Pigeon_Droppings2
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droopsnoot
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I sowed them in three bands - one band was from some seeds that were "best before" last year sometime, the other two bands were from two different seed packets that are in date. This is the view today, I can't remember which end is which, nor how wide the bands were, so I don't really know which these are. I don't think they're radically different types anyway, I'll settle for having some lettuce of any type so hopefully they'll go further. Don't know whether to plant them in the garden or move to one or more bigger pots.
Onoff
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My beans...some strong plants about 6" high, others a bit small. All planted the same time. Wasn't sure whether to put them in now or wait until after the next couple of days of rain forecast?
Thus I put just the really strong ones in. Gave the weaker ones a good organic feed and left for a bit.
Lots of little weed type plants I had to take out with tweezers:
Also put 8 sprouting potatoes out of the fridge in the little bit I've dug over. No idea if they'll grow. Chucked a handful of blood and bone in each hole. Halved the spuds and coated the cut face in crushed up chalk / water slurry and let dry. Something to do with lime someone said earlier? Popped them in and covered over.
Thus I put just the really strong ones in. Gave the weaker ones a good organic feed and left for a bit.
Lots of little weed type plants I had to take out with tweezers:
Also put 8 sprouting potatoes out of the fridge in the little bit I've dug over. No idea if they'll grow. Chucked a handful of blood and bone in each hole. Halved the spuds and coated the cut face in crushed up chalk / water slurry and let dry. Something to do with lime someone said earlier? Popped them in and covered over.
Onoff
In the land of the unfinished project I am King!
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It was something I made for my Dad, many years ago when I could easily get the stuff.
He was the avid gardener. Up until then he'd always harvest been sticks from an adjacent woods. When he became infirm I decided to have a go and dismantled and brought it home.
Luckily I like beans. I've cut down this year and just grown 32 plants from seed of the best cropping variety (Czar). If I have surplus I give it away or take up the pub.
If I'd have had the time this year I'd have grown more varieties.
It looks like the bens are too dry in those Papier Mache pots .
Ensure when the beans are placed into their final positions , that all the pot tops are at least 1/2 " below the ground surface, or else the soils water will wicked away through the pot tops and cause poor stunted plants till they get well established in their root ball . That could mean a delay of thre weks beans or more if it is hot drying & breezy .
A few hours soaking is far more effective than a dripple of four to ten seconds out of a watering can or hose pipe spray head , plus when there is prolonged precipitation the leaves & stems also take in nutrient enriched falling water , oxygen & CO2 as well as pollutants collected by the rain as it falls .
Back in 1982 when my brother ( a copper for 8 years) , had his first mortgaged house he got me to rototill the big back garden in the autumn and put a couple of tons of quality well composted muck out of a retired Vets casualty recovery yard & stables .
I nearly wet myself laughing when I visited him in the late April to see how his garden had grown , he had sown half a packet ( 250 seeds ) of greyhound spring cabbage and half a packet ( another 250 seeds ) of golden ball cabbages at he rate of one seed every two feet with two feet between rows in half the garden I'd till for him . Trouble is he used a lawn sprinkler on a time clock to water it three times for an hour in every 24 hrs .
He'd got cabbages three foot high and almost two foot across , it was a struggle to wade through them . I had to explain to him what successional sowing meant , why & how it was used to get crops throughout the year
These days, I use my bottomless seed pots and labels with the contents and date sown. I put a single seed in the lightly compacted tube in a pencil point depth hole & cover it with a pinch horticultural vermiculite then gently water it well and stand half a dozen sown tubes in a used strawberry punnet , that way even if the tubes get mixed up I should know what is in each tube .
Then when the plants are say 40mm high push the contents up out from the bottom of the tube, as a well developed plug of compost & strong growing plant . Making for very little root disturbance and then pop the plant in a carefully dibbered to size flat bottomed hole in the veg bed . then water then in well.
When you have seeds that have germinated like yours you need to wait till the second set of leaves are well developed and use say a tea spoon handle gently tease the plant out by lifting it on the spoon and gently holding on a true leaf.
Don't handle the plant stem otr seed leaf lest you body heat , skin acids as well as pressure of finger & thumb can easily kill or injure the plant .
droopsnoot
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^ Cheers. I was starting to wonder when I should move them on. I'm intending to put them into a larger pot or tray rather than directly into the vegetable patch - too much chance the cat will use them as a toilet there, and not much space between the potatoes that I keep thinking I've cleared out.
I'm far less organised than you are in terms of labelling stuff, but in this case I've tried lettuce several times before and got nothing from them, so it was a case of just sticking some in a pot in case they'd do something. The old seeds were literally put in here (and a few directly in the veg patch, which have done nothing at all) as it seemed better than just throwing them in the bin. Disappointed about the middle "band" as they were in date, but they were from Wilkos so will be nearing the end of that.
I'm far less organised than you are in terms of labelling stuff, but in this case I've tried lettuce several times before and got nothing from them, so it was a case of just sticking some in a pot in case they'd do something. The old seeds were literally put in here (and a few directly in the veg patch, which have done nothing at all) as it seemed better than just throwing them in the bin. Disappointed about the middle "band" as they were in date, but they were from Wilkos so will be nearing the end of that.
