Tap and Gardening

I’m currently sitting on my back doorstep, sort of wishing it’d rain (although my washing would get wet) as that would mean I could drag Boy Lacer inside and then get on with finding Girl Lacer’s tap shoes (class in 1hr50mins and counting) but Boy Lacer rarely went out in the garden over the summer so I don’t want to spoil it now.

I was going to let Boy Lacer loose in the garden on his own (with me staying in the kitchen where I can watch him and try and ignore all the grubby little boy things he was getting up to) but Boy Lacer likes his mummy where he can see her.

After a spot of whimpering and “I’m tired” (from him, not me, although I could do the same thing), we’re back inside, so I guess I better go find those tap shoes! And load the dishwasher and find a kindly house fairy to deal with this chaos and so on and so on. Back later . . .

I never did find those tap shoes, it’s like some cheap budget murder whodunit, ‘What happened to the tap shoes?’ dum dum daaaah! I’m getting clear flashbacks to Girl Lacer coming out of tap last week with her tap shoes off, her handing them to me and then what? So fair cop, it’s my fault, I hope I find them, she only wore them once! I’m sure now the dance school owner thinks I’m even more of a clutz, as I had to explain to her why I was sending in my daughter to a tap lesson with no shoes, it’s not the first time I’ve had to admit my ‘failings’ to her. I just have this giant dance shaped hole in my head where dance related information just escapes. Then after class, during which me and Boy Lacer had the option of either waiting in the church or the poky vestry lobby, I opted for the lobby option after we tried the church option and Boy Lacer started to kick off just as a non-dance mum person, i.e. an actual worshipper walked in, I seemed to be somehow implicated in a missing pair of cycling shorts drama which had nothing to do with me, I was just sitting on an empty seat that had just been vacated by someone else, as Boy Lacer who’d been on the floor with me, needed containing a little as he was getting a bit over excited but apparently there were some cycling shorts on there. Actually I’m sure they even weren’t thinking I was implicated, it’s just my paranoia at my clutz status.

Anyway, you know this post was meant to be originally about gardening? Whilst supervising Boy Lacer out in the garden this afternoon I did get a chance to do the rather sad activity of emptying out some of my plant pots, which has prompted me to write a final post about how my vegetable gardening went this year and my plans for next year.

Chillies - pretty much the only crop I’m successful at growing I’m afraid and even then I eventually lost a large number of my plants. I’d had a massive problem with greenfly earlier in the season and that damaged some of my plants beyond repair ultimately and the leaves started to fall off. They did survive long enough however to produce a reasonable crop of chillies (more than I could use actually) and I still have my two ring of fire chillies and one of my other chillies which miraculously seems to be sprouting new leaves. I brought those three plants back inside today as I’m worried about frosts, I’m almost equally worried about the creepy crawlies that probably took residence in those pots over the few months they were outside (sending my plants outside ultimately helped control the greenfly) and are now resident on my window sill.

Salad plants – These were actually a success to, but I had purchased them as a set of baby plants and it was just too much, so they bolted incredibly quickly. I will do it again (I have to, can’t face bagged salads now and I like my exotic leaves) but will grow small amounts from seed every few weeks.

Carrots – mmm, the world’s smallest carrots! There is still some debate about whether they were meant to be that small or whether it was because I planted them in a too shallow a container. Again I had purchased them as baby plants so I don’t know what they were meant to be, next year I will plant from seed, in a deeper container.

Herbs - my coriander bolted incredibly quickly, so that will be another one I’ll plant every few weeks from seed. I loved my greek basil plants which grew really well indoors but then suffered from greenfly so I moved them outside and they didn’t do so well. I also attempted to grow ‘normal’ basil from seed which as Boy Lacer would say took “aaaaaaaaages”.

Aubergines - I’m glad I saw a piece on Gardener’s World about how they’re really difficult to grow, so in a way I’m a bit proud that I at least got them to grow aubergines to conker size! My poor aubergine plants had a tough time, their leaves were the snails favourites and hence they got really damaged and this summer I don’t think has been ideal, would have helped if I had fed them to! May grow them next year.

French beans - no problem except the entire harvest was used up in one small batch of pasta sauce, probably will not grow again, but may try another type of bean.

and finally

Cucumbers - nooooooo, not doing that again! They’re high maintenance, take up too much space, bend too much and hence grow a funny size and don’t loose their prickles! All I’ve gained from my cucumber growing experience is an appreciation of cucumber farmers!

