Today I will mostly be growing

Last week we cleared out the back of our garden and took the rubbish to the local household refuse site. However I decided to save our old rusty BBQ with pine under-shelf from a fate worse than the crusher and re-use it as a plant stand. My challenge was to hide the rust and add some colourful plants on a very small budget, so heres how I did it.

What you will need is:

1. An old rusty BBQ,
2. Some terra-cotta or plastic plant pots,
3. Lots of stones from the garden (ours has more than its fair share!),
4. Compost,
5. Cheap Plants from the market or local garden centre i.e. violas, ivy, dianthus, herbs.

(more…)

Yesterday I made sowings of Calabrese, broccoli tenderstem, runner and french beans and summer cabbages in pots and root-trainers for the mini greenhouse. As per my other post I already potted on my cucumbers, peppers and tomatoes and now my mini greenhouse is very full with not much space to spare.

I had a bit of a sort out and cleared out the bottom row which was being used as storage for pots and trays. Whilst I had all the trays out on the table I thought it would be a good idea to do a stock-take to record what trays of vegetables and flowers I have so far, so I might be able to keep track of them all. So here goes:

Here’s what’s in my mini greenhouse on 19.04.08:

Vegetables
All vegetables (apart from peppers, tomatoes and cucumbers) will be transplanted into the raised beds when they have grown on a bit, space has been made in the plots and when the signs of frost have passed.
(more…)

Today I was mostly potting on Cucumbers (marketmore), Sweet Peppers (romano mixed) and Tomato (unknown) - could either be Golden Sunrise or Green Zebra but I forgot to label it so its pot luck what I have!

How to Pot on Seedlings

Tools Required:

• Shuttle Trays with 9cm pots, (I bought mine from Poundstretcher/Instore for £1.99 per tray) or similar,
• Multi-purpose compost
• Sieve,
• Dibber and Widger,
• Watering Can,
• Plant Labels and Pen.

(more…)

Just a quick message, I sowed my very first seeds in my newly built timber raised beds on 10th April 2007 which was 1 year ago!

I’m hoping for an even better crop this year and look forward to a new set of experiences when I try growing different vegetables like butternut squash, beetroot, mange tout, parsnip, savoy cabbage and broccoli.

Heres my very first blog post about seed sowing on my 3 raised plots on 10.04.2007: Blog Posting 10.04.07.

Please click here to view my harvest of vegetables over the last year.

Current growth on Plots 1 to 3 - 10.04.2008

The weather was lovely and warm last week with temperatures higher than normal with the thermometers hitting 17 degrees on Friday 4th April 2008, I was happy thinking my seeds will finally get underway with their growing, until today Sunday 6th April where the temperatures dropped off the scale at a frustrating minus 2 degrees centigrade.

Heres a picture of my snowy vegetable plot:

(more…)