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Its July in the garden and all is well. Pretty much everything is doing well and nothing else has gone to the big garden in the sky.
Ive ignored all guidance on the corn and am still growing 4 of them in the same pot. The peas and mange tout are doing amazingly well, climbing up their little frame and sprouting wonderful pods. Ate some of the peas during the week, think they need a bit longer.
The courgette, Butternut squash and tomato are yet to do anything exciting, except the tomato is now about 4 foot tall.
Everyone in the house is amazed that I have not killed anything yet, and the garden of death has had a metamorphosis into the garden of life.

July 2nd, 2009 | Category: David's Farm, Growing around the UK, Phil's first garden, Uncategorized | Comments (1)

The sweetcorn I bought came in a small pot with 4 plants in it, so I just planted this in a bigger pot and hoped they would grow. But Chris’s mum jean gave me a great tip yesterday, which was they need to be planted in a grid with lots of space in order to pollinate correctly. So this weeks task is to put them into the tubs and position them at the back of the garden in a grid. I also found this great page that tells you all about growing sweetcorn 

May 31st, 2009 | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

So Ive finally moved house, and now have some real room to start growing some more. Not much flowerbed, but lots of room for little pots, and a few large pots already in place.

So ive not wasted any time and have started planting out some of the pots I had, also have planted some more seeds in the shed at the end of the garden that has a plastic clear roof. Hopefully it will be someway towards a greenhouse.

Below are the current collection that are growing

May 23rd, 2009 | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

I bought two cucumber plants, one in somerset, one in wimbledon, and when I arrived at my new house planted them into one of the old troughs with a mix of old and new compost. I placed them around the side of the house out of the wind, but also out of the sun. Two days later they were not looking too good.

 

After getting the usual jokes from my housemates, “welcome to the garden of death” etc, I decided to move them around to the sunny garden.

Left them out over night and came back the next evening to find they had gone, I later discovered they had been buried by what I can only presume is cats or foxes? They are now officially dead. First casualty of the year. boooo.

May 23rd, 2009 | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

I’ve been buying everything from amazon lately, from shoes to film projectors, but I have found its limit, Onion Sets. Until today I did not know I needed an onion set, but apparently its the thing to do in autumn.
Apparently you get the onion half grown and you plant it in Autumn and then it grows over the winter, Awesome! I eventually found some on ebay and have got 50 of the little beauties on the way.

October 13th, 2008 | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

Looks like this is going to be the last hot weekend of the summer (and may in fact be the first hot weekend also) so I took the opportunity to see what is left on the roof terrace and harvest.
I could tell that the carrots looked a little odd from the top and they needed to be dug out rather than pulled, but I was never expecting what I found, curly carrots! J shaped carrots that it appear just decided to start growing the other way at some point, the pot would have had plenty more room to grow into, but they just appear to have taken it apon themselves to grow sideways, bless them!
Also the peppers are still in full growth with little ones still appearing, not too sure what to do about this, whether to leave outside or bring inside, will need to do some research.

October 11th, 2008 | Tags: carrots, curly carrots, harvest | Category: Phil's first garden | Comments (1)

I went out tonight just to check how the plants are doing, its a bit of a damp night, been raining lots.

I started pulling out some of the dead leaves under the courgette plants to give them a bit more room when shock horror, a little slug appeared, on looking around the plant it didn’t take long until i found another one of these buggers. 

Being up on the third floor I thought i was immune to these, oh how wrong I was. My first thought was I need some kind of preditor that eats slugs (as I dont like the taste of them) so looked it up. Apparently I need one of the following : Frogs, Toads, Snakes, Hedgehogs, Salamanders or Eastern box turtles? Does anyone know where I can get a Salamander?

September 9th, 2008 | Tags: slugs | Category: Phil's first garden | Comments (2)

I cheated and bought these peppers as a plant due to the lateness of the season, but will defo be growing from seed next year. This is the 2nd batch of peppers from the plant, they start off green then turn yellow, then I eat them. Not sure if this is usual or not. They taste great, and come in various sizes, would love to know how to get them to grow bigger all the time.

September 8th, 2008 | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

Given my lack of space on the roof terrace and the problems with watering, the natural step up is to get an allotment, this is harder than you would think.

There are no allotments available in the borough of Merton, the waiting lists range from 4 months to 10 years. The ones closest to me are 2 - 3 year waiting lists. I’m thinking of trying to find someone to share with, someone who needs a hand in exchange for a bit of space. Will keep you posted.

September 7th, 2008 | Tags: allotment, merton | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment