The highs and lows of growing your own dinner 2015

StressedSteph

Hi all


You all sound REALLY industrious. I must get my act together.

Five Orphan lambs were purchased and settled into their new home yesterday. That is lamb for the freezer sorted for 2016 .

I have two bags of Early New potatoes chitting in the towel chest in my bedroom.

I also bought 3 packs of Dhalia seeds (Love those as cut flowers)
Will start these off indoors.

I also bought

Savoy cabbage, carrot, lettuce & Parsnip seeds all of which reckon you can plant outdoors February onwards. I will sow mine in the polytunnel though so hopefully less chance of them getting hit too hard by a frost.

I am in the South West so guess we do have it pretty easy. No snow so far this year.

Today I want to get all those seeds sown and weed the rhubarb bed. Nettles seem to have taken over and the rhubarb didn't do so well last year because of them I think. If I catch the nettles now before they start growing again I should be able to clear it and stick a load of muck down to prevent them coming back through for a while.

Hope you all get the chance to get out in the allotment today.

Frosty but at least its dry xxx

Happygreen

StressedSteph wrote: »

Hi all

Today I want to get all those seeds sown and weed the rhubarb bed. Nettles seem to have taken over and the rhubarb didn't do so well last year because of them I think. If I catch the nettles now before they start growing again I should be able to clear it and stick a load of muck down to prevent them coming back through for a while.

SSteph, do you feed your rhubarb? I never know if I put muck on it might develop flowers but maybe it's the other way round, if the soil is poor?
Re. nettles - eat them! They are the first free and nutritious green . I hide them between spinach or cabbage greens nobody will notice! Or make nettle juice for the garden, tomatoes love it.

zafiro1984

Happygreen: - I stick loads of muck on my rhubarb, now and also bits go on over the growing season and I also water really well in the summer. Two rhubarb plants give me enough to use fresh plus enough to last frozen over the winter. I haven't had any problems with flowering stalks.

StressedSteph

Happygreen wrote: »

SSteph, do you feed your rhubarb? I never know if I put muck on it might develop flowers but maybe it's the other way round, if the soil is poor?
Re. nettles - eat them! They are the first free and nutritious green . I hide them between spinach or cabbage greens nobody will notice! Or make nettle juice for the garden, tomatoes love it.

zafiro1984 wrote: »

Happygreen: - I stick loads of muck on my rhubarb, now and also bits go on over the growing season and I also water really well in the summer. Two rhubarb plants give me enough to use fresh plus enough to last frozen over the winter. I haven't had any problems with flowering stalks.

Hi Happygreen & Zafiro


I haven't put muck on my Rhubarb recently, think maybe that is the problem. I have never managed to get enough stalks to be able to pick and still leave enough plant left to survive.


I am definitely doing something wrong. Think I will spread some muck around them this year and remember to water them well.


They have been in the ground for two years now, I REALLY should have gotten at least 1 rhubarb crumble by now

ALIBOBSY

Can I join this thread just to help focus the mind.

Have been growing for the last 6 years and learnt alot, but still have plenty to learn-STILL can't grow good beetroot.

Have a fair sized garden, the back is all raised beds, a greenhouse and a walk in chicken run-got one little tinker who keeps escaping and appearing from the greenhouse in the morning lol.

Got a bigger front garden but left most of it as lawn for the kids. We have got a rockery a bed and a few fruit trees on it. OH dug me an extra bed along one side, but I had some health problems and never got around to edging it or planting in it so it just turned grassy/weedy again.

Got the last of the brassicas and parsnips to dig up and need to clear the greenhouse out.

Seeds wise got a boxful from previous years lol, plus those free herb seeds from the offer last year (arrived too late to use then).
Got some seeds from Lidl and will do a proper inventory and work out if I need any other of their basic seeds.

I have just taken delivery of a seed order from justveg, used them before and can really recommend them. With the various offers I got around 20 packs for £10 delivered. They can do them cheaply as they are in smaller amounts and plastic bags. The discounters-LIDL/ALDI/POUNDSTRETCER et al do good basic seeds but if you want more specific named varieties you need to go to places like more veg or real seeds. I try to buy non F1 if I can so I can seed save for later years in the easier to do type of veggies/herbs.

So trying cape gooseberries this year, got some baby corn minipop and some Northern extra sweet full size sweetcorn as it is supposed to deal with northern temps and the shorter growing season better-we are in the northwest.

I love peas, but find the modern varieties you get are the dwarf ones that produce low amounts and take up a fair bit of space, these were bred for commercial growers to harvest via machine. Always seemed to get much more "bang for your buck" so to speak from runners and climbing french beans. So this year I am growing some old varieties of climbing pea. I got two heritage types from moreveg, both are quite hardy, grow over 6ft and both supposedly give high yields and keep producing as you pick like the beans do . They are pea "alderman" and mangetout "carouby de maussane". The latter suposedly produce really big sweet pods that seem to spring up over night so looking forward to them. Also got some "barlotto lingua di fuoco" to produce some dried beans for winter soups.

Will be growing alot of the usual suspects as well as sunflowers with the kids-we then save the seeds to eat/feed the chickens/make pesto with. We live semi rural so two mins up the road the farmshop does cheap local spuds, carrots, onions ie full sack of spuds around £4-£5, sack of carrots/onions for about £2-£3 at most so not worth growing much of either, but I like onions and they do make good companion plants so do some-have some seeds in already and will grow spring onions and fancy carrots like cosmic red for some fun for the kids.

I do alot of companion planting, and permiculture beds and like the square foot planting approach. Grow alot of edible flowers and like to try unusual stuff for a change. I love nasturtiums, wonderful flowers and leaves for salads, look great in the garden, grow like mad things, keep black fly off the beans and great for the chickens-supposedly rids them of worms and helps their digestion, they definately adore it.

Will go back and have a read of the thread now lol.

Be careful all those just starting this year, this growing stuff lark becomes addictive.

BTW my secret plan for the beetroot this year is to treat em mean, read they don't like to be looked after too much and to avoid watering once established unless the ground really dries out.

Ali x

ALIBOBSY

chella wrote: »

My granddad used to grow masses of veg and fruit and he made it look effortless!!!!

Runner beans, went ok, not a big crop. I grew them in containers and am sure they didn't have enough soil.

Radsihes, just went leafy and never grew the radish.

Aubergines, died a death.

Peppers grew really well!!!!! ....... then I saw at the back of all 3 they had been half eaten by a slug or something.

Strawberries never fruited.

Courgettes I got about 5 edible ones n the end.

Tomatoes, hit an miss there too.

I grew mainly in containers, I am thinking I should dig up some ground and make 2 raised beds?? each would be about 2 by 2 meters.

This year I am attempting....
French beans
peas
radishes
spring onions
carrots
tomatoes
cucumber (last year they were prickly and bitter?????)
strawberries.
aubergine
courgettes
and squash, also grew last year and nothing appeared.

HMMMMMM still got a lot to learn

My Grandad always made it look easy and Dad always had a veggie plot when we were little. Inspired by me trying to grow stuff both my veggie sister and he have started trying again and he always seems to get fab results from just pottering around where we work hard and seem to never do as well lol.

The good thing is is hand always slips with the seeds so we get plenty of left over seedlings, he always seems to have about 50 lettuces lol.

Runners I always do in the raised beds and always get masses of pods, I grow it quite high though, OH buildt me a sort of wooden structure-think gymnastic uneven bars, and so the beans grow up and over in an arch.

I have never had too much success with aubergines even in a greenhouse tbh. Tomatos were fab last year in the GH, the two leftover seedlings I stuck outside didn't do much really. These and peppers/chillis tend to prefer the extra heat, but you never know, if you start them early indoors and grow on as much as possible before going outside, plus choose a sheltered area?

The cucumber problems maybe the length of time you left them on the plant? The outdoor cukes grow quite small spikey cucumbers and you need to pick them whilst still quite dark green, once they lighten and start to go more yellowish they are ripening and go bitter,they never get as big as the shop ones.

A tip I got about courgettes is to prune as you go and give plenty of feed. Pruning wise you cut off the leaves as they start to go a big ragged and paler/any white traces. Always feed at the same time and its seems to give the plants a new burst of life. I grow comfrey to make my own plan food, but nettles are supposed to be good as well.

Your radishes sound like my beetroot lol.

Ali x

ALIBOBSY

misspickle wrote: »

I am one of those that trys hard to grow things and I love it but I'm just so useless at
it all I was hoping you could all help me so I can actually produce something this year!
I think I literally love anything I plant to death. Where am I going wrong?
I only want to do a few simple things like lettuce and herbs. I think I maybe over water at the beginning. Is it better to spray water on them or just pour it on?
I live in the south west and the garden gets a lot of sun but its all concrete so I have some raised wooden beds.
I wasn't pleased with the compost last year. It was all dry and clumpy when I bought it and not what I used to have I'm sure.
What compost should I use? How often to water? Do I start them off indoors?
My big herb pot ended up more weeds than herbs! It was all mixed up and in the end I didn't know what was edible and what was weed still ate them though. My chives kept going brown at the ends and straw like at the ends but they had lots of water so why?
My lettuce just didn't look that healthy.
Please help. I know I'm useless but I am very willing.
Is there anything I can do today? To prepare? I have the day off so would like to get cracking.
I'm sooooo determined this year! Last year was a disaster. Nothing grew in the grow bag last year either. Just a very long strange looking unidentifiable thing. God knows how I managed that! How can you go wrong with a grow bag? I forget what I planted in it :think: tomatoes I think. I like radish too. And spring onions. How deep is the compost supposed to be? Sorry for the long post.

Never had any luck with grow bags, too shallow for toms really, Mine go in those florist buckets or bigger tubs. Many herbs like basil and parsley like to be watered from the roots up.

Ali x

Jazee

Alibobsy - what is the square foot planting approach? I think I can work it out, but if you can explain fully please!

ALIBOBSY

Jazee wrote: »

Alibobsy - what is the square foot planting approach? I think I can work it out, but if you can explain fully please!

Basically the theory is that most plant spacings and info on the packets is based on commercial growing and open ground planting. In raised beds the ground can be controlled more and is usually much richer. So you can plant more closer together.

So you split the bed into 1 ft squares-you can buy frame guides or do what I do which is use garden canes lay over the beds as I plant.

You then can mix up the plants you grow in a bed rather than long lines of single types. This also has a knock on effect in that you can try to companion plant stuff in squares next to each other and it helps to confuse the pests by mixing things up.

I have recently spotted some plastic planting guides here http://www.plantspacer.co.uk/ but I think they are expensive for what they are. Going to put my Maths A-level to use and try to create my own out of old cardboard boxes. Will post the results if anyone would be interested (and if it works lol).

Some plants work better in blocks anyway. Self blanching celery is brilliant. The slugs love the young plants so keep in pots till a fair size-say 3 inches or so. Then plant 9 in a square foot block and they will romp away and wipe out any weeds inbetween-so no weeding bonus!. I harvest some of outer leaves and sticks like a sort of cut and come again celery to use early on. Then once bigger you can cut bunches. I chop and freeze whats left come late autumn for throwing in soups and stews over winter. Apart from the initial potting up and potting on so they get big enough to deter the slugs they are a stick in the ground and leave it crop. You get more leaf that stick especially on the outer plants of the block, than normal shop celery, but its great for flavour in cooking and you get some sticks to eat as well.

Loads of websites online with slightly differing versions of it,but the idea is basically the same.

Ali x

Scottish_Mike

ETA: Ali beat me!

Square foot gardening was developed by Mel Bartholomew and entails getting a 4x4ft square raised bed, dividing it into 16 one foot squares and planting your seeds in the squares, possibly closer than you normally would.

I tried this last year and had a degree of success, but we had a lot of trouble with certain plants shading others out - my purple sprouting broccoli ended up totally taking over my bed and shaded out my parsnips and carrots leaving them stunted.

I don't think the system is useless by any means, but careful planning is required!