Slugs ,mails and all manner of grubs , insects & beetles just love munching on the sugar rich , tender full of juices newly emerging plants .. try a proprietary pelleted slug killer
Till I started heat sterilizing my seed compost using vermiculite & slug pellets in the greenhouse I was losing trays & trays of emerging seeds
Till I started heat sterilizing my seed compost using vermiculite & slug pellets in the greenhouse I was losing trays & trays of emerging seeds
prepman
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Well just threw a load of finger chilli seeds into a plant pot. Nearly all germinated. I keep the chilli in fridge in a brown paper-bag and them dried out. Preserving them for cooking. Whether the cold help them germinated? Didn't expect much.
Putting seeds in a fridge so they are deeply dormant then bring them out , soak in clean water for 24 hrs then sowing them is called stratifying them . The re.warming and soaking stimulates the growth node inside the seed.
Not only does this work for a lot of seeds it also works for strawberry roots ( a couple of small poly bags worth in the fridge for a few weeks ) with growing nodes on them . often giving a decent crop in the same year you plant out in early spring .
String the chilies on button thread loops and hang them to dry in the kitchen , snip off one when you want it and also put a couple driedones in a small bottle of olive decent oil for a few months so you get really hot frying oils or flavourings etc.
Not only does this work for a lot of seeds it also works for strawberry roots ( a couple of small poly bags worth in the fridge for a few weeks ) with growing nodes on them . often giving a decent crop in the same year you plant out in early spring .
String the chilies on button thread loops and hang them to dry in the kitchen , snip off one when you want it and also put a couple driedones in a small bottle of olive decent oil for a few months so you get really hot frying oils or flavourings etc.
droopsnoot
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I've moved a few of my lettuce on to a larger tray now, to see if anything comes of them. I'm not sure they will do well as I think the roots were quite entangled as the seeds were planted so close together and I may have damaged some of them. I was using a spoon and a bit of wood to separate them so as to not touch them directly, and I'm about as useful with those as I am with chopsticks. Still, plenty more still in the original tray if these go nowhere. I'll have to move the rest on soon, but once you give them enough space to grow they take up quite a lot of space.
You can start such seeds in plastic egg boxes in the recesses and lift out a plug plant to transplant it with little or no root disturbance /
droopsnoot
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I'll keep these things in mind - I might start some more off, but be a little less generous with the seeds next time. Overnight one of the ones I transplanted to the larger tray seems to be a little more upright.
I put a Freecycle aquarium air pump in a sealable Tupperware box put a pair of nipples in the side and connected the air out to one and a thin tube to the other sealed the power cable entry up then sealed the box up to get a vacuum pump , Made up a biro outer tube with the thin tube off a WD40 spray glued in it ,stuck the air pump tube in it and drilled a 1/8 hole in the side of the pen body
When switched on I can pick up single small seeds take your finger off the hole to drop the seed precisely where you want it . Eventually I used a 1 mm brass tube ( B&Q) as the WD40 tube was a little too small bored ,
I've sown oodles of different seeds like this into small individual seed tubes over the last 15 years .
When switched on I can pick up single small seeds take your finger off the hole to drop the seed precisely where you want it . Eventually I used a 1 mm brass tube ( B&Q) as the WD40 tube was a little too small bored ,
I've sown oodles of different seeds like this into small individual seed tubes over the last 15 years .
Greeves246
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Have two 205l blue plastic drums collecting water off the workshop and shed roofs but had run them dry in the dry spell so picked up two more today at £10 ea. watched a YouTube video on removing top to use as a lid so I can access the inside to put taps on. Hopefully that will be enough if we get another dry stretch.
droopsnoot
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I've got two water butts, one from the roof of the lean-to on the back of the house, and the other from the actual greenhouse. It's only just occurred to me (now that they're full again) that they're the wrong way round - the larger one should be on the lean-to where it can receive from the whole of the roof of the 10' x 6'-ish thing, and the smaller one should be on the 8' x 6' where it's only getting water from one half of a smaller roof. It obviously didn't occur to either parent, either, when they installed them. Can't swap them now, though, until we get another long dry spell for them to empty out.
I was looking at putting overflow pipes in them - one is close to a drain, but the other is at the bottom of the garden where there are no drains so I think I'll have to leave that to just overflow naturally. It doesn't feel right, but it's been doing it for decades. I salvaged a length of white PVC pipe but now I'm thinking that making something out of 15mm copper pipe offcuts will look nicer, especially when it starts to age. Just have to figure out a way to do the corners.
I was looking at putting overflow pipes in them - one is close to a drain, but the other is at the bottom of the garden where there are no drains so I think I'll have to leave that to just overflow naturally. It doesn't feel right, but it's been doing it for decades. I salvaged a length of white PVC pipe but now I'm thinking that making something out of 15mm copper pipe offcuts will look nicer, especially when it starts to age. Just have to figure out a way to do the corners.
OJCar
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Has anybody got a neat way of attaching down pipes to Aluminium framed greenhouses that have the built in gutter?
We had plastic adaptors that slotted into the end of the gutter but they have UV rotted
and some have fallen apart so back to balancing acts to collect the water into the butts.
We had plastic adaptors that slotted into the end of the gutter but they have UV rotted
and some have fallen apart so back to balancing acts to collect the water into the butts.