So, I will do this again next year, with more grown from seed I think, as ultimately it’s a lot cheaper and hence a lot less riskier if things go wrong. Next year I want to grow more salad leaves, increase my herbs (should be doing this over winter in the kitchen really), carrots again, possibly aubergines and definitely potatoes. Hopefully by the time I get to the allotment waiting list my fingers will at least be a slight shade of green!

Surprise carrots

Me and Girl Lacer pulled some carrots today, we were quite surprised about how small they were! I think they might be meant to be like that, as they were from a kit specifically designed for window boxes, but still it was a surprise. I had planned on using a few in a coleslaw I’m probably going to make tonight, if I were to do that I’d have had to have pulled the whole container! So when I went to the supermarket just now I had to go and buy a normal sized carrot!

I’ll leave the rest of the carrots in a little longer, although one still in the ground is looking a little gnawed at the top, probably mice.

In other gardening news, I have at least two aubergines starting to form, which I’m chuffed with as the head gardener lady on Gardener’s World last week said aubergines were quite difficult to grow. I’ll take photos of the baby aubergines when they’re a little bit bigger and more obvious.

And finally, the snails so love my greenhouse the &*^% things are having babies there! Needless to say I evicted this snail along with the rest.

 

‘Pride and joy’

My cucumbers are doing well, this is the biggest (my original first baby cucumbers shrivelled up and went yellow, I think they were too early). I love watching this one grow, the other ones in the greenhouse are quite behind this one, which is good, as with their varying sizes and the fact that I’m still getting flowers, means that I’m not going to get a glut of cucumbers all at once.

I’ve of course eaten and brought cucumbers all my life, but until now I’ve never had an idea how they grow, so watching them grow has been really interesting. For example I didn’t know that (at least in my variety) the baby cucumbers start out spiky, obviously stopping things (like snails – grrrhhh) from eating them too soon. My biggish cucumber is starting to loose it’s spikes and I noticed today that it’s starting to get lines / ridges (?) at it’s bottom.

As for my other plants, my peppers are resolutely not producing peppers, I don’t know if I’m expecting them too early but they’ve been flowering for a while, they flower, the flower looks moth eaten very quickly and then nothing comes from it.

As for my carrots, which were looking very droopy and I was worried I needed to pick them pronto (even though the tops peeking out were not very orange) but they’ve recently perked up, I guess they weren’t getting enough water (I was watering them though) or maybe the heat (it’s cooled down here again now). So I’m back on track with my planned carrot harvest in July.

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.

 

 

The never ending vegetable box

My Rocket Gardens Window Box Garden arrived today, now I don’t actually have window boxes (the amount of vegetables that arrived, you’d need quite a lot of window boxes actually) but I do have a small garden with quite a lot of patio. I certainly don’t have space for a vegetable patch, so I’m restricted to containers, which actually is quite a good thing, as my soil is poor and the existing beds are in quite a bit of shade, whereas the patio isn’t in shade and the soil is as good as the compost I buy!

When the box arrived it was a fairly small thing and I was thinking, “What, that’s it?”, then I opened it.

Half empty Rocket Garden box

Inside was a virtual Aladdins box of well packed baby vegetables in a bed of straw, I had enough salad leaves and spinach to plant fully my giant (fake) antique bath tub I brought from Ikea the other day, plus dwarf french beans, peppers, basil (greek basil, mmmmm, not sure about that, I’m used to ‘traditional’ basil, I’m sure it’s ok though, although luckily I have some ‘normal’ basil sprouting as we speak on my kitchen window sill), coriander, parsley and carrots.

So lots more plants to join my cucumbers (which Girl Lacer by the way is getting very attached to, she comes and says hello to them). Four of my six cucumbers plants seem to have survived the great chill by the way. The salad and carrots are staying outside under fleece; the salad is under fleece principally because there’s still a bit of a risk of frost (the month long range forecast does not look good), the carrots are under fleece to try and stop the birds getting at them. Rocket Gardens recommended considering the current inclement weather to keep the peppers and herbs inside, however I don’t have window sills big enough for my peppers, so they’re in my greenhouse (read cheap plastic thing) but hopefully they’ll be ok, if it starts looking really cold (will someone tell the weather please that it’s actually the end of April?), I’ll bring them in at night. The herbs are currently on my living room window sill.

I am just getting so excited about all that salad this summer (hopefully, if I don’t kill it / the slugs and snails eat it before me – my garden has a major slug and snail problem).

Snail on my front doorstep this afternoon, trying to do a spot of house invading

I am just picturing though that cheese salad sandwich though; rocket, mizuna, golden streak mustard, cucumber, sliced peppers, cheese, heck I may even make my own bread (but I won’t go as far as making my own cheese!).