The lettuce and beetroot that we have been growing were ready to plant out this week. We are growing these ones in pots so that we can provide them with some protection from the frost by bringing them in to the cold greenhouse overnight. Otherwise, our later sowings of lettuce and beetroot will be planted... Continue Reading →
A hot and spicy(!) update
We thought it would be good to give you an update on our peppers, almost three months after they were sown. So here they are: Dad has given us up some space in his cold greenhouse to keep them, and we have been watering them since we pricked them out into these pots and watching... Continue Reading →
Trialling the brassica seeds
Different seeds have different shelf lives, with the shelf life typically decreasing once the sealed packet has been opened. But we always think it's a shame to just throw the remainder of a packet of seed from one year away the following year if you didn't finish it. Therefore, early on in the season we... Continue Reading →
Preparing the herb garden for 2020
Some herbs are perennials (grow again year after year), but lots of the ones that we grow are annuals (you need to re-grow them every year). These are some of the herbs we have sown for this year: garlic chives, italian parsley, chives and tarragon. We also have sage and thyme which have overwintered and... Continue Reading →
Some early cropping salad too!
As well as our container courgettes, we thought we would start off some salad crops indoors. For now, we've sown some Little Gem and Iceberg lettuces and some Boston beetroot. The lettuces were initially sown in quarter seed trays, like most of our seeds, and then pricked out into these small cell trays (about 1 inch diameter). The... Continue Reading →
Early cropping container courgettes
We would usually sow our courgettes around the third week in April. This means that by the time they are ready to plant out, the chance of a frost is reduced where we live, therefore giving them the best start to their growing lives. Given the lockdown we're currently under, we thought we'd sow a... Continue Reading →
Tidying up after last year: our strawberry story
Last weekend, I did a bit of tidying of the strawberry bed. We're hoping for a slightly more successful season with the strawberries this year. There were two main reasons we think we didn't get many strawberries last year: We only bought the bare route runners quite late on in the Spring, which meant they... Continue Reading →
We’ve managed to stick to one of our New Year’s Resolutions so far…
We grew a few different types of peppers and chillies last year. Some of them we really liked, and others we were pleased we'd tried, but wouldn't be in a massive hurry to try again. But that's just how it goes, we live and learn, and that's all part of the fun! One thing we... Continue Reading →
A look back at 2019
This time last year, we made a plan for the growing season ahead. So we thought it would be a good time to look back at that plan and see how we got on! Potatoes We'd set ourselves the goal of three sowings of potatoes for 2019, to harvest in May, July and December. Well... Continue Reading →
This year’s trio of peppers
We've tried growing three types of peppers this year: Padrons, Macchu Picchu and Snackbite. As an experiment, we have been growing some of each at our respective houses. A month or so back, the peppers needed potting up from their 3" pots. We potted them up at this point into 4" pots in multipurpose compost. Although it doesn't... Continue Reading →
