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courgettes :One good One bad

I planted these far too late, which means in early september they are still quite small, I also planted them too close together and did not thin out, which means they fought over the water and some would bare fruit and then suffer to support them with enough water and they would brown easily.

Having realised this I cut more than half the crop, which has allowed the courgettes to flourish, ive also watered this everyday (even if it has rained) , as the plants are in troughs they have no ground water to draