Show Us Your Veg Patch - You Know You Want To!! (Merged Thread)

madhouseof4

I'm liking the uses for the ruler!

I figured it was time to jump back on this thread, it's been nearly a year since I last posted about my garden. Last year didn't go too well, but I guess I was not the only one to have suffered from the dreadful summer weather. Plus I was pregnant through all of last years growing season Now baby is 5 months and life as a mummy of 3 is not really settling down, I figured now was as good a time as any to get stuck back in . I was really hoping that we would have been allocated an allotment as we've been on the list just short of 2 years. I called in Jan and was told I was at 63 and called again last week and have moved to 31. I am guessing I have another year to wait, so we are still growing as much as we can in the garden.

We have pretty much everything sown, except the swede as it says from May. This year we basically followed the RHS planting planner pdf with regards to what time to sow things indoors/outdoors. Then, about a month ago I saw a greenhouse going on freecycle and hubby & I decided that we shouldn't pass it up. I think that hubby wanted to kill me when he saw the state of it and he certainly did his fair share of whining after spending a day dismantling it. We put it back together and spent a few weeks putting our all into making the greenhouse look as good as new, including wire brushing it, a coat of metal primer and then a coat of metal paint before washing the remaining glass and replacing the broken bits with polycarbonate. Technically we don't have the room for it, it's 8ft x 8ft and takes up almost the whole width of the patio and is making it so we can't use the back door out of the garage! We have some staging on order for one side of the greenhouse and were going to make do with just that, when the FIL suggested recycling the metal packing cage from his moped. We put it together today and gave it the same paintjob as the greenhouse and have to say, it will work really well as staging.

Here are some photo's:

Greenhouse as it was before we assembled it, it was a bit of a wreck!


Primer:


Finished!


Moped crate/cage thing after painting (excuse nappies on the line and the messy garden )


In the greenhouse:

Steel_2

SuzieMum wrote: »

Also I have 5 huge bushy red pepper plants indoors, they all have loads of flowers on now, one looks like it has a green bulgy pepper about to start growing behind a flower, so are they ok indoors as I presume they don't need bee's to polinate??

I always thought they were self fertile (or is that self pollinating?). I'm impressed you have such large plants already. I'm still trying to persuade mine they'd like to grow a set of true leaves.

Jolaaled - Like the raised bed!

All of my baby plants in the greenhouse were looking a bit sad for themselves, so I added a bit of miracle grow to their water a couple of days ago and blow me, if they haven't doubled in size! I don't often feed things with it especially not seedlings as they are in fresh compost and shouldn't need it, but they were just languishing around looking terrible.

My mange tout were doing ok outside until one of my feathered slug hunters developed a taste for them. They're looking a little......chewed. Still climbing, but definitely chewed.

[Deleted User]

Madhouseof4 ~ your greenhouse looks like new, well done and enjoy!

timnlaura

Madhouseof4 - I am so jealous, it is looking fantastic! We had the chance of a greenhouse the other week (via freecycle), but after finding out about the size and state of it we got put off. Yours looks Amazing! well done and I hope it does you well, which Im sure it will!

Ive only really been a bit of a lurker trying to pick up some tips while OH finishes off the raised bed (3m x 3m L shape, 1m wide round my whirly) which will hopefully hold tatties, carrots, red onion and runners (or broad, cant really remember! I blaim pregnancy!). No idea what the best way to do it is though! so complicated with all the measuring it seems!

Also have toms on the windowsill, but they are looking a bit thin and gangly( been grown from seed), chillis on the window sill, the lettuce mix has died, the strawbs have started to flower in the pot outside (am i to pick them off?) and the raspberrys, blackberrys and blueberrys seem to be going ok! I have been taking pics but can find the cable to upload them! never mind, Im sure Ill bore you all with them at a later date!

thanks for all the help

timnlaura

dcurzon

i've made some progress...
The chillis are in the plastic mini greenhouse thing and looking well

i have some tomato plants (cherry tomato, sweet million) all reached about 2 inches height in their seed tray. 18 of them, we only need 3 or 4, so i'll sell the rest at car boot

salad peppers have been sowed in the propagator and awaiting growth

lettuce sowed into a small trough, i'll give it about 3 weeks then sow some more into another small trough

i now have 'seed potatos' in a box on top of the fridge. i'm waiting delivery of a potato barrel (yes, i know i could have put them in anything, but i have a small patio and like to look at it) to plant those in.

So, hopefully, during july/august/sept, we should be eating our own chillis, lettuce, peppers, tomatos and potatos

Primrose

madhouse - you've done a lovely job on that greenhouse. Hope you don't ever need to open your back garage door to get a mower out ! I've only got a mini plastic greenhouse so not really big enough to grow tomatoes in with all my other seedlings. I would like some early tomatoes though, so as we've got a fence like yours with concrete posts I'm thinking of getting my OH to erect a "heat screen" on one panel so a few tomato plants can be brought on early.
I propose putting a large hook at the top of each concrete post, and threading a 6 foot bambo cane or other long pole through large sheet of polythene (wide enough and long enough to cover the area of the fence panel). This large sheet of polythene can then be clipped into the hooks and fall down in front of the tomato plants which will be planted against the fence, being anchored at the bottom with a couple of bricks. It will be a bit "rough and ready" but hopefully will keep a lot of heat in and really bring a few of my tomato plants on early. As my tomato seedlings are currently only one inch tall, I may have to buy a few more advanced seedlings from a garden centre to see whether this method will work.

hathor

Primrose: the theory seems sound to me. If you could bear to paint the "hothouse" fence panel white, or run foil down it before you let down the plastic sheet, you will increase the reflected heat & light in there, too.

angelavdavis

Madhouseof4, you have done a smashing job at transforming the greenhouse.

Here is a pic of my planting area which I recently converted to square foot gardening, I still have one identical sized area to convert, but this is for starters:



I am growing onions, garlic, broad beans and beetroot in this border currently.

As well as this area, I am growing potatoes in pots, have a fruit bed containing a wall trained nectarine and double cherry, tayberries, rhubarb, strawberries in pots, large glass coldframe, grapevine, apple and cherry trees and a fig.

More pictures are on my other thread here.

gingernutbizkit

The weather here today is awful - big storm early hours of this morning and now everything is wet and miserable..... annoyingly I had a whole day out in the garden planned so will have to work out what I can do now.

I've got loads of plants ready to go out but I'm thinking that it's probably much to early for them to go into the ground. Will lettuces, peas and mangetout be ok?

I think I'll be spending some time doing some more sowing today - although my conservatory is starting to resemble a nurserie!!!!

Hope the weather is nicer where you are.

Ging x

retrocircles

madhouseof4 - Your greenhouse is gorgeous! I'm jealous!

I'm ooo-ing and ahhh-ing about a greenhouse. There's obviously the cost factor, but as a beginner gardener I don't know if I'd benefit from one at the moment? Oh I don't know!