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.