Phase one of growing your own (digging the plot) already having been achieved, I moved merrily into phase two; planting stuff! :D
Planting stuff is the fun bit of growing veggies. It's full of hope and distinctly lacking in caterpillars and mosaic viruses. It might be second to harvesting and eating your crops, but there are a lot of unknowns between then and now!
At our local garden centre, we topped up our seed collection with 89p packets of swedes (plant in May), cabbage, sweet peppers and spinach beet. We also got some onion sets for 90p for ~100! Looooads of potential veggies for £4.46!Back at home, we whipped out the John Innes and started filling up seed trays. (Side note: I love the John Innes song by Can You Dig It?, a comic duo who write songs about growing your own!)
We sowed cabbages and leeks in one tray. You can plant them directly in your plot but Dad said he likes to keep an eye on them til they're a bit bigger.
In true frugal spirit, the plant labels are made of a cut up margarine tub. :)
In the other tray, Dad planted his beloved hot chilli plants. (Whilst complaining that the seeds were burning his hands!) These have to be germinated in a heated propagator. There are SEVEN varieties in here, plus one line of sweet peppers. He is so excited because he ordered four new "really cool" varieties online, including Fairy Lights and Stumpy! They have some fun names!
As well as the trays, I got stuck into my vegetable patch by planting a couple of rows of onion sets. You plant them so that the tip is just poking out enough to grow a shoot. Apparently pigeons and blackbirds like to pull them up, so if they start getting mutilated we will string cotton above them to stop them being able to land.
Anyone else been making use of the sunny March weather? Let's get chitting some potatoes! :D
6 comments:
I've been doing the same thing today, I just started with 5 lettuce varieties and four tomatos - lots more to do, but slowly, slowy - I get fed up quick!
I'm still eating the lovely Kale and chard from last year, and purple sprouting too, as well as perpetual sprouting spinch,the sprouts didn't make any babies but I'll eat the greens anyway.
spinch ? what's spinch ? ha ha !
I'm planting too, got 6 varieties of tomatoes, some peppers and leeks so far. Ready to sow are peas, radish, lettuce, squash and cucumber. Now I am just waiting for a nice warm sunny day to get on with it. You are right, this is the fun part now!
How cool! I'll be getting my plot ready this month--probably take a couple of days off to do it. It's so much fun to garden.
I planted 2 chokos and am going to my plot in a few minutes to check on their progress.
John Innes! John Innes! Who is he, who is he! John Innes! John Innes! Why is he in my compost!
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