Harvest season

So I guess you're all wondering where we have been these past couple of months?! I started a summer job in the middle of July so with both of us working a full week we were not quite so up for spending our weekends tending to the garden.
It was also extremely hot and dry at the start of the summer so without an outside tap we struggled to water everything sufficiently and kind of lost heart a little. The rest of the summer, however, has been pretty wet for Norfolk's standards, futher dampening our desire to look after our crop.
As a result we let the garden do its own thing for a while leading to it becoming rather overgrown in places and not really knowing what kind of a crop we would get.

We (O.K, mostly Matt!) have spend this last weekend clearing the garden ready for the winter which does already seem to be on the way. We have ended up with quite a good harvest but I'm sure it could have been better if we had kept a more beady eye on things:
We dug up one of the three bags of potatoes which produced enough to fill an old sweet tin although they were quite small.
Most of the peppers had gone off but we managed to get a handfull before they turned which I used in a vegetable lasagne tonight.
The sweetcorn wasn't quite ready for picking so we only kept one cob but we'll remember for next year!
There was another bag of carrots which should keep us going for a few weeks.
We cut some of the spinach leaves but its a cut and grow plant so it should keep going for a while and also found a marrow growing off the last courgette plant.
We have pulled up the onions and hung them in the kitchen, they are quite small so either needed to be planted deeper or spaced further apart.
Finally we still have a squash plant which we should be able to pick soon and some brussel sprouts and more potatoes in the ground for the winter.

Looking back we can see that plants tended to grow better in the soil bed rather than the grow bags. We will also probably not do as many tomatoes next year as they went a little wild and became quite unmanageable once we stopped having time to keep an eye on new shoots. We have also kept the herb plants we bought as most of them are perennials and the fruit plants (strawberries and blueberries) as they should do better next year.

We probably won't do much over the winter as it gets bitterly cold here but planting will definitely resume in the spring!

We have now been able to enjoy produce from the garden with almost every evening meal for the past week or so! We have plenty of mangetout, french beans and courgettes as well as a variety of fresh herbs and sweetpeas which we have been picking to put in vases - they smell lovely! 

We think the onions are almost ready to come up and can see some tomatoes growing on the plants. They have gone a little wild though and tend to fall over as the supports we have got don't seem to be strong enough. The pepper, melon, cucumber and spinach are also doing well and we had the last of this batch of strawberries with some home made scones, very yummy! 

We can also finally see some cauliflowers growing amongst the leaves although we have also spotted the dreaded white butterfly so don't know how eatable they will be - watch this space for the verdict! We'll try and put some photos up soon aswell as the garden looks very full and lovely and green. A friend that came over exclaimed at how we had managed to keep so many plants alive so we must be doing something right!

In bloom

Well we now have our first actual courgettes growing - two of our courgette plants have been sending out baby courgettes with lovely big yellow flowers on the ends. We have about half a dozen on each plant which is great. In other news the tomatoes are adjusting well to being in grow bags and the bean plants are beginning to flower.

Another busy saturday out in the garden! During the week we noticed some mini courgettes growing and lots of flowers on the mangetout which are climbing up the netting well. The strawberry plants have sent out lots of new leaves and some more flowers so we are hoping for a second crop after the current ones have ripened. 

On saturday afternoon we headed out into the garden and got to work. Matt put 9 of the tomato plants into growbags as well as some of the pepper plants from the greenhouse and has made a prototype watering device from an old squash bottle. Another sweetcorn plant was ready to go into the soil aswell and we have taken the herbs out of the greenhouse as the coriander and thyme have started to flower.

Whilst Matt was busy with the plants I put on an old pair of gloves and de-weeded the soil bed and gravel strip. The gravel had become seriously overgrown with weeds despite a black protector sheet underneath the stones. It was satisfying work although I found two slugs, one of which I almost picked up along with some weeds so Matt fed them to a frog that was hiding next to the fence! We also discovered some baby caterpillars munching on our cauliflower plants and a bigger, fatter green one and lots of eggs on a couple of the plants! We picked up the caterpillars we could see and put them out the front door for the birds and have brushed off what we could of the eggs so hopefully the trauma of that will stop them hatching. We will see what happens over the next few days but might need to get some form of pest control.

