Be Excellent To Each Other

Did you bang your head on the weekend or break several fingers? Several of your posts today have been littered with typos.

Uhm....Yes!

I have cut everything back and planted my bulbs. I am becoming a domestic Goddess.

Well, I've got a cold, but I don't think that explains much.

So, er... When can the by planted?

Amazingly, plants can be planted. I know, crazy.

Too cold for the plants you have now though, you could try bigger pots. But next year just sow the corriander seeds directly in the brown stuff that isn't dog shit outside. As for when, I'd say Spring. Look on the packet for more details.

First gardening decision / purchase done yesterday.

Bought flower seeds to specifically attract butterflies.

*Waits with camera until June*

I plan on growing strawberries (Baba Z requested), chilis and herbs again.

Can you recommend a good website or book that says when you should plant certain things?

I need inspiration and some suggestions of things that grow in the shade.

Cheers, Big Z.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/ is a very good place to start.

I thought you were moving anyway?

Oops. Heh.

Today, President and He Who Would Be King If It Weren't A Free Republic of MaliTowers, MaliA conducted an inspection of the progress of The Move Towards Reducing Imported Foods So The Money Can Be Spent On Education And Things

Electric button seeds have been sown and are in a seed tray inside Wilkinson's finest plastic greenhouse.
6 Courgette plants are in Planter Number Eight.
The garlic in Planter Number Eight doesn't seem to be doing a lot.
Sweet-peas have been introduced to support the Fence of Separation Gamma
Strawberry production looks to be on an upward trajectory. Analyst are predicting a twofold increase.
Gooseberry Production has been slowed due to unseemly elements.
Hostas are doing well.
Tomato plants numbers Fourteen through Eighteen are doing well.
Some Chard isn't dead.
An unidentified plant has appeared, and is being held in quarantine until it can be assimilated into the Collective.

I hooked up phase 3 of my Garden irrigation system this afternoon. As Gaywood will attest (having assisted with phase 2) it is (much like everything I create) a wildly over-engineered network of hacks and cludges that somehow manages to actually work.

I'm still waiting for these sodding flowers to grow. All the early spring colour has gone from my garden now the tulips and daff ets have finished. Everything is very tidy but there's not a lot happening, might have to get my arse to the garden centre for a few bits for the meantime.

Me too. I didn't understand the hatred.

You will be drowned in courgettes.

Your courgettes will be drowned in courgettes.

Didn't I mention that we're well into the growing season? Or was that in the cookery thread? We've gotI think that's it.

Not only have we supplemented the allotment (containing greenhouse, and whose beds we're significantly increasing in size to adjust for relinquished space and a second user) with a smaller greenhouse in the back garden, the back bed is now being turned into a potager (for next year, we reckon), the hanging baskets hold the tumblers, and some of the patio has a plastic mini greenhouse, potato sacks and the herb pots. Oh, and Hel found some funky wooden lantern things which are now in the garden as well, with chilli plants in.

At least the house is now (mostly) chilli-free; just the ones in the kitchen for super-easy cooking access.

Crikey. Good going, you!

It's taken four whole years but I've finally been able to harvest my first 'crop' of asparagus!

Got a planter at last... now have a few herbs (mint, basil, etc)

Beetroot and letuce. With a big pot of tom plants...

Have cleared a space for a raised bed...

Shame they taste like shit really.

You're obviously not coating them in enough garlic butter...

My first strawberry! It was very nice too...

Absolutely nothing happening with mine.

Most things coming along. I've just ordered some chilli plant food to see if that'll encourage them (seems like general compost has too much nitrogen, causing them to favour foliage rather than fruit), and the RHS winter veg collection (120 plug plants and a pack of seeds) is ordered. For your information, though:

1) Green fly are cunts
2) Scotts/MiracleGro are cunts*
3) Cats are cunts**
4) Sciarid flies are cunts

That is all.

* For the lawyers/lawyer-fearing: big chunks of coal, bark and fucking granite in bags of compost, symptoms of very high potassium content in the tomato plants in the growbags. Worst, the sciariad larvae seem to be in both - we've found it and one of the first google results for "small black fly soil" is someone complaining to and being answered and refunded by Scotts.

