The all new good, bad and ugly of growing your own in 2020

carinjo

Finally! The runnerbean frame is up! Had no energy to do anything else after. Expecting rain on weekend, so a quick tidy tomorrow. At least got my click&collect today and homebargains were full of essentials i never knew i needed 

zafiro1984

Isn't it quiet at the moment? We had a coffee this morning sitting on the buggy and enjoying the sun, all we could hear was bird song. No train noise, it's at least half a mile away but when the wind is in the right direction we can hear it. If a car goes up the lane you actually notice it. I bet pollution levels have dropped and the planet has benefited. 
In the unheated greenhouse this afternoon, it's so hot, potted on 3 types of tomatoes all of them blight resistant. pricked out more leeks, did a bit of moving things around. Another couple of days will see it tidy and working for this year
 

hathor

Good morning everyone. As a novice gardener I am keen to make a success of my efforts so I don't get discouraged and give up. I plan to lean on all you experienced gardeners quite heavily to guide me through all the scary decisions in taking responsibility for my new plants: hope you don't mind! I did dabble in an entirely container-based gardening effort a few years ago, but as building work progressed on my plot that was abandoned. Stuck in lockdown, my options are very limited so I am making the best of using up all the old packets of seeds left over from the a-pot-ment. (Many of them are out of date, but I figure that plants want to grow, right? In Nature, many plants have to wait for conditions to be right before they burst into life, it seems.) My thinking is that if they grow, great; if not, it won't have cost very much.

Anyway, I have successfully germinated some climbing french bean plants (younger seed, it must be acknowledged) and they are apparently doing well. I am hardening them off just now, but soon they will be the first things to be planted in my new raised bed. They do seem a bit leggy, ie quite a bit of stem before the first true leaves. When I transplant them, should I still only put them in at the same soil level as in the pot, or can I bury them a bit deeper to give them more stability? I know that for tomatoes that if you plant them nearly up to the leaves, they will make more roots from the stem and have a better base, but I don't know whether this applies to other plants as well.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Charly27

Welcome Hathor . I’m with you on the sow before date on seed packets. They certainly aren’t going to grow in a packet! I find it hard to be patient but that is what gardening helps with. 
My butternut squash seeds are finally germinating and that makes me feel thrilled. I try not to peek in my mini greenhouse everyday then it’s a lovely surprise when I do. 
I’m not sure about the beans. Like all members of that family I think it’s important that you don’t disturb the roots so a nice deep hole and the whole plant in the module, root trainer or loo roll popped in. Slugs do seem to enjoy young beans so perhaps some sort of barrier or trap? What do others think?
Ive planted half of my seed potatoes at the allotment and waged continuous war on the nettles in the raspberry patch but had to have a ‘break’ yesterday as back, arms and hands hurting. So I helped DH with decking. Boy it was hot out there yesterday. Weird kind of rest.

-taff

Don't put out the beans out before the last frost has passed, they're not that hardy. This site https://www.gardenfocused.co.uk will help you out with when and what to plant and when the last frost date is.

Suffolk_lass

hathor said:

Anyway, I have successfully germinated some climbing french bean plants (younger seed, it must be acknowledged) and they are apparently doing well. I am hardening them off just now, but soon they will be the first things to be planted in my new raised bed. They do seem a bit leggy, ie quite a bit of stem before the first true leaves. When I transplant them, should I still only put them in at the same soil level as in the pot, or can I bury them a bit deeper to give them more stability? I know that for tomatoes that if you plant them nearly up to the leaves, they will make more roots from the stem and have a better base, but I don't know whether this applies to other plants as well.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Welcome hathor - yes you can bury up to the first pair of leaves and the cells will sort it out. There is a link to an Alys Fowler Youtube clip here that talks about just this! I was just checking myself. The tip about watering from the bottom is good advice too.

carinjo

An early morning on allotment and two of my nicola potato leaves have stuck their heads through. Very excited.
The fleece is doing it's job and have a row of rosso lettuce and rainbow radishes coming up in the raised bed. Lifted 2 tarpaulins and looks nice and clear underneath, started digging over the area for sweetcorn, even though this one persistent little frog kept getting in the way. The new neighbour had a lot of success with his sweetcorn germination and offered me enough if mine don't.  
At home sowed some lawn seed where there was a flower bed before, put some fleece over to keep Ms Marple, our cat out. 
Also tried my hand at forced hyacinth bulb growing in some glass vases. Not sure if they still any good, been in a bag in a cupboard for a while now. Helped the OH repot some cacti into cute tins we been collecting.
Taking it easy this weekend except for planting some ridged cucumber seeds in pots.

DiggerUK

What's going on here. I've still only got 1 sweetcorn showing, 1 gherkin/small cucumber showing and no potatoes (Kestrel) yet.
I can go off people very quickly you know..._

Suffolk_lass

24 of the 30 sweetcorn seeds have germinated in the toilet roll tubes packed in glower pots of seed compost. They are in my unheated greenhouse but in a position that gets lots of sun and the greenhouse is warm enough to work in a t-shirt during the day.

In fact loads of stuff is going great guns. I shall drop off a tray of french and borlotti beans to my neighbour when I take them 6 eggs on Tuesday - hopefully a few of the runners will be doing their thing by then as I know she wants some. I have about 10-12 tomato seedlings in each of the five trays - I was so late planting this year, but they will get going in time - I freeze loads then make homemade passata in preserving jars that last all winter. I also have a tray of climbing italian beans going for it and a tray each of outdoor cucumbers and yellow courgettes, about to grow their second pair of leaves. I will be giving a few of these away too.

Only onions and potatoes (and a cheeky fast cropping dwarf bean) planted out so far and only rhubarb and asparagus harvested from the new season (we still have half a bed of leeks to dig out so we can prepare for summer brassicas).

I have also planted brassicas, sunflowers and salad crops this week and within 24 hours, the pak choi is showing. It was just begging to get growing.

Scrimps

Evening all,  this week we have created another raised bed and taken delivery of our compost.  Ive marked out some square foot gardening spaces for half of it, we intended to sow today but the kids had other ideas.  I harvested some lettuce from the greenhouse beds, I did plant it all quite close together and expected to thin out as we went but the warm weather really promoted growth which sounds great but during this evenings harvest I found so many small slugs!  It really puts me off eating a salad despite having checked and washed them numerous times, it seems to press the averasion buttons.  I think slugs are like weed seeds - 1 year seeding is 7 years weeding.  Our slugs have previously been what felt like plague like numbers, so all those eggs are hatching now.
I have put nematodes down this week too, weve got another 2 treatments alreadys paid for to be delivered in 8 and 16 weeks but weve decided that this year is the last year we want to pay the money for this quite expensive treatment.  Im really hoping that keeping the garden tidier this year as well as the nematode treatment will reduce the numbers and make it more manageable in future.  For now I will harvest some lettuce but will be significantly thining the bed.