With a break in the weather at the weekend I managed to catch up on a bit of gardening. First job was to pot on a good quantity of chillies and tomatoes.
Some of these haven't grown at a rate I'd expect. And I think the compost is to blame, bought in, but it's so unpredictable. I'm going to start adding a bit of seaweed feed to the watering can, not something I'd normally do this early on, but I feel they all need a bit of a boost. I don't normally buy liquid feed to be honest but the comfrey won't take kindly to being chopped already.
I may have gone a little overboard with the chillies this year, but I have plenty of people who will happily take plants from me if I decide it's too many!
With my more tender plants taking up all the greenhouse, and my other "little" greenhouse being out of action I decided to set up a little area in the polytunnel for some of my other seedlings.
I've managed to clean out the polytunnel (video out this weekend of the big clean up, including the children helping to clean the plastic), and the whole space just feels so much better.
I'm hoping to get a few quick salads grown in there now before I plant in my main crops for the summer.
I also managed to finish planting out a few bits outside, but I'll share that in another post. I tried to tackle a few little jobs as well, probably as I was trying to avoid starting the other big greenhouse base. Feels like a big job, but now I just need to get on with it.
The whole garden feels a bit better this year. I'm going to double down on the effort I need to put into it, I just spent an evening ordering more herb seeds and a few extra bits and bobs. I want to grow cut flowers again as I enjoy giving bunches to my friends and having them for the house. But as always I'm probably setting my sights too high and the weeds will swamp me out by July!
How is everyone else getting on in the garden? Do you have the seeds in that need to be in? Or are you behind?
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ReplyDeleteA similar blog post today like mine. Seed compost doesn't appear to have many nutrients and seedlings are very slow growing this year. Great photos.
ReplyDeleteI've just been feeding my seedlings the last few days and already noticed an improvement.
DeleteWe are probably a week or two ahead of normal this year. February was so warm as was the first part of March, we got started early with the cool season stuff. But the last two weeks have been fairly cold even for them so they aren't making much progress. We do have some lettuce and peas up and a lot of other things planted in the garden. In the greenhouse we have some of our warm season things started but not sprouting yet. The biggest thing is that we got a nice soaking rain, our first in two years! I actually had some puddles in our garden for about an hour after the rain stopped. After two years of drought, it was a sight for sore eyes.
ReplyDeleteSomehow I keep feeling like I'm forgetting some really important crops! I need to make sure I'm really on it this year with the garden, last year was so disappointing. I'd just love to have the second greenhouse up really. If I could grow loads of tomatoes and cucs then that would cut or shopping bill the most. I can never seem to grow enough of them!
DeleteMy seeds are slower this year, I'm hoping as the weather gets warmer they will catch up
ReplyDeleteYeah, I hope mine do as well. I started feeding mine this week and honestly I can already see a difference, so many composts are just rubbish.
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