A Rainy Day in June

Well we've had some pretty wet weather recently with a couple of thunderstorms aswell so most of the plants have shot up. The cauliflowers and potato shoots especially enjoyed the watering but we moved the strawberries and some of the smaller plants out of the bowls that they were sitting in in case they drowned, quite a contrast to the previous few days where everything was incredibly thirsty due to the hot sun!

Luckily there seems to be no evidence of slugs since the downpours apart from a snail that tried to get in the front door, most traumatic bringing Fran flashbacks of slug invasions when left at home alone in the holidays! 

Some of the tomatoes are ready to go into growbags now so we are experimenting with making drip irrigation systems from old plastic bottles. We are also looking for good homes for some of the tomato plants to go to so let us know if you would like one!

This week we found that the tomatoes on the lower greenhouse shelf were growing upwards instead of making new leaves because they weren't getting enough light. Marvel if you will at the cleverness of nature but it gave a new urgency to needing to build the second greenhouse. This has now finally been done and the tomato plants are all in the new greenhouse at the bottom of the garden next to the shed. 

Some of the other greenhouse plants - sweetcorn and peas - have been put into the ground along with some extra mange-tout that we had been growing in a seed tray. The potato sets have also been planted into three separate sacks half full of compost, which you gradually fill up as the leaves grow taller. 

Over the bank holiday we had some unusually heavy rain and a bit of hail so were a little concerned for some of the plants but it turned out to just be a shower and it all seems to have survived. Hope you have had some nicer weather!

Our garden in May - An Illustrated Update

Now that it is getting much warmer the plants are all enjoying the weather and shooting up nicely. A lot of the plants have come a long way since being inside on the windowsills so we are more hopeful of a decent crop soon! Here is an illustrated update of whats been happening...

First of all we bought two mini greenhouses as we were running out of space inside and we have built and filled one of them already! Everything is growing much better in this new environments, the peas (top shelf) and sweetcorn have done especially well and are almost getting too big for the greenhouse so they will be hardened off and planted in the soil before too long. You can also see some pepper plants which have been repotted in individual pots, our tomato plants and herbs. We have found that takeaway trays are perfect for putting pots in so that they don't get overwatered

This is a view of the whole garden from the house, you can just about see the soil bed on the far right and the grass needs cutting, any volunteers?!

Below are the onion and shallots sprouting lots of lovely green shoots, the mangetout which we have set up some netting for as they are beginning to send out tendrils and the cauliflower plants which are still growing lots of leaves but no vegetable yet!

This is the two lettuce seed mats that we have grown so far, it's the only thing that is ready to harvest and is very tasty which is hopefully a good sign for the rest of the garden!

We planted a couple of gourgettes in a grow bag a few weeks ago and as you can see they have grown lots more leaves and seem to be holding up well being outside.

This next one is the first pot of carrots that we planted, the second planting is also growing well but needs thinning out. Hopefully there are lots of mini carrots growing beneath the soil!

Ooo yes the sweetpeas are doing really well, they too have sent out tendrils so we have tied some string between the supports to encourage them to grow up the poles as at the moment the tendrils are wrapping round adjacent plants! We also got some plant ties this morning so have tied some of the outer stem to the poles and string.

Below are some pictures of our fruit plants which have been busy growing flowers - various types of strawberry plants, a Chandler blueberry plant and one of our tomato plants although the latter doesn't have any flowers.

This last picture possibly explains the lack of slugs and pests in the garden although there are plenty of spider! We noticed this little frog whilst doing the pea netting before it hopped under next doors shed.
Other than that the sprouting potatoes are just about ready to be sown so we will be doing that this weekend and as well as some weeding and setting up the second greenhouse.

