Growing faster, growing slower

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.

Other posts you might like:

Lessons from our summer of growing Lettuce begin – the 2011 growing season is underway! Growing salad leaves – frugal, organic & green Next year’s growing plans