I might love my neighbours and broccoli but I hate squishy seed potatoes

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 July 2011 in growing | 8 comments

You know how seed potatoes go squishy and brown by the time you harvest your new potatoes?

Is it just me or is putting your hand into that BALL OF VILENESS, the vegetable equivalent of Satan’s diseased gonad, enough to put you off growing potatoes for life?

…

Just me?

I heart my neighbours – and broccoli

Posted by louisa on Tuesday 26 July 2011 in growing | 6 comments

My attempts to grow broccoli this year were one big flop – they all went to seed during the hot spell in April.

My attempts to grow broccoli-substitute rapini were also a big flop – they went to seed too (although since they only need about 45 days to grow, I might be able to squeak out another try of those this year).

Then yesterday, I bumped into one of our dog-walking buddies while out with Lily-dog. We’ve been walking the round hound in the evening recently so haven’t seen him for a good few weeks, perhaps a couple of months. We chatted growing successes and failures this year, and he mentioned he had some spare broccoli – already in pots and starting to bud – and would I like some?

I said I would – expecting a few little seedlings. He dropped four of these bad boys off yesterday afternoon.

You know that empty bed I mentioned the other week? Empty no more!

I don’t really have any plants to share at this point but I think a pack of eggs, some freshly made lemon curd and whatever else I can conjure up will be heading his way soon.

Thanks neighbour!

75% off seeds at Wilkinsons

Posted by louisa on Thursday 7 July 2011 in frugal, growing | 10 comments

It feels a bit early (in general and earlier than last year) but various shops have started selling off their sow-by-2012 seeds cheaply.

I was near a Wilkinsons yesterday (I heart Wilkinsons – I nearly wet my pants when they opened a big store down the road from our old house in Leeds and it’s one of the things I miss most about living in Leeds. #sadconfession) and popped in to peruse their packets — all 75% off in store (they seem to be 3 for 2 on the website). I went a bit mad at first and ended up putting about a dozen of them back but I did buy…

That’s:

2 x dwarf french beans (Canadian wonder – 120 seeds per pack) = £0.25 a pack
2 x runner bean (white emergo – 40 seeds per pack) = £0.32 a pack
1* x broad beans (Bunyards exhibition – 50 seeds) = £0.56 a pack
3 x nasturiums (trailing single mixed – 35 seeds per pack) = £0.49 a pack
1 x onions (bunching ishikura – 375 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
1 x pepper (“sweet” mini red – 50 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
1 x beetroot (boltardy – 275 seeds) = £0.37 a pack
3 x cucumber (telepathy F1 – 5 seeds per pack) = £0.39 a pack
1 x phlox night scented (200 seeds) = £0.32 a pack
2 x sweet pea (mixed – 25 seeds per pack) = £0.56 a pack

So 17 packs of seed for £7.35, rather than nearly £30 – I’m quite happy with that.

* I would have bought more of these even though they’re branded so more expensive, but this is all they had

Combined with the (18) free packets I’ve collected one way or another this year, and what I’ve haven’t used this year and the seeds I’ll save from my Real Seeds purchases this year (achocha, special peppers etc), I think I’m about all set on the seeds front for next year already – perhaps some more broad beans (as they’ve been fab this year), some courgettes (as I don’t have much luck saving seeds due to being hybrids/cross-pollination, and we heart courgettes) and some basil, but that’ll be it. Hurrah! :)

Apparently Dobbies and the super cheap supermarkets (Aldi/Lidl etc) are heavily discounting their seeds at the moment too.

Have you started buying seeds for next year too? Have you spotted any other seed bargains out there?

Plants & pots & seeds

Posted by louisa on Monday 4 July 2011 in growing | 5 comments

Thanks for all your batch cooking and what-to-grow-in-my-empty-spots suggestions! I’ll reply to the comments as soon as I can but I’m feeling very inspired by both! :)

I mentioned on the empty-spots-in-the-garden post that I was visiting my mum & dad on Saturday and my dad might have some spare plants for me – well, he certainly did. He gave me:

Six lavender plants – he was offering more (he’s gone a little lavender crazy this year) but I don’t have room for them. As it is, a couple of these will go to our neighbour who loves lavender.

Three (admittedly slightly pot-bound) chillis and eight (capsicums) pepper plants. These will need potting on immediately and I’m not convinced we’ll have quite a long enough season to really benefit from them – but I’ve got others of both so these will just be bonuses (and I’m going to try overwintering all my chillis this year too). They will, of course, have to stay in the greenhouse rather than filling up my currently empty containers/bed – and last week that would have worried me because I’m running low on decent sized pots … which I mentioned to my dad and lo & behold:

40+ decent sized pots. (Leaves in the photo for scale and not just because we’ve not swept the porch recently ;) ) He has hundreds stashed near his old greenhouses (from when he knew a landscape gardener and saved them from landfill) — I only took 40 this time but could have taken ten times that. I feel confident I might never need to buy a medium size plant pot again ;)

My mum also had a box of goodies for me – old jars, egg boxes and whatnot – and included in that were some seeds that they’d got free but wouldn’t use: packets of peas, coriander, tomatoes, land cress, rocket and all year round lettuce. I’m going to use a couple of my foot-square scrap wood planters for the rocket & land cress, and the rest can join my seed stash for use next year. (At last count, I’ve got about 18 packets of seeds free this year from one source or another – about half flowers, the rest veg – so hopefully next year will be a cheap year!)

So not only did we get to introduce Lily-dog to the sea (funny!), have pink-and-white ice creams and a visit to Broadhursts – oh, and see my mum & dad, my garden is a little fuller now too :)

What did you get up to this weekend? Did you get to enjoy the sun?

Falling short – empty spaces in the garden, boo

Posted by louisa on Friday 1 July 2011 in growing | 9 comments

I’ve spent most of this afternoon pottering in the garden and as time went on, I had a strange realisation: I’ve actually fallen short in what I’ve sown this year.

I have everything planted in final positions now and I’ve still got a bed, two wooden troughs and some containers empty. Well, the bed’s not empty, it’s full of self-seeded borage (pictured above – which I was happy to let grow until I needed the space for something else) but the wooden troughs are empty-empty — and annoyingly, it’s the nice ones I made at the start of the year. I’ve been using them as extra temporary staging in the greenhouse so all the others were filled up first, and here I am now with nothing to put in them. Boo.

I had problems with damping off at the start of the year and some stuff went to seed because I didn’t pot it on soon enough during the warm (and chaotic here) spring – if those problems hadn’t happened, I’d probably have actually sown about the right amount of stuff this year (amazingly!) but since they did, I’m left with some empty spots. Shockingly bad behaviour, isn’t it?

So now I’m wondering what, if anything, I could put in them. Any suggestions?

I’m going to see my mum & dad tomorrow* so my dad might have some spare things he could give me in exchange for the eggs and courgettes I’ll be taking. (*Mum, if I haven’t called you by the time you’re reading this, we’re coming tomorrow. Hope you’re not working all day or out. Also if you’ve been shopping today, I hope you didn’t buy lots of eggs and courgettes. ;) )

My beloved Hessayon book tells me I could plant some late peas for autumn sowing — and actually I’ve already got some seedlings that we were going to eat as pea shoots. I do though have issues with growing peas so maybe we should just eat them in their childhood form as planned.

I think we’ve got just about enough salad leaves in containers dotted around the place – although if I can’t think about anything else, I’ll grow some more lettuce.

I *could* just leave them empty, but where would the fun be in that? ;)

Have you got any empty spots this year or are you filled to the proverbial rafters? What would you plant if you had an empty bed/some empty containers at this time of year?