The ups, the downs and the insides out of growing your own in 2026!

Suffolk_lass

@cardexpert Aldi-lidl do garden cold frames for about £30 each at this time of year. Or a warehouse shelving unit (with wire shelves like Ikea used to do), maybe screwed to your wall with L shaped brackets with some bubble-wrap of polythene sheeting. Being against your wall helps most - stops late frost catching it. Rather than spend a lot, check out freecycle or your local FB marketplace pages

EssexHebridean

Word of warning - don't bother buying the metal framed polycarbonate sheeting cold frames that Lidl (and i suspect Aldi) do. they are flimsy and the joints where they fix together are shoddy. Ours spent much of last summer collapsing and was an absolute devil to put back together. I've still got the panels and may build a wood frame to fix them to.

Tomato seeds all sown - Gardeners delight, Minibel, Maskotka, Alicante & San Marzano. Also the final 8 sweetcorn seeds "Amaize" in the packet. All under propagator lids on the front room windowsill.

Chillies/aubergines have now been moved to the slightly cooler living room sill

Sunflowers are now fending for themselves outside during the day as they desperately needed a bit of wind to stop them getting any leggier.

DD265

I am regretting my choice to show vegetables this year and it has become crystal clear why the entries were limited; the start of May is far too early! That said, I am far too committed now so onwards.

My spinach is admittedly looking very promising and the first potato plants are ready for earthing up tomorrow. The beetroot I am not convinced and who knows what the spring onions will go on to do. I may still sow some radishes so I have a backup crop and also because I generally find them pretty easy to do, but entries are due by the 15th April I believe so I shall have to decide soon.

In early February - I think the weekend after I last posted in this thread - my allotment greenhouse was vandalised and they smashed almost every pane of glass. It cost a small fortune to reglaze with second hand glass and I have put CCTV up now. Miraculously, the pomegranate tree survived; my plastic cloches were too small so I made do for a couple of days and got a pop up plastic cloche and some fleece on it. Lots of happy leaves on the go now.

I did get my peach tree planted too, I went for Avalon Pride in the end. The blossom will burst in a week or so; the plum tree is steaming ahead on that front so I spent a bit of time hand pollinating with a brush. Due to the vandalism I didn't get one of my blueberry bushes, an apple tree and a pear tree moved before the buds started to swell so I have decided to leave those another year.

My garlic and onion sets have been in the ground a few weeks with a fleece tunnel, which I'll remove after the current cold snap ends. We've had rain, hail, snow and sunshine today plus a windy weekend, so I haven't spent a huge amount of time down there but hoping for better weather tomorrow and of course, it's light in the evenings now.

Planning to sow my tomato seeds this week at home - currently hardening the show veg off with increasing hours in the conservatory to make some space in the office. Have to watch one of the cats particularly because he wants to eat the spring onions, which is bad for both the cat and the plants, and earlier I caught him about to chomp on the spinach, so we have to keep him out of (or supervised in) whichever room the plants are in!

Sallyp2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81889369#Comment_81889369

i can rent gardeners world magazine from local library for free. Mag are rented for one week but renewable

saves money and minimises waste

Sallyp2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951439#Comment_81951439

Sorry your allotment greenhouse was vandalised. I've had equipment stolen and it upsetting.

fionaandphil

Vandalism is just awful, mindless. Some friends dismantled their greenhouse last year so we have a small spares supply. We had a smashed pane about 2 years ago, and that was bad enough, we were finding glass for months after - even hoovered the greenhouse! Glad you got it fixed but so annoying.

EssexHebridean

That sort of vandalism is just so frustrating - makes you wonder what on earth is going on in someone's brain that they need to do things like that to get their kicks.

Lovely productive weekend with us - the majority of the garden office wall is now sanded and repainted, loose panels have been refixed, and the mini greenhouse (the new one - the cover on the original split when we took it off in autumn) is now built, in place and with plenty of seedlings in it already! The other main jobs for the weekend were also done - the relocation of the compost bin, it will get slightly less sun, but has freed up a nice area for putting things like tomatoes & peppers, and rebuilding the edge of a raised bed where the timbers had rotted, ideally we will get one more section in on top but it will do for another few yeas as it is now hopefully.

We did lots more work on our reclaimed pallet table - then discovered that we need longer screws or some sort of brackets to attach the legs. MrEH was all for just going ahead with the shorter screws, but the amount of movement in the leg we had attached as a trial was making me extremely nervous so I eventually talked him into some restraint!

Courgettes, squashes and cucumbers all sown and on the nice sunny front room windowsill. Toms transferred to the office, under propagator lids. More calendula, and some nasturtiums sown in pots and popped into the mini greenhouse. Sweet peas potted on. still hoping that the sunflowers get a bit less spindly - although I might try repotting them into yogurt pots if we have sufficient tall ones to do it. A pot of basil sown too.

Suffolk_lass

Our old greenhouse had all the roof glass swapped to polycarbonate sheets after we were staying in a large house on a Scottish island and a roof pane became dislodged and almost killed the housekeeper's gardener husband. He was airlifted to the mainland for emergency blood transfusions. As soon as we got home we swapped ours as it wasn't safety glass (neither was the Victorian one on the island). We still use those sheets, and two of the wall sheets are in the new greenhouse after Mr Sl was moving one and slightly twisted it and it exploded. We vacuumed the lawn about 4 times @fionaandphil - at least that new greenhouse is safety glass!

At last I have planted a few seeds again after losing everything when I visited my Mum for a week. Tomato babies have germinated and a few chillies are in a heated propagator. Some sweet peas are ready to harden off but the beds aren't ready. I need Mr Sl to help lift things with me but he's out today. So some weeds removed, a bit of digging and pricked out 48 plantlets into pots. I need more space before planting more seeds. Plant shuffling - commenced!

carinjo

Sorry to hear about the greenhouse @DD265 . Our allotment have had so many problems with theft the last year, we getting new gates and locks this year.

@cardtexpert the coldframes from A1di/L1dl

not great, yes, but they will get the job done. Mine is 2 years old and gets pegged down in the corners and opened/closed with great care. Sometimes one has to make do with what you can afford.

First sowing of baby leaves and radishes at home germinated. On allotment: raised beds with salad leaves, radishes, leeks, beetroot, carrots (first time doing carrots!) moved the surviving broadbeans into one bed.

Yesterday at home sown in pots: tomatoes, cucumber, peppers, aubergine. All late i know, but hopefully the greenhouse will help extend the season.

Last couple of weeks started redoing some raised beds. Removed soil that had no base (cardboard) protection against marestail and done base and new soil, hay eyc. Lined pallet collars with empty compost bags.

I am loving my (almost) free salad box ladder. Found the "ladder" dumped in a pub car park, think it used to be the sides of a bunkbed. Grey planters gifted by neighbour. Only had to buy brackets, which got from a voucher after taking up a deal found on MSE weekly email.

droopsnoot

I spent ages a few weeks ago cutting up some spare bits of wood to make a frame to protect my lettuce from cats. Covered in some offcuts of chicken wire, put some more sturdy stuff on the top in case they climb up there and get a paw stuck. Then the day after I put it in place in the veg patch, I spotted an old metal fireguard on the scrap pile, so I've modified that to suit. Twice the size, no sharp edges. easy to lift out of the way. I've transplanted some lettuce into the patch alongside the seeds, and put down some onion seeds. I don't hold out hope for the onions, the only ones that grow for me are the ones coming up between paving stones on the path. The seeds are out of date, so that won't help. I'll probably just empty the packets into another part of the veg patch in case they do anything, then buy some new next year.