The first lesson I learned about container planting is that watering can be so deceptive. I’ve been happily watering my containers thinking I’m doing well. then I began to wonder why my 2nd set of carrots wasn’t appearing. Even though I thought I’d really saturated it, I tucked my finger into the soil and just beneath the top layer these tubs are dry as the proverbial bone. OK, I have to make absolutely sure that I really saturate them until the water’s coming out the bottom before I finish soaking them.
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Despite getting up at 8:30 it took me until nearly midday to get up to the plot. It’s so hot today as was predicted but I decided to brave it. I put my legionnaire’s hat on to try and protect myself a bit. I’ve spent 3 hours watering just trying to make sure that everything was saturated. I’m just going to do a summary of what’s in here now.
It really pleases me to see I got a couple of good courgettes to pick, Plot 101 is finally starting to yield some good crops, although I’m still getting lots that are dying off. Anyway, I’ve got one whopper in here that I’m going to pick today. I later discovered blossom end rot, I think that’s what the problem has been. From what I’ve read this is caused by inconsistent watering. I think the combination of the drought conditions and my regular absences means that the watering has been erratic. I snaffled a few little courgettes before they spoiled and cooked them with some early onions. They are just like spring onions.
My Savoy cabbages are still trying really hard although the outer leaves are still being nibbled, they look like they might actually come to something. My yellow courgettes still look a bit puny but they’re still putting forth fruit so hopefully, they’ll come good like the green ones.
I’ve got tomatoes! This cherry tomato bush seems to thrive since I transferred it into a pot. I’ve now got about 10 little green tomatoes and hopefully, I’ll get something off them before we depart.
I’ve transplanted a few of the cucumber seedlings that I’d had upon the bench as something I got in and chewed a few of them so I thought I’d better put them in the ground and see what they do I’m hoping as they were last year’s heroes I’m hoping to get some good cucumbers this year and hope I’m not too late
The squash still looks like it’s thriving, it’s beautiful and green and putting out loads of female fruit but I’m still not sure if they are getting pollinated and still getting a lot of shrivelled fruit after a few days so I’ve taken the cover off the squash now hopefully that will mean that things can have access to them to pollinate them
I think I’m going to take another handful of peas today cause I seem like I’ve got another bunch of really fat juicy pods ready to burst
The onions are still looking great, I thought I had overcrowded them but having read a little bit of the allotment book, it talks about planting onions in clumps just as I did and it doesn’t seem to be a problem, so I’m just going to leave them to their own devices and see what happens. I reckon I’m gonna have about a dozen of each white and red onions
The carrots in my original tub are still looking good, however, very few of the succession seedlings are coming through and can just see a couple in there. I realised last week that my watering wasn’t very efficient. When I just scraped back about a millimetre of Earth I could see that the soil was just dry as anything so we’re making sure I really saturated these bags these grow bags.
I’ve got at least 2 decent beetroots in my green bag although again nothing much came through all my 2nd sowings well after saturating the whole space I now see that I’ve got 2 little seedlings so I’m gonna put some more in to be stubborn and just keep watering like crazy
I think my spinach has bitten the dust, it seems to have gone to seed I’m not quite sure what to do I might see if I can collect the seeds and then replant this tub with something else.
My ring of red cabbages looks absolutely beautiful we’re taking the umbrella off to have a look at them and the colour is just wonderful and they don’t seem to have fallen foul to any damaging critters I hope that I’m not tempting fate by saying that
I tried an experiment with one of those wall-hanging systems. It’s a felt “mat” with pouches, into which you plant stuff. I had some initial success with some salad leaves and I started my pak choi off in there but now I realise I don’t think I can sustain this. The felt does not seem to retain any moisture – when you water it the liquid runs straight out. So now the wall was unfortunately very dry again. it ideally needs to be watered every day and I just can’t see that happening.
On the bench, I’ve still got some pak choi and I’ve got a couple of cucumbers. I’m starting to consider taking those back to the house to see if I can get them to grow in the garden. The chard does not yet look like anything’s happening there although it got very dry.
I only put these in 4 days ago so hopefully maybe I’m just being a bit premature some of these things do seem to shoot up really quickly in this heat though you’ll see what happens and keep waiting.
In the grow-house I’ve got action – those tomato shoots are looking very healthy they look like they need planting out soon but I am almost scared to move them cause they’re so happy here and the lettuce and peas I planted on Saturday haven’t really done anything yet but again that’s early days yet.
but I do have a couple of tiny shoots in the aubergine tub and these tomatoes just look healthy.
After this whistlestop tour, I hope you can tell I was so over the moon that everything was coming up veggie. But of course, the time had come for me to abandon my plant babies again. It’s summer holiday time folks, so let’s see what survives my absence this time.
To the roots of it 