Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

foxgloves

Yes it could so outdoor plants might get some rain anyway if they're lucky. It's more difficult with a greenhouse as even well-ventilated, they can reach very high temperatures.
F

ladyholly

If you are away during school holidays it is almost certain to rain.

Sun_Addict

@Makingabobor2 we put our plants in our dog’s paddling pool last year when we went on holiday. DD was at home but couldn’t trust her to remember to water them. It seemed to work very well and everything survived. 

foxgloves

Oh my life, it's hot! And what have 2 people who wilt in the heat decided to do this afternoon? Visit the Swedish Emporium on the other side of the county. Hopefully it will have AC.....the friends we're visiting afterwards are the only folk we know with AC fitted at home.
Morning Campers! Wish I was camping but perhaps not with the storms forecast for later...the latter being our more usual camping weather in the past....either that or being directly under the flightpath of incontinent flocks of geese.
We are heading into the final week of June's budget cycle & despite a pantry stock-up on a number of items plus 2 x 12-boxes (on offer) of the v refreshing sparkling mineral water made from wonky limes, we have come in £30 under budget on groceries. Will use some of this to pay for coffees while we are out & about later & the rest will be sent to a Savings Pot. I think the Leisure/Entertainment Pot would be a good idea as it can boost funds for some concert tickets we've planned to buy.
I've had a lazy start to the day. I've added a couple more decluttered mags to my friend's bag as will be seeing her later, knitted a bit more of some stash-buster socks destined for the presents bag, read 2 chapters of my current book & watered all the veg. I can see I'll need to do a bit of picking tomorrow. Straightened my hair & ironed something to wear for going out, that's been it this morning for tasks.
I need to stay focused at the Swedish Emporium. I have a list but mostly I want a new washing-up bowl, 3 more glass tealight holders (as they make good, cheap pattern-cutting weights), a double coir doormat for conservatory doors & to check whether their glass freezer/oven-proof lidded containers come in other sizes. Mr F can't remember what he wanted to look at but he will when he sees it.
Old washing-up bowl will go down to the shed as intend to resume growing watercress next year. 
Just realised that I never got around to posting my theory about this Spring's home sown veg plant problems. All resolved now, but I think it can be useful to evaluate these things.
Stay hydrated m'dears,
F x

Makingabobor2

Wow £30 under budget is excellent.  I keep trying to get ours down, but not working. Maybe I'm starting too low to start with. 

Suffolk_lass

I was hoping you would share your theory regarding home-sown veg as for the first time ever, last year and this, I have had issues, and have my own theory about it.

Moorviews

I am eagerly awaiting your theory as my 2025 home sown vegetable plants have been dismal and this is unprecedented for me. 

Well done on the budget underspend!

foxgloves

@Makingabobor2 - Yes, that's a decent underspend, but I increased our grocery budget once the mortgage was paid off, then a little more around the time of the pandemic when supermarket stocks weren't that stable & we were tending, like most folk, to buy things in multiples when we were able to do so. Then of course, with runaway food inflation, we never reduced the monthly amount back down again, so I think it is more generous than some couples would allow. I budget £350 per month, which covers our food, food for the cats & all our cleaning products plus the usual household consumables like loo rolls, foil, etc, However, it doesn't include our fish boxes, which we have delivered 4 or 5 times a year, the Christmas turkey (there, I've said the C-word!) or our milk & juice from the milkman. For boring technical reasons, it's just much easier to budget all those separately. We eat very well on this amount & we are happy with it. However, I am mindful of the fact that should we need to pull our horns in for any unspecified crisis, unforeseen problem or just to enable us to via funds to elsewhere in the budget, we could feed ourselves for less. We also supplement our budget with homegrown produce from the garden.
F

foxgloves

@Suffolk_lass & @Moorviews,
I had a really odd Spring this year with my veg babies & I think I finally came up with a cause. For context, I shall just outline the veg sowing system here at Foxgloves Manor. Our greenhouse is unheated so the early veg (chillies, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers & aubergines) are all started off indoors, beginning with chillies on the last day of Jan, then the rest successionally ending with cukes & outdoor tomato varieties towards the end of March.
So it looks like this:
1.Sow seed in heated propagator.
2. Pot up seedlings into 9cm pots once they have at least 1, preferably 2 sets of true leaves. Cover pots with bottle cloches & transfer to warm bedroom windowsill.
3. When they've put on a bit of growth & looking sturdy, move down to conservatory as part of hardening off process. Still bottle cloched, though these are removed on warm sunny days, & but always re-cloched & then covered with a tablecloth at night.
4. On April 1st, all plant babies that have been through all of the above process are moved down to the greenhouse. They retain their cloches for about a week, then these are removed on warm days. At nights, they are always re-cloched & covered in bubblewrap. We had some very cold nights so they had a triple layer of bubblewrap during this time. 
5. As night time temperatures warm up, cloches are removed & I just use a bubblewrap layer at night, then it's time for them to get the big girl's pants on & survive without the extra layers.

