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...