The plants have had a treat to drink this week in the way of actual rainwater as it has been less dry recently, we hope they are not getting too cold though! The lettuce is almost ready for picking now and the next batch is well on the way. Onions are sprouting and lots of big green leaves are being grown. Germination is still going well too although we are quickly running out of space inside as the tomato seedlings have been transplanted into individual pots and we have a second lot of various seeds on the go. The latest addition has included perpetual spinach, brussel sprouts and cucumber. Our potatoes sets arrived too so we have put them on top of the fridge in egg boxes to sprout until they are ready to go into their sacks.

Should have some more photos up soon as everything has grown much bigger since last time and the garden is getting quite full!

More seeds and seedlings

The beans have now been transplanted into individual pots and after making sure they survived, moved to live outside.
We are still seeing a great germination rate - the courgette seedlings are just about to ping up straight and more herbs are coming through, it is just parsley that we are waiting for now. We also finally have some seedlings growing in the soil bed outside so there are some sunflowers and mange-tout hopefully growing steadily now.
Another set of carrot and lettuce seedlings have been sown in a 'bag for life' and a pot respectively outside in order to continue our existing supply and some more mange-tout and sweetcorn have been started off inside in case the outdoor seeds don't do too well.
Due to the poll results we have ordered a potato set which includes reusable growing bags and four different varieties of potato sets.

A confession...

On a quest for a better watering rose so as not to damage or drown our little seedlings I noticed some reduced onion and shallot sets so bought a pack of each. Thankyou to everyone that voted on our poll but we have now planted some onions and a couple of shallots. Most were past they'r best but we should have enough to last a while as you can store them easily. They look quite funny as they are basically mini onions and you have to plant them with the top poking out of the soil just enough so that birds can't get hold of them but they get enough sun to grow. So thats our little confession, we'll still be looking at the poll for our next lot of sowing though!

Our indoor seeds are continuing to do very well, the climbing beans have shot up and are by far the biggest plant we have now! They are quite interesting to watch too, the stems are alot thicker than any other shoots we've had and they ping up really slowly shedding an outer layer to reveal bright green leaves which open to about an ih in diameter! We planted two seeds in each pot but will need to give them individual pots at the weekend as the roots have already reached the bottom of the pot. The lettuce, tomato, carrot and sweetpea seedlings seem to be doing well and we can now see the first shoots of our peppers and some of the herbs: chives, sweet basil, basil neoploitan and coriander have all germinated. We also have a couple of different strawberry varieties which have been repotted and added to the existing plants - breakfasts will be yummy once they and the blueberry bushes bear fruit!
Unfortunately the seeds we planted in the ground still don't seem to have germinated as the nights are still going down to 1 or even 0 degrees so we are going to sow some in pots inside instead and if the original seeds do eventually germinate it'l be a bonus!

Pictures

Thought we'd add a few photos of our progress so far:

Lettuce seedlings:

Our new blueberry plants, Bluecrop in the foreground and Chandler behind it.

Close-up of the budding blueberries:

The week old tomato seedlings:

The solution to our fruit problem

An exciting new development has meant that we can now hope to have a plentiful supply of fruit as well as vegetables, after previously resigning to the latter alone due to the British climate not quite being suited to growing bananas and oranges. One of the garden centres in Norwich is open late on a thursday evening so we headed over after dinner for a browse and to pick up some free pots as they have a box outside where you can recycle old pots. We saw that they had a 3 for 2 deal on all seeds so we decided to get some courgette and leek seeds to add to our collection. The third pack of seeds was the cause of our excitement...we discovered that there is a variety of melon that can be grown in the UK! Also managed to bag a stack of pots that looked hardly used from the box outside.

