Grow Your Own

I have been so pleased with the pickings from my allotment this year! 

I've been pleased with the pickings from your allotment too! 

Pumpkins and winter squashes from my garden have been great this year!
I had a blue bananan squash that I roasted with maple syrup that was glorious. Boston squash = heaven.
Pumpkins! 
I have got some wee butternut squashes too, under the mini polytunnel. 

Mmmm.   

I finally decided to pull up the potatoes from the allotment before the ground gets too hard to do anything with it.   I reckon we pulled up about 40 kilos, if not more, of potatoes (Purple Shetland, Pink Firs, Roosters, and a white one I forgot what it was) and then built up a storage box. The tatties are all snug in their beds of straw for then winter. 

Oca is ready!
Also still pulling up carrots, turnips, beets, cabbages, pak choi, rocket, and leeks.   

I'm looking into growing some herbs/veg on my window ledge this year.  I'm guessing it's far too early to start anything now, but I wanted to see what sort of things I could grow, and start to plan.

If anyone can recommend good window-ledge gardening websites, let me know, as I'm struggling to find any good information on how to get started.

Thanks!

ETA: We already have two outdoor planting troughs from B&Q, with a capacity of 35L each. (full dimensions are 20 height x 20width x 89 length), so if I can use those to grow anything, that'd be ideal!

No, it's not too early to start some things from seed, I don't think - phatbeetle, what do you think?

I'm planning to get some chilli seeds going soon - this month. I planted them so late last year - like not until May/June? I still have a couple chilli plants going that I brought indoors & they are still yielding chilies for us, but I'd like to have had those more last summer so I'm starting waaay earlier this year. 

Plus from last year's attempt, I only ended up with Fresco and Apache chilies, as these are the only ones that thrived for me on that first go.

But I am hoping to get some Serranos and Ciliegia Piccante ones going this time as well - I have seeds for those four varieties. I picked these specifically for the size of the plants & the indicated chili heat - as we couldn't grow them outdoors up here. 

If you're just growing indoors, then yeah, not too early to sow seeds at all.  You basically can have a 'year round garden' on your windowsill.   

It can be hard still as there isn't a lot of light still this time of year, so make sure you choose a window with plenty of light (south facing if possible) and also make sure you don't have any draughts or frosty windows or anything like that. 

Don't try and overcrowd your plants -and look for varieties of seeds that are suited to container gardening as they will thrive better.     

I've successfully grown all kinds of herbs, rocket, lettuce, spinach, tomatoes, chillies, and full size peppers indoors on windowsills. You do need to be vilgilant about aphids and other beasties on tomatoes, chillies, and peppers though. You can put marigolds in amongst your veg or spray with a mixture of oil/soap/water to get rid of them.   

Good luck!

 

I meant to say this weeks ago, but my aunt got me a little garden box for my roof for Christmas! So, I'll be planting some stuff in there in the Spring, though not sure what just yet. Thinking tomatoes and strawberries will do well in there...

I meant to say this weeks ago, but my aunt got me a little garden box for my roof for Christmas! So, I'll be planting some stuff in there in the Spring, though not sure what just yet. Thinking tomatoes and strawberries will do well in there...

Awesome!!

For those who like to grow your own chilies from seed, it's time to start propogating them - they have a long growing time.  They will need, ideally,a warming propogater, but a propogater on a sunny windowsill will do too.

Up here in the North Pole, its a bit too early to get stuff in the ground, but those down south may be able to start getting in peas and lettuces in

I'm itching to get in my garden and grow! We had a lovely day yesterday and I really just wanted to dig, instead of being in work!
 

For those who like to grow your own chilies from seed, it's time to start propogating them - they have a long growing time.  They will need, ideally,a warming propogater, but a propogater on a sunny windowsill will do too.

Thank you for the reminder! I started some peppers from a kit last weekend; they currently live indoors in a plastic "sun room".  Hopefully after they germinate it's warm enough for me to move them outside, as it's currently taking up space on my dining room table...(No windowsill, just a big outdoor ledge.)

So I think my peppers are dead.  My OH kindly put them outside one day to let them get some direct sun, but then left them out overnight.  I guess it got a bit too cold for them, as when I brought them in the next day they were all wilted, some leaves have gone a pale yellow/white and shrivelled. They aren't exactly coming back to life after being kept indoors and watering for the past few days... Any ideas?

I think they're done for.  So I'll be giving it another go, and have just ordered some more seeds  (what a way to spend a Saturday night!).  Trying again with cherry tomatoes, mini bell peppers, marigolds, calendula, and basil, to go with the mint and chives I've got.

How are we doing growers?  Well underway here, happy to see my tatties popping up.  Overwinted cabbages and broccolis getting huge. Strawberries flowering. More cabbages, beets, turnips, swedes, radishes, lettuces, carrots, parsnips, onions, leeks, oca, chard, spinach, chicory, peas, mangetout and brussels sprouts in.  Cauliflowers, brocollis, kohlrabi, more cabbages,runner beans, etc to go in this weekend.   

We've got a good bunch of stuff in our garden.

Sprouts:
- I've got a bit of ginger growing. Bought it from the store and it just started growing a green shoot so I left it. It's maybe 20cm tall. I just need to get some soil to grow it indoors (too cold outside for ginger in London from what I've read)

Planted & sprouting:
- Tomatoes (both yellow and red cherry toms)
- Sunflower
- Poppies (red and white from seeds I've collected - the reds are from FIL's house and he was surprised we had them since he'd forgotten we collected them last autumn from the poppies that grow wild in his garden)
- Basil (from two sources - some we bought and some that were given to us by our host in Italy - but I think they're the same or similar variety)
- A bunch of tree seeds we've collected on walks and at parks

Doing well:
- Peas
- Salad leaves
- Potatoes (red and white/yellow from a friend)
- Fuchsia I took from a cutting of a fuchsia DH found and adopted

Flowering and fruiting:
- Snapdragons (from seeds I collected along our road)
- Alpine strawberries (we've already got some fat red berries that need picking but they're tinnnnnny - about the size of my fingernail!)
- Rose (one little bud so far!)

Duracell plants- they keep going and going and going:
- Several avocado trees
- Fuchsia
- Random trees & shrubs
- Passion Flower vine I took from a cutting a few years back

This year will be so much easier to water everything. We got a hosepipe that hooks up to our kitchen faucet. We've got one hose that goes from the sink around the backs of the sofas and ends at the door and another that sits outside. When we need to water something, we hook it up to the sink, connect the two hoses and let 'er rip. So much simpler than filling milk bottles from the kitchen sink and watering with those!!!!

How does your garden grow TravellingFrog?

Have you had better luck PickledSakura?

Any other growers having success?

I was asked a few weeks ago to be on BBC Radio Scotland's Kitchen Garden, but I was out of the country at the time and couldn't do it.      But hopefully they will ask again soon!!

I'm happily enjoying lettuce, peas, onions, beetroot, radishes, spinach, chard, kale (never ending kale), strawberries and got my first calabrese broccolli  - I was chuffed to bits with this one!  I think I will have a corgette ready this weekend as well.  Raspberries and red currants , first early potatoes, mangetout, turnips, cabbages, and more onions almost ready.  Other stuff ticking away and growing!
Love this time of year!!!

My house has had strawberries (which were turned into strawberry sauce for a cheesecake I made), salad leaves, peas, green beans, radishes, beetroots, carrots, cabbage, spinach and tomatoes! Still waiting for the tomatoes to ripen...