Ed's Simple Life

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.

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...

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?