Vegetable garden update

My container vegetable garden is so far (touch wood), going really well, Mr. Lacer is constantly amazed that I haven’t killed anything yet. My salad container, after a few dodgy moments with the cos and the spinach which was originally covered too much by fleece, followed by the continuous rain we had making me worried that my drainage holes were not enough, I am now worried whether it’s getting enough water but despite all this it’s doing very well, providing more salad leaves that me, the only salad eater in this family can ever possibly want to it and it is so much better than a limp browning bag of supermarket salad. The rocket and the golden mustard are both flowering, which probably isn’t good on the cropping front but at least they’re happy (I’m soft). I have a picture of my flowering rocket in close up on my photo blog here, I like the way how the flowers look like white medieval crosses. Here’s a more general picture of my salad,

The plants in my little plastic greenhouse are also doing well, in fact my little plastic greenhouse is probably getting too hot now, as unzip it and stick your arm in, it’s literally like a steam room. I was worrying about that but thankfully my gardening guru aka my dad, did a flying visit this afternoon (back from his holiday where he discovered train spotting holidays were unsurprisingly full of train spotters) and he recommended unzipping it during the day, so I’ll do that. Anyway here’s the cucumbers, which I’m naughtily not supporting yet, I’m hoping they’ll cling onto the struts of the greenhouse, which they’re starting to do, when plants do do that, it absolutely amazes me, the trained biologist in me is easily impressed.

My peppers are getting so tall, I’ve had to move them to the top shelf of the greenhouse, where they will get more space. My aubergines and chillis, which I’d initially doubled some of them up in their pots, desperately need replanting. My greek basil leaves are getting bigger, as is the plant, phew, I was unsure about that one one when I got it. My ‘normal’ basil seedlings are also doing well and have just been moved from my kitchen window sill in the greenhouse, as the weather stays warm and they look more like basil plants every day. My parsley is doing fine, it’s still going and has lasted already a lot longer than a supermarket potted parsley. My coriander, despite me using it alot is getting leggy, I’ve had this happen before with home grown coriander, I will have to plant some new coriander seeds soon. Oh and as for my carrots, little difficult to see how they’re doing obviously, but still green and bushy up top!

Other than that, I think so far I’ve handled the ‘baby stage’ of my plants fine, apart from a few rocky moments at the start. Now I’m worrying about the ‘teenage stage’, as they start to flower and prepare to fruit, I have no idea if I’m doing the right thing.