** Though the one we caught this morning was hilarious; we put bean netting over the back bed to stop the little cunts shitting on it, but it tiptoed over it and stared at us while squatting on the single small patch we missed. Hel threw a sandal at it. It tried to charge away, got tangled in the netting, tried to leap over the fence, was yanked back down by the netting, charged off the other way behind the shed and managed to scale 7 feet of chicken wire we put up as extra dissuasion. Bet the cunt still comes back though - automatic water sentry gun and ultrasonic things are going on order now.

Ooh, oh! I have a green chilli in the kitchen, will take a photo later.

Agree about greenfly, we seem to have some whitefly too, they are annoying.

I now have 3 gherkins, experimentally picked because we realised we actually have no idea how to tell they're ready. Right size and colour, firm, but covered in spines which I wasn't expecting.

There are tomatoes! The strawberries and rhubarb are about done for the year! Some of the potatoes may be ready (or just dead)! The garlic is ruined! The radishes are going nicely! The onions are swelling! The beans and cucumbers are creeping! The courgettes are teeny tiny! We have a few bell and banana peppers ripening!

The winter veg collection arrived and Hel potted them all yesterday (120 plants arrived bundled as naked plugs into pressurised, modified environments)... though if I have haemochromatosis I'm not sure how many of the leeks, broccolli, sprouts and kale I'll be able to eat.

Also after months of getting taller and taller but not being eager, the jalapeno plants have exploded into more than a dozen fruits each. The hot wax, fresno, anaheim and cayenne have a few fruits ripening through yellowy to orange. The tabascos are still lazy. A fresno was ripening but then started rotting so I picked it, rescued the few little bits I could and roasted them. Tasty, but not hot.

I've forgotten the seventh variety again. No wait, rokita. They've got a few ripening fruit as well. The chilli food... it may have encouraged flowering. Hasn't stopped the fuckers growing upwards, though. Jesus.

A weak soap solution (eg Fairy) sprayed onto the surface of the soil seems to kill the sciarid flies, though it may also cause the plants to drop flowers - we lost loads in the few days after spraying. Bearing that in mind, and also that after a week of almost no flies there are now billions again (larvae must've matured) we're going to buy some nematodes to tackle the root (ho ho) of the problem.

I've got early spuds all ready to lift, and some salad spuds that'll be ready pretty soon. Tomatoes are slow this year - first fruits are just about appearing. As always, I have tons of chillis, but it'll be another month probably before they're ripe. Shallots are ready to lift, I reckon - or close to it.

If your potato plants have flowered and are now dying off, then they're most certainly ready to lift.

It's our earlies (well, they're probably maris peer, and we don't remember if they're earlies or not) in the allotment that have experienced foliage death - the ones in the growing compost bags at home are fine.

We've got a fair few tomatoes on the 9 plants in the greenhouse, but only 4 or 5 are ripe/nearly ripe. The tumblers in the hanging baskets outside have fucking hated this weather - there's one tomato between the two.

Oh, and the second batch of chillis - another 40 plants - have done much better; much more compact plants (all less than a foot tall) that nonetheless are flowering. Hel planted those into final pots yesterday as well. We've put those into plain dirt and will chilli food them, rather than using growing compost, to see if that helps the fruit/foliage ratio. (I think) It's mostly the fact there's a load more heat/light than the first batch had.

Talking to Hel at lunch, apparently the tumblers have loved the last week and are now sprouting fruit. We're going to move them into the greenhouse now it's emptying of seedlings (and buy a temporary plastic walk-in one for storing chilli plants at the allotment!) to see if we can encourage them.

Hel is convinced she's going to hate raw gherkin because she doesn't like pickled gherkins, despite them being a variety of cucumber bred for firm flesh (ie good for pickling) and her being cucumber's number one fan.

First signs of tiny green tomatoes are present and correct at Cavey Manor - yay.

(Feckin' late blight took all my plants last year, just as the fruit was growing really nicely. Have gone for grafted plants this year, in the hope that these are more resistant...)

Raw gherkins are nice. Green fresnos are alright - a definite salad pepper, and probably better ripe. The first three tomatoes were gorgeous.

