this morning they have all gone, about 40 of them. Could mice have done that? I am GUTTED!!!

 

[invisibleplanet]

Seed potatoes are chitting here
Growing them in containers this year as the soil will take alot of effort to perfect, and I'm not going to live here long enough to warrant making major changes to the soil structure

 

[etnea]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this...
I have grown some basil from seed and it's doing very well on my balcony (I'm in HK). It's at first set of proper leaves stage just now, and the pot is super over-crowded. My question: should I thin out by hand, or should I just let nature do its thing and assume that the strongest seedlings will overpower the weaker ones?

 

[tendril]

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this...
I have grown some basil from seed and it's doing very well on my balcony (I'm in HK). It's at first set of proper leaves stage just now, and the pot is super over-crowded. My question: should I thin out by hand, or should I just let nature do its thing and assume that the strongest seedlings will overpower the weaker ones?

I'd thin them out by hand.

 

[pennimania]

Love this time of year!

Have just planted spring onions, courgettes, pumpkins, winter squash and lots of flowers, especially poppies which I love.

My tomato plants are all showing 3 sets of true leaves now - still on my windowsill - I will plant them on in the polytunnel in a while. i have shallots and garlic and Chinese greens doing quite well in there now.

 

[sheothebudworths]

My purple sprouting broccoli is FINALLY SPROUTING!!! Really pleased cos I there was nothing much doing for a while there and I wasn't sure how much of an effect the cabbage butterflies/cold weather would have had. *excited*

Sown some flower seeds today - the kids did sunflowers (red and yellow) and I put some night scented stock into bits of the bed and a pot, too. Have cut my very dead looking hydrangea right back incase it revives it (which I believe means I wouldn't get any flowers this year, but wasn't looking much like I would anyway, lol - so worth a try ). Pruned the heather, sage, thyme and penstemons.

Need to repot some of the tomato seedlings and get some other veg started which I'll hopefully be doing next weekend with my bezzer.

 

[tarannau]

Really good day in the allotment yesterday - loads planted, from sweet peas to corn. Raised bed for herbs built and another large herb planter sunk, filled with numerous heavy bags of soil and some thyme planted. And the greenhouse readied to start on the chillies in a couple of weeks. Slugs are still destroying anything green mind, but hopefully the traps will begin to thin numbers more and there's copper tape around the most tender herbs.

Back home the chillies are doing pretty darn well. Too many types to list all growing well and looking good for the season. The wiri plants are slow, but healthy and others are leaping ahead and loving the longer sunshine. By the time they go in the greenhouse and final pots I'm confident they'll be in a position to crop by the end of the season. I'll get round to some pics soon

 

[tarannau]

Oops. I do actually have some blurry pics.

Some more late starters in the propagators - purple flash, pretty in purple, numex twilight, super chile, thai dragon, chenzo, thai basil, lettuce leaf basil, epazote and some stragglers, soon to be discarded

A little window tray with cayennes, wiris, cheekys, trini cherry, trinity

Another tray - serranos, bolivian rainbow, purrira, white habanero, orange habanero, birds eye, naga, friars hat and numerous others. Worryingly I've got another 15 or so plants dotted around. Will start to thin out and redistribute in a few weeks.

On the plus side it's not been too bad a start to growing chillies from seed this year.

 

[sheothebudworths]

I am now living in a CAT FREE ZONE!


My bezzer and I spent today erecting a variety of mental looking barricades involving chicken wire, plant pots filled with stones and last, but definitely not least, my inspired and deeply cunning plan of thin posts/nails/twine.
Those motherfuckers will not be shitting in my garden ANYMORE!

That took up most of the day but we also managed to sow some peas and sweetcorn, repot some tumbling tomato and aubergine seedlings and put some Gardeners Delight seeds into a propagator, too.

Mowed the lawn and then had a nice half hour of 'Oooooh aren't we CLEVER' at the end.

 

[sheothebudworths]

Uhh-uh!

Pic one - embarrassing mad woman stone filled flower pot defence along the brick wall (next door to neighbours who have four cats and a paved garden ;-) ), plus chicken wire on the fence...

Pic two - you can hardly see (which is the point ) but there's sticks/string/nails along the top of the fence....out-foxing the cats (I tell you, this shit has kept me awake at night)...

Pic three - NO MORE NAILS and chicken wire between me and Bob (no cats - no complaints about NO CATS ) - strung the jasmine back over the slightly flimsy set up....


Didn't bother putting nets up over the newly planted seeds in the veg bed

 

[fogbat]

If I knew where you lived, I'd come around and do a shit in your garden, just to spite you

 

[The39thStep]

Really good day in the allotment yesterday - loads planted, from sweet peas to corn. Raised bed for herbs built and another large herb planter sunk, filled with numerous heavy bags of soil and some thyme planted. And the greenhouse readied to start on the chillies in a couple of weeks. Slugs are still destroying anything green mind, but hopefully the traps will begin to thin numbers more and there's copper tape around the most tender herbs.

Back home the chillies are doing pretty darn well. Too many types to list all growing well and looking good for the season. The wiri plants are slow, but healthy and others are leaping ahead and loving the longer sunshine. By the time they go in the greenhouse and final pots I'm confident they'll be in a position to crop by the end of the season. I'll get round to some pics soon

Do you mean sweet corn? If so bit early i would have thought .

 

[sheothebudworths]

If I knew where you lived, I'd come around and do a shit in your garden, just to spite you

My bezzer said I'll probably come down in the morning and they'll be four cats strung up by their necks from the various string/wire ensembles .....AND POO IN THE NEWLY PLANTED BED.