Ed's Simple Life

In my never ending quest not to pay for plant pots I've now taken to using pop bottles to grow broad beans in (working on the sq ft gardening assumption that the roots in compost will tend to grow down and not out meaning that depth will be more important).  I've placed some drainage holes in the bottom. I'm not too sure how much of a success this will be growing the board beans inside, below is a picture of the beans that were in the kitchen a month on.  Earlier this week they were relocated to the potting shed and their small individual pots replaces with one larger pot. Below:  On the Left the Broad Beans from the Kitchen, on the Right a Lonely Broad Bean planted outside at the same time. These were sewn in December and have been flowering for a while but as of yet there's been no fruit.  Up until this point I thought that they were self pollinating however having now read around a bit it appears that they are not which would explain the ...

In this previous pos t I was looking at newspaper seed pots and sewing some seeds in them which seems to have on the whole worked to varying degrees of success. The Chard, Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts seem to have come up ok ... however I've had less luck with the Sweet Pepper (Spanish Mixed) the pots don't seem to offer much in the way of drainage which I think has been the downfall of the Lettuce and the germination of the Peppers.  Reading around a few people have said that the ink used in the newspaper printing can have a damaging effect of the plant too. It was a nice experiment and I might do it again sometime later in the year when they can dry out better but for now I think I'm going to stick the old tetra paks.

Following a month on the window sill in a very cramped old mushroom container I'm really pleased with how well the salad bowl lettuce has come up.  Last year I grew it in the potting shed, which unfortunately the aphids destroyed, this year I thought I'd try indoors with limited window space. In the same container at the rear are some mixed oriental leaves which don't seem to be enjoying the cramped conditions too well but still they should be good enough for a cheese and pickle sandwich or too. I'll sew some more next week but this time I'll try to give them a bit more space if I can find somewhere to put them.

My indoor crops have been growing really well thus far (in normal Tetra Paks with the tops chopped off and drainage holes in the bottom).   An issue (at least I think it's an issue) I seem to be having is that some of the tomatoes and the cucumbers are starting to bud, whilst the crops are still quite small.  I'm still fairly new to this and this maybe what is supposed to happen I'm just not too sure.  Originally I thought that it might be because the house was getting too warm, but I seem to remember that last year my cucumbers had grown quite a bit taller before they had started to bud and they were in the potting shed which during the summer months (I planted them much later last year) would have been much warmer than in the house which rarely exceeds 18C in the evening and during the day the heating is off completely.   My concern is if they're budding too early then this will effect their overall growth as they will put more energy in to flowering ...

A few months ago I brought a cheap LED grow light from eBay , it cost around £15 next day delivery. Until now I've not had too much use for it (waiting until I finally get around to my hydroponics setup). At the moment my window ledges are getting a little too crowded as the weather outside hasn't heated and I don't think the veg are big enough to go in the potting shed yet. So instead I've decided to pop the cups I "borrowed" from work (that the cucumbers are growing in) into a mushroom container under the grow light (that you can see elegantly hanging from my radiator) in the hope that it will do a good enough job before they need to be planted out. I was just wondering if anyone else has any experience of the cheaper LED grow lights?

Well the Carrot harvest the year was an interesting one. I'd steered clear of growing carrots due to stories about carrots pulsating with carrot fly which honestly made me want to vom.  I decided to face my fear and armed with my B&Q Value F1 Carrot packet of 1500 seeds it was time to plant some carrots. Above is the resulting crop from my seeds, I didn't plant too many as I was lacking for space and needed to fit them in-between the Chicory and the Broccoli in the cold frame so I wasn't expecting a bumper harvest.  I wasn't too concerned about the meager quantity because after all it was just a trial...but the size?! Above are the same carrots but this time with a tea spoon next to them...not a table spoon a tea spoon! They did taste great, but I was a little disappointed with how small they were.  I figured that I hadn't prepared the soil enough for them with the soil beneath the cold frame being too compacted. My solution to all of this (...

Last year when I got on the gardening band waggon I wasn't too sure what it was that I wanted to achieve...however I did know one thing...no matter what I wanted to achieve a raised bed would help me do it! So I waited a few months until I found a raised bed that was on offer from B&Q then with a bit of resourcefulness managed to get 20% off on top of sale price...happy days. I'd like to point out that B&Q is normally not my first port of call (primarily because you can get pretty much everything they sell cheaper somewhere else) and when it came to making raised beds this year I took a completely different approach. I decided in the end to purchase 2 raised beds and staked them out roughly going north to south which I had read that was what I was supposed to do. Once both were down I thought it would be a good idea to have one that was a bit more sheltered and protected that the other for the less heady vegetables and so brought some timber to turn it in to a c...

A few weeks ago we went to ikea and picked up some stuff for the kitchen including: Two cheap rails A couple of 10 Pack Hooks Different sized hanging containers The aim of the purchases was to create the following: Once the containers were on the wall I decided to have something growing in them, as I haven't got my hydroponic kitchen herb garden set up yet I thought that some salad greens and herbs would be best. Finding a tray to fit inside the hanging container was a bit of a mission impossible so I cut up some of those clear plastic containers that you get fruit in from the supermarket and then glue gunned them back together so that they would be a snug fit, once I did this I spray painted the outside of it black (although I don't think that this step was really necessary).  In the larger container I planted some Chives, Salad Bowl Lettuce and some Mixed Oriental Leafs, hopefully they'll come up well. In the mean t...

