Advice for a hopeless gardener

[steptoe]

I sowed tomatoes into my propagator at the weekend. They have germinated. So now the daylight is lasting longer it’s good timing. I’ll transplant them later and give them shelving in the greenhouse for plenty of light. Keep em covered at night . That’s them sorted. Welsh and Egyptian onions are racing onwards now. My sweet pea seeds are germinating well too. I like a spread of those in my veg garden. Looks nice. I put nasturtium in too. Looks good ,is edible,and diverts butterflies from my brassicas. All looking good.

Hi mate nice to see you getting the garden stuff done i am doing more to now well trying , i just put my toms in but as you may know i use indoor lighting proper hydro lights to bring them on and then i have th heated poly tunnel lol but the poly has been liek a sauna the last few days lol the peppers are going good in there and the herbs .

The wife loves the sweetpeas to i grow ours up netting and some on strings to the fence as i say madam loves them but nasturtiums we had a big batch one year in the garden and just let them die off and throw there seed round and now well they pop up all over , have you tried the everlasting sweetpea now we first came across these on a drive out inthe country side and i use to think the person in the local house use to plant them out until we did some looking closer and found them growing from inside blackberry bushes soi knew they had to be wild and did some searching and found them online we now have huge amounts each each and again they just pop up but it is fun sitting out in early winter and having a cuppa and you hear like little cracks of a twig as the pop explodes and twists like string flying the seeds all over lol they are great fun , i think we have a large pot of saves seed if you or anyone wanted any

[jennyjj01]

Compost Heads up:

local ALDI, today had 40L of enriched, peat free compost at £3.99 a bag. Don;t know how good it is. They had some non-enriched even cheaper.

Plus B&Q are unloading Peat compost at £2 for 50L if you can find any in stock.

[steptoe]

Compost Heads up:

local ALDI, today had 40L of enriched, peat free compost at £3.99 a bag. Don;t know how good it is. They had some non-enriched even cheaper.

Plus B&Q are unloading Peat compost at £2 for 50L if you can find any in stock.

Hi jen yes b and q had offers on but they say you have to go to the store to find it lol when you get there i asked for where it is the lady said oh that and smiled she said we have not had that brand for over a year now , i said so it is a con to get customers in the store she just smiled and strugged her shoulders .

I order mine online home delivery now or i go to the local hardware he gets it in bulk and does deals .

You best get sowing more lol if the shortages last we might be able to make a killing selling the surplus lol , then again we could start a preppers uk tear and share lol to locals in our areas lol .

I have well over 50 pepper plants , i am going to try and grow as much as i can and well share what we can not store or swap with people who might have pigoen and rabbit shooting land ,how many lettuce for a rabbit and how many tomatos for a pigeon hehehe .

LOl oh we have a new addition to the family yup and it is a ging lol we have another stray kitten called now little ging lol omg she melted my heart compared to our other stray who loves me with chicken in my hand but once food stops the love stop snap and scratch lol and she is spoilt the new little lady is living in the back room for now until we can put the 2 in an open area and see if thye will get on but she loves to be fussed follows me everywhere but not in to the poly tunnel she wil not step on to the gravel floor i found that strange cats love gravel to dig and poop in but she would not com in but i pruned the raspberries and she kept putting her nose in the clippers and pushing my hand for a fuss lol . she has been with us sort of since before christmas living in the garden behind the greenhouse never coming close but now well she is like superglue when you are with her lol .

[Arzosah]

Oh steptoe! What a cutie she is! I'm familiar with a neighbouring cat round my way that likes to play with the blades of my loppers, as you say - terrifying he's all grown now, but still comes up for a stroke. He's not a stray, just enjoys travelling

[jennyjj01]

I could no longer resist.
I've individually sown 8 Crimson Crush tomato seeds in my kitchen window propagator. Expensive Blight resistant variety.

Now, consulting the experts, because I barely got a crop last year........

I aspire to have a bountiful harvest fit to make some pasta sauce. And I'm looking to use about 2 or three square metres of my allotment for this. Enough area to dedicate?

Will this work?:- Propagate these 8 seeds to about 6 inches: Take two side shoot cuttings off each to give me 24 plants: Love them, cherish them and try darned hard to keep them alive.

How big should I let side shoots grow before using them as cuttings?
How often into the growing season will I dare to do this?
Will letting sideshoots grow big enough to root from. damage the parent plant?

I intend to sow my MoneyMaker and Gardeners delight soon and grow them alongside, possibly with equal area each..

I don't have a greenhouse, but can get a 4 foot cube of plastic glass made up. How much value would that bring to the whole exercise? I suspect it will be worth doing, but I don't want to waste much effort if the harvest difference will be marginal.

