May Update: What are you growing in 2006? (Tips here for Fruit, Veggies and Flowers!)

chickadee wrote:

When is it safe to start transplanting the plants into grow-bags in the greenhouse? I live in the North of England so we still get late overnight frosts sometimes. Will the greenhouse protect the plants from frost or will they still be caught?

I had the idea that I would use my now redundant dustbin to grow potatoes (our council has just converted us to wheelie bins). Is this a good idea? Can I plant several 'layers' of potatoes?

Hi, Between now and say the middle of June, move your plants outside each day, this is called "hardening off" and does just that to the plants. What I have done is bought a cat litter tray from supermarket (around £1.50) its just a tall sided ridged tray your looking for. Tall sides to stop the plants being blown over if its a windy day. (I'm at work all day too and nothing you can do about the weather wilst your there).

Anyway, each night I put as many plants as I can fit in the tray usually about 7 or 8 plant pots, then in the morning just nip the tray outside. Then when I get home from work, put those plants back on the windowsills and pick up the next 6 or 7 for the tray the next day.

Dustbins are brilliant for planting spuds, I'm not sure about the layers, I think you can do. I only know this way, put some compost in the dustbin, say about 6" put about 7 seed potatoes on the top of the soil and cover with another layer of compost. When you can see the plants above the compost put another layer of compost ontop to bury the plants. This is "earthing up", what your doing is stopping the light getting to the potatoes and turning them green.

Keep them well watered.

Kazonline wrote:

I normally buy iceburg - but I'm guessing that growing that would be a bit too ambitious?

We got some Iceberg lettuce seeds from Lidl for 29p.

Withing 4 days of planting them, we have 10 little shoots and lots more on the way I would imagine!!

If you have a lidl near you I would suggest getting some (loads of other seeds too for 29p) and so far it has been easy to do. I can't guarantee anything, but usually I kill plants (not on purpose) but these have started to grow so they can't be that hard to do!!!

M

Oh, forgot to say, yesterday at a farmers market I bought a horseradish plant and also a chocolate peppermint plant, which smells so lovely. Apparently very good with desserts (the chocolate peppermint not the horseradish :rolleyes: ).

XDH brought me back a bucketful of horseradish roots last autumn, I forgot all about them and they got left in a bucket by the shed. I've just rediscovered them and about 5 have thrown out huge great shoots with leaves on. I thought they'd be completely dead or rotten by now. I'm going to shove a few in a bare patch of ground I have and see what happens :j

Moggins - I collect egg shells and then crush them up and use them to arround my veggie patches to keep out slugs. They dont like to crawl over the egg shells as they are too jaggy so I think this would put off snails too?