My grandad once grew melons, he used my grandma's bra to support them. "postman got 'ell of a shock"

Advice, how do I get rid of slugs without killing my pets? Fuckers ate most of my plants last year and I wish to have my revenge.

There's plenty of pet safe pellets out there. Or, if your stuff is in pots, wrap copper wire round the top of the pot. Beer traps work with some success too.

Caught me out many a time.

Bastard chilli plants are still dropping loads of flowers. Still, better they drop flowers than fruit, which is what they seem to do.

Get some frogs. Now we have frogs the slug population seems to have declined quite significantly.

We seem to have multiple frogs now - I know there's at least one because I accidentally kicked it and it leaping out of the way scared the crap out of me.

I have no frogs

Kermit scares away the rats with his arse?

Points for effort, I must say.

Must be a hell of a mess to scare those sort of rats away.

Exciting chilli update!

• It turns out that Hungarian Hot Wax at the "pale yellow with slightest hint of red" stage are a) sweet, b) slightly fruity and c) unexpectedly hot in the seeds and white flesh. Not blinding hot, but a bearable, persistent tingle in the mouth after eating a raw 1mm slice. We have many of these sizeable fruits at this stage. Excellent.
• A Fresno in the kitchen went from "solid green like all the others" to "9/10 brilliant red" literally overnight. Bizarre, given the shit weather recently. We have many, many that have not done this yet.
• A Cayenne's done the same. Likewise we have many that haven't done this.
• The Tabascos are flowering! And there are fruits appearing! Including one 1cm long chilli which hopefully will ripen and not drop off!
• The second batch of plants have not only been flowering but now have actual real chillis on them, despite being all of a foot tall.
• I continue to collect dead flowers from all the plants - about 3 dozen from just the 8 plants at the allotment last night
• Last night we put sciarid nematodes into all the soil. Stupid cunting flies.

We have literally by far the largest bell pepper that I've ever seen, and I've spent time in rustic Italy and Cyprus (ie places where the locals get to buy the good stuff that they don't ship to the stupid unaware Britishers). If a cunting slug gets to that one I'm going to be most upset (despite pellets liberally strewn they've got to at least 50% so far, and they're not being hugely productive plants). It hasn't shown signs of ripening yet, which is peculiar because a wrinkled runty one in the same greenhouse has also done the "overnight ripening" thing.

2012 season! Having gone so over the top last year in an anxious fit of lacking confidence and knowledge - something like 76 viable chilli plants - I determined to plant far fewer this year. So, yesterday I sowed 5 seeds of each variety to allow a couple of failures in each while getting a good number of chillis.

Unfortunately, we also went to the garden centre and I got a bit "kid in a sweet shop", meaning I now have 11 varieties - 55 potential plants. Added are habanero, padron, a purple one I don't remember the name of, and naga jolokia. It was Helen made me buy that, I was going for milder types.

Plus I've started trying to wake the plants I over-wintered; 27-ish after whittling down through mould and rot and most still seem to have good root balls. Which reminds me, I need to buy a load more chilli food.

I put 25 pepper seeds in too, again including a purple one.

Then there's white and red onions, red shallots, 3 types of potato (laid out to chit), aubergines, gherkins, cucumbers, garlic (already in and doing well), saffron crocuses (down last year, doing well but no flowers expected this year), millions of peas and beans, courgettes, butternut squash, half a dozen varieties of tomato...

Turns out £16 is still the cheapest on Amazon for a litre of Chilli Focus... but someone's doing 5L for £22! I've still not finished the litre I bought last year, but I was terrible at using it properly. Going to have to try harder now.

This year I've decided I can't be arsed, and pretty much won't be growing anything.

Spent most of the day in our garden yesterday, lovely to have the sunshine again.

Moved a hoster / bamboo / early wildflowers into different spots (and pots) and had a good tidy up.

Petrol lawnmower wouldn't start, so that's off for a service (well overdue).

I really enjoy pottering about in the back, just need to make a modelling bench now.

Best place to mulch your mum.

Ooh, and mushrooms! We got oyster, chestnut and button mushroom windowsill kits a couple of months ago, and got a quick burst from each then nothing... except the chestnut pack is now exploding with them, and it looks like the button kit will soon do the same. Nothing new from the oyster ones yet, unfortunately.