Growing faster, growing slower

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 24 May 2011 in growing | 3 comments

As I mentioned in my camping post earlier today, I spent the whole day before we went away playing in the garden so my plants would hopefully be ok home alone for four days and to catch up on everything I hadn’t done the previous weekend.

It was a good day – I weeded, I dug, I potted on, I planted out and even though I told myself I wouldn’t, I sowed more stuff (more salad/lettuce and some beans). I was a bit nervous about the stuff I planted out (a few courgettes, a few achocha and pumpkins – one of which is pictured above) because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep an eye on them over the weekend but I desperately needed the space in the greenhouse. Everything seems to be doing ok today. I also planted out the hop seedlings Su sent me (thanks Su!) – they’re settling in well too and I’m hoping they’ll be a climbing layer for my mini-forest garden.

In the greenhouse, I also potted on a good number of tomatoes into their final pots – and realised quite how many more tomato pots I’ll need (although I do hope to plant some outside too). I think tomatoes are the only thing I’ve over sown – I’ve got too many of them really but not too-many too-many so it’s manageable, and there is really no such thing as surplus tomatoes, is there? I can almost see the tomato plants growing and they surprise me every time I see them because they look so sturdy, healthy and tall enough to block out the sun… ;)

Along with the tomatoes, some of our crops are going much better than I expected: our potatoes have shot up and I’ve had to earth them up twice already – I’m near at the top of some of the bags/pots. Our squash (summer squash – courgettes/zucchini – and winter squash, butternut and pumpkins) are looking very healthy indeed, hence planting some of them out the other day. The cucumbers (particularly the first batch) are flowering, the buds forming on our rapini/broccoli raab and the achocha (achocha! *jazz hands*) are climbing their way up everything around them (again, hence planting some of those out before they ensnared the whole greenhouse).

But other things though are taking a lot longer to do anything. I’m genuinely shocked that we haven’t had any lettuce or salad leaves from the garden yet* – at this rate we might have potatoes before a head of lettuce – and as I lamented on Jono’s blog the other day, our radishes are pathetic (this isn’t a new thing, they always seem to stagnate for some reason). Our leeks shot up but don’t seem to have done anything for the last fortnight (I know they’re slow growing but they seem like they’ve stopped growing…). Everything’s growing in decent compost and I don’t think it’s a case of overcrowding/too small growing space for any of those things but I’m going to pot on the leeks just in case and I’ve started more salad in new pots, sown incredibly thinly, just in case that is the problem.

How does your garden grow? Is your growing on track for this year?

* We did buy some growing salad trays from the supermarket a month or so ago, and have been regularly pillaging them for cut-and-come-again leaves but we’ve really just been keeping them alive rather than growing-growing them.

Fixing runny/solid jam and reusing marrow & squash leaves

Posted by louisa on Friday 20 August 2010 in green | 0 comments

Just a quick heads up that over on Recycle This, we’ve had a few relevant posts this week.

Yesterday, I asked how to fix jam that was too runny or too solid – and lots of other jam related reuse/recycle questions.

And today I’m asking about reuses for marrow & squash leaves, other than just heave-hoing them into the compost. They’re so giant and tough that they seem like they might have other uses… we’ll see what people suggest.

If you’ve got any answers to either question, head over to Recycle This and tell us all about it :)

Preparing for winter

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 27 July 2010 in growing | 1 comment

I claim to be rather disorganised (usually as a bluff for why I haven’t done something I don’t want to do…) but gardening – and more simple life in general – forces you to plan ahead. Despite it being the middle of the summer (in the calendar, if not observably from the weather), I spent most of my gardening time over the weekend thinking about the late autumn, winter and next spring.

I planted on leeks, tended to my many, many winter squash, sowed spring cabbages & attempted my third batch of kale (the first lot got too hot, the second lot got too wet…). I also fretted slightly about where I’m going to plant my garlic when the time comes later in the year – I was hoping to have a good chunk of a bed for it but I’m not sure there will be room. Lack of decent bed space is one of the biggest problems with our garden but I don’t have the time to tend to both our garden and an allotment (if I could get one…) so I’m going to have to keep working around that. I’ve also got mental calendar notes for starting autumn-sowing cauliflower and over-winter lettuce.