Am I ok co-homing my MoneyMaker and Gardeners delight varieties?

[GillyBee]

I propagate tomato side shoots at ten to twelve cm long. So 5" in old money. Tomato varieties can share space happily BUT if you want to save seed from them make sure they are different enough to tell apart. You may also want to separate varieties very susceptible to blight from ones that are moderately susceptible to reduce te risk of it spreading plant to plant.
I can't talk about the plastic box idea but anythng you can create to give newly planted out toms a bit of shelter fron the breeze will be a good thing. Old office water bottles with the bottom cut off work well with a cane down the middle to stop them blowing around or some fleece or a crop cover of some sort. Just while they get setled in.

[jennyjj01]

I could no longer resist.
I've individually sown 8 Crimson Crush tomato seeds in my kitchen window propagator. Expensive Blight resistant variety.

Now, consulting the experts, because I barely got a crop last year........
...
I intend to sow my MoneyMaker and Gardeners delight soon and grow them alongside, possibly with equal area each..

I don't have a greenhouse, but can get a 4 foot cube of plastic glass made up. How much value would that bring to the whole exercise? I suspect it will be worth doing, but I don't want to waste much effort if the harvest difference will be marginal.

Still impatient.
Today I transplanted two trays of Ailsa Craig Onion seedlings out into a raised bed. I have skipped hardening them off. Mistake? Probably.
I then sowed 8 MoneyMaker tomato seeds into their vacated place in the windowsill propagator.

All tomatoes sowed in pairs to better utilise growing space.

Alongside, in the raised bed, I sowed 50 sets of Stuttgarter Onions at about 4" intervals. That bed is now fairly fully sown, but I understand I can companion plant with a few things.... Carrots?

I have hundreds of Ailsa Craig onion seeds, and a bag of Centurian sets, so I'll be sowing more as a fallback. I'm determined to get a good crop of onions so I'm trying multiple varieties in multiple ways: Scattergun approach.

One sprinkling of onion seeds in my warmed propagator is doing nothing at all

I'm itching to sow some leeks indoors.

My Chitting spuds (pentland Javelin and Desiree) don't look great. I have them out in my cloche under cover. Not much green in the sprouty bits. I wonder if the cold has harmed them. I'm thinking of planting a few in pots and bags now. Too early? More into the ground next month?

Inspected the triffid onions. They're not looking good. I'm down to 7 survivors. All my garlics died

Somebody shout me down if I did wrong.

[steptoe]

Somebody shout me down if I did wrong.

Jen i gave up on onion fropm seed just do sets now .

Get them leeks in woman lol mine are transplanted already in to 12 inch deep 2 ft long planters to bring them on leeks need to be in , sow them indoors keep them warm they are slow like onions , i throw a whole packet of seed in to just a small 6 inch long 2 inch wide planter with a lid then keep thme in the house near the rad to get them going , once up lid off then once 6 inchs high i plant them on to the long trough in the poly tunnel then later in the year they will go out in the ground , i just been sorting seed i put all my old cucumber seed in to 2 piece of kitchen towel inside a flat plastic bag soaked them and put on top of my grow light panel because it is warm but not hot , i will find the ones that sprout and prick in to pots , i also got the butter nuts ready to go in get sowing hon and keep a few seeds back in case then you have a fall back .

I have to rack in some grow more to the veg area were the peas beans carrots beets swedes and a few other bist will be going , don't forget if you put anything out at the lotty use a cloche and if using a plastic bottle cloche put some copper tape round keeps the slugs out .

[jennyjj01]

I just thought I'd share this.

War time Dig For Victory Leaflets How times and techniques have evolved!

[GillyBee]

Have you done anything to protect your tomatoes? I feel it is still way too early for them to survive outdoors let alone do well. Temperatures here in the south have only just reached double figures and we still have a good month or 6 weeks to go before mine will go outside during which time we may get another cold snap. The ones for the unheated greenhouse will not go in there before mid-April
My rule of thumb for tomatoes is as follows:
16C is the minimum to get any gernimation - so sow them indoors.
12C is the minimum temperature for flowers to set fruit but they really need 15C or more. Keep warm if you want fruit.
5-6C Cold tolerant varieties will survive but not grow. If you try to keep seedlings this cold they will proably die. Fully grown plants may ripen existing fruit but will not set anything new and the diseases take hold very easily.
30C+ most varieties lose the ability to set fruit until it cools down a bit. Some "warm climate" varieties will hold out further - but they don't like the cold & need warmer temperatures to set which is a problem in the UK more often than the heat.