Matt also discovered a small nursery, called Woodgate Nusery (http://www.woodgatenursery.co.uk/) near work selling individual plants ready to be planted out into bigger pots or soil, including berries, a variety of vegetables and plenty of flowers. This is great because in the bigger garden centres we found that you could only get trays of 6-12 plants rather than individual ones, especially as Matt came home on Friday with three strawberry plants and two garlic plants!

Today we went back out to the nursery so that we could both have a look round and having done some research decided to buy a couple of blueberry plants (bluecrop and chandler) to add to our fruit collection. The man running the place was really helpful and even gave us a couple of bigger pots for free to replant the blueberries in. We also had to get some ericacious soil for them which is more acidic than normal compost. Back at the ranch we got to work replanting the blueberry, strawberry and garlic plants and sowing the melon, courgette and leeks in small individual pots. The melon and courgette are being added to the various seedlings on windowsills inside and the rest are outside. The tomato count is now up to 15 and we are starting to see some sweet pea shoots poking through the compost so along with the fruit plants our garden should be looking colourful in no time.

Finally, we have decided to keep track of seed prices, dates of sowing, the first shoots appearing and planting out, and the yields we get so that we can calculate the costs compared with buying from a supermarket or greengrocers.

It just keeps getting better, two of the tomato plants have germinated along with lots more lettuce. We'll be feasting in no time.

Yay, we have lettuce. Went out to water this evening and found some little green shoots poking out of the soil.

More sowing

As expected at least one set of cat prints in the freshly dug soil! First to go in were some cauliflower plants we got at the garden centre yesterday. We put them in in two rows, roughly 40cm apart. We also put in a row of sweetcorn seeds, a row of sunflower seeds and a row of mange-tout seeds. We stamped a few holes into an empty mushroom tub and planted some pepper seeds and put it inside on the window sill to germinate. We also put a selection of herb seeds into indivdual pots - chives, sweet basil, basil neopol, corriander and parsley. Finally we started some french beans in small pots indoors.

We were very busy today doing lots of planting and looking forward to seeing some green shoots soon!

Lots of digging

Phew, that was hard work digging out all the grass. On the plus side the border is looking lovely, totally weed free and ready to go - a fresh invitation to cats everywhere! Off to watch Doctor Who so the new seeds will have to wait until tomorrow.

The Big Discovery

Ok, was having a poke around the garden when to our suprise discovered that the overgrown patch of grass was concealing a border running down the length of the garden! Having been resigned to pots and containers it was most exciting and very much increases our chances of reaching our goal!

With exciting discovery in hand it is off to the garden centre, again - this time for tools and a few more seeds. Having watched Edible Gardener on BBC Two we are thinking of getting some peas and beans on the grow.

Still no sign of germination but we did get some free pepper seeds with BBC Good Food magazine. We are hoping to use our veg to make some of the recipes in the magazine as they often have seasonal ideas.

Keep checking them but they still haven't grown - apparently it takes longer than an hour!

The adventure begins...

Welcome to our gardening adventure! We are going to attempt to turn our boring city garden into a haven of vegetable production. Our aim is to grow enough veg to be self-sufficient for at least two months out of the remaining year (2010), plus, have lots of fun along the way. P.S. The only things we have grown previously are sunflowers and cress - this is going to be interesting!

Being a city garden we are going to need to grow our vegetables in pots, containers, in fact anything that we can punch holes in the bottom of and fill with compost. We've just got back from the garden centre (where we also found a great selection of yummy cheeses in the adjacent farm shop) having bought a few pots, lots of compost and some sweet pea seeds to add some colour and fragrance to our veggie garden. We already have a bunch of seeds from the BBC Dig In campaign, a great way to get started.

So, to start off we filled the large (9") pots with compost and sowed 1 pot with carrots, 1 pot with lettuce and 2 with the sweet peas. We put these straight outside and gave them a good watering - they were thirsty seeds! On the inside we put some tomato seeds into a seed tray and popped it on our kitchen window sill where it would be a bit warmer.

Now we must sit and wait for them to grow!