The great, good and not so good bits about growing your own dinner 2017

Hi all

Quick update, all my spuds are chitting away happily (93 seed potatoes :eek: thats gonna be a LOT of spuds!

I have planted 3 "Rocket" variety into small pots and placed in the cool and sunny spare room, if they come up I will then transplant them into their growing bags. Might get a couple of pounds of spuds as early as mid to end of May

Tomorrow I am going to sew some spring onions and lettuce, and do a bit more pottering while the weather is being kind :j

Morning all. I'm about to get out in the garden for the first time proper this year. Fortunately we're still eating from what I planted in the autumn, so last nights salad included Chinese leaves, rocket, chard & chives, and I made a quiche this morning and included an onion from stores.

No seed planting done here yet. I normally do that in Jan/Feb indoors but couldn't because of house refurb so will probably do it next week now.

I will lift the last of the leeks today and make leek and potato soup.

First job though - cut back the hydrangea.

The hot chillies (Ring of Fire) and sweet peppers have now been pricked out and are being grown on on the study windowsill. Ring of Fire freeze well, so we're still working our way through last year's crop - hopefully they'll last until this year's plants start to fruit! Next job will be to plant the courgettes and non-edibles in the cold greenhouse.

yesterday I managed to dig over a patch that was roughly 1.5 x 1.5 meters :j amazed by how much I did as I was only there for 40 mins! It's an area that was covered with membrane for 9 months so it was so easy! Took out all of the stinging nettle roots I came across. Very hopeful that by the end of this week I will have finished all of the beds :j A woman at the allotment last week advised just turn it over and take out the big weeds as there is still enough frost to break it down. Have checked the weather for today and it's no longer forecast to rain so hopefully in an hour or so I'll get down there again for another hour :T

Anxious time as so far the only things that have germinated are rocket, 1 basil & 1 coriander seed from everything I sowed 12 days ago waiting on peppers, aubergines, broadbeans. Hope they do germinate. I think I remember feeling this way last year and things took longer than I expected but did germinate mostly.

As I doubt I will be getting the allotment this year I have decided what things i will trial in the backyard but with such limited space and not really getting full sun it will be interesting. some areas are so bad i actually put artificial flowers there!


Anyway, moving forward I know when I do get my allotment I might be lucky and find useable things on it but know that I will have to purchase others. I have a small tub in the house that i can start to store my trowel etc but thought i might [funds permitting] start getting vouchers etc , where do purchase things from? I was thinking wilkos might be an ok one?