I've been doing this system for years & while I generally have a few casualties, this year was just weird. At Stage 5, when all the plant babies would normally be growing & getting ready for re-potting, ALL of them...that's 3 types of tomatoes, 3 types of chillies & everything else, just sat there sulking & utterly refused to grow! The cucumbers & 1 chilli variety maintained a decent green colour but the rest of them looked sickly. They had water, my go-to cure-all which is the seaweed solution in the brown bottle, were shaded in the strongest sun, covered on chill nights & generally cossetted. Eventually, 2 things happened. The cucumbers all carked it, 3 on one night & the remaining one a couple of days later. However, the rest of the plants slowly turned a healthy green. But they still didn't grow! I had a whole greenhouse bench full of nice robust little plants which were still the same size after a good few weeks. I wondered if it was a compost problem as I did have issues one year with the earlier peat-free ones, but the brand we bought this year was good - much more crumbly & friable than some I've had & also, whereas they can waterlog underneath & cause problems, the drainage in this is very good & if anything, I'm having to water a little more often. I gently tipped a couple of plants out to have a look at the roots - all looked normal, no signs that the roots weren't growing & they didn't need re-potting. No pests either.
So what do I think it was?
Well, I was in the greenhouse moving some of these growth refusenik plant babies around (remember they are all at this stage in standard 9cm pots) & I noticed how hot the pots felt. The plants themselves by this stage were looking fine, just not growing, but I started thinking that if the pots felt hot, then the compost would maybe be too hot for the roots to take up adequate nutrients, etc. Tipped one out again & the compost did feel hot.
By this time, I would usually be getting some of the plants into grow bags so I decided to go ahead with the aubergines & this is what convinced me that my 'hot compost/roots' theory was on the right lines. I had 4 sturdy (but not growing!) little aubergine plants all about 10 cms tall & only required 3. I planted 3 into the grow bag (same compost/brand as I was already using with the same feed included in it) & left the 4th one as a back-up just in case any died & needed replacing. A week later, they had definitely grown. I decided that the 'hot roots' theory could maybe be a 'thing' & potted all the tomatoes, chillies & peppers into bigger pots. I've always understood that little plants shouldn't be put into overly large pots as they don't enjoy sitting surrounded by wet compost, but the 9cm pots were overheating too much in the very hot Spring we had. The bigger pots made a difference. Everything began putting on growth, despite not having been remotely pot-bound. The aubergines provided as close to confirmation as I am going to get. A few weeks later, the 3 aubergines in the growbag were growing strongly whereas the 4th one which I kept as a 'spare', still in its original 9cm pot, had remained exactly the same size. It hadn't grown at all. I tipped it out again & there was nothing about the roots which indicated it was in need of re-potting. It was in the same compost, same greenhouse, same watering/feeding regime, so I think the only thing I can conclude is that the combination of very hot Spring days in the greenhouse & a much more free-draining compost resulted in over-heating of the roots & this caused growth to stall. Even my scotch bonnet chillies which were tiny when I transplanted them into their final big pots romped away into growth. The extra volume of compost around the young roots must have provided a bit of shelter from the heat. 
So where are we now? Everything is in its final growing position & although the tomatoes are behind where they'd normally be at this time of year, the greenhouse ones are all setting fruit & the outdoor ones are all in flower. I decided not to re-sow cucumbers. Instead, I bought 2 grafted plants ('Bella' which is a good variety I have grown before, grafted onto some or other robust squash rootstock) & although they were not cheap (2 for £12), they are doing really well & we've already had a good number of full-sized cukes from them. I have a feeling they will end up paying their way. 
I'd be really interested to know if you two had similar issues, as I know you both said you haven't had a good Spring so far with getting veg plants going.
Anyone else who made it through to the end of this, especially if not a gardener, I should go & have a sit-down & a nice cup of tea!
Anyway, I'd better get today's post on.....
F x

Makingabobor2

That's really interesting FG.  I am still, as you know, what I would call a novice gardener, and at the moment I don't have a greenhouse.   So I love learning all these tips.  My tomatoes don't seem to be as good as last year, although there is a lot coming out now, so fingers crossed.  Also my strawberries are terrible compared to last year, so not sure what went wrong there. I took a couple of runners from last years, plants, but then bought about 4 plants as well.  Can't decide if its over/under watering, wrong position, wrong size pots, or bad compost.  Also my courgettes don't seem to be getting very big.  Keeping fingers crossed for everything else, and I will learn and read up a lot more over the winter, ready for next year.