Unfortunately today I ran out of gardening supplies but had seen a tutorial on the internet about how to make "seed pots" out of newspaper ...I was and still am to a certain extent quite skeptical but decided to give it ago as I had ran out of room in the propagator and had no more cups from work. Following these instructions I made three seed pots to start off my Sweet Peppers in (Spanish Mixed) in, although I halved the size of the paper as the pots that the instructions created were about 4 times bigger which my windowsill just didn't have the room for. I'm a little concerned that at some point the base is just going to fall out, but time will tell.  It looks like many people literally plant the pot outside and let the news paper degrade in the soil, we shall see.

I brought these last year and had limited success; I think mainly because I planted them out too late coupled with not knowing I needed to pollinate them and because I didn't pinch them out...all in all I didn't have a clue what I was doing. Having said that I still managed to get an ok harvest from them. This year I have opted to plant:   Moneymaker  Gardeners Delight   Beefstake  Tumbling Tom (yellow) It's still not warm enough to put them outside, so I needed to find something bigger to plant them in to once they out grew their propagator...I'd seen somewhere on the internet where they had used tetra paks so I've tried the same and guess we'll have to see how it pans out. I'm interested to see which will grow better the plants in the shorter but wider 1.5 ltr squash containers or the deeper but thinner 1ltr tetra pak.

Some time last year I started to keep some of the seeds from Chili Peppers when cooking, I guess I was marginally spurred on by the slight success of the lime seeds from supermarket fruit and the nectarine seeds.  As with the above seeds I was fairly convinced that nothing would grow.  I planted these seeds the same time as the ones that I brought from my usual internet seed shop , they haven't grown as well as the ones from the seed shop however I'm still fairly pleased that anything happened. From reading around a bit I'm pretty convinced that even if they do grow they won't fruit much/anything but it was worth a shot. I also grew some sweet peppers from seed from super market produce as well, they also seem to be growing ok.

Again another evening trawling the internet looking at growing vegetables led me to discover that you can re-grow those spring onions that you used in your stir fry last night.  I'm assuming that they might not grow as well as the ones in the garden, but I'm looking forward to seeing how this experiment pans out. Considering it started with little to no hope I'm quite impressed with the weeks worth of growth. The spring onions I used had been in the fridge for at least 3 weeks and were looking fairly dead, all the roots on the base were brown.  I placed them in a plastic cup of water and then on with window ledge in the kitchen which faces north so doesn't get a great deal of sunlight.  A week later and below is the result (the onions were originally chopped where the white ends, all of the green is new growth).  I change the water every few days.

Following some instructions I found on the internet I attempted to grow some limes and oranges from the seeds in the fruit from the supermarket...which from what I can tell everyone says that it's a "fruit-less" experience. The Oranges grew ok for a while and then just seemed to stop growing and the leafs (whilst still looking fine) dropped off and I was left with just a stalk.  The Limes on the other hand seem to have grown alright.  The ones below are from last year so aren't exactly growing a mile a minute but I'm intrigued to see how much more they will grow as they barely experience temperatures of over 20C.

On the kitchen windowsill (north facing) I currently have two varieties of broad bean growing.  They were planted in December (I think) and now seem to be a little out of control.  The two varieties that I have growing are: Broad Bean - Bunyards Exhibition Broad Bean - Witkiem Manita I'm not too sure how much more they grow before they start to grow beans.  I believe I'm meant to cut off the top bit of the plant with the two leaves once the beans start at the base of the plant. The first few from the left have started to flower as you can see below and I'm fairly sure that they're self pollinating so I don't need to do anything.

As well as the All Year Round lettuce that I planted last week I also planted a few varieties of cut and come again lettuce. The main varieties that were planted were: Salad Bowl Red Salad Bowl (left over from last years B&Q Multi Pack) Mixed Oriental Leafs (also left over from last years B&Q Multi Pack)  All of these like the all year round lettuce came up stupidly quick, I planted a fair few seeds as I didn't think that the seeds would have kept too well...how wrong I was.  I needed to transplant them in to something where they would have more space so I used an old mushroom container to put them in as a temporary measure...seems to be working out well so far.

Last week I planted 6 all year round lettuce seeds that my friend had given me in one of our seed exchanges as there was no way she was going to plant 1500 lettuce seeds and like wise it was fairly unlikely that I'd have the room to plant lots of the seeds i had so we did a bit of a swap of our excess. I was really impressed at how quickly they came up I re planted them in to larger trays today to give the roots some space to move.  I'm hoping that they will continue to grow at this pace...although I'm guessing they may not. Does anyone know if when I replant them I'm supposed to bury them a little deeper so that just the leaves are above soil? 

I picked up one of these windowsill greenhouses from ikea it's been great for transplanting my seedlings into once they have out grown the propagator.  Inside it this month are the Chilli's that have grown too big and one cucumber that I'd transplanted to a tetra pak to free up a cup for more Chilli's.  Hopefully once the sweet peppers have grown big enough I'll be able to place some of those in there too. The Chilli's I'm growing this year are Apache Jalapeno Twilight I mainly picked these because they were all mentioned in a book called Crops in Pots that I received for Christmas which is full of great ideas.

When I was experimenting with growing veg last year the cucumbers, unlike the tomartoes, went really well and grew loads...so much so that I had more than I could eat.  In the end we ended up making cucumber wine with the remainder. This year I planted some of the seeds that I had left over from a b&q veg multipack.  I had 2 free seeds given to me that were Nutleys Lemon Cucumber, one of these grew and then promptly died when replanted, the other one has grown quite well so far, no real difference between the 2 varieties at the moment. These are growing in disposable cups I've been "borrowing" from work with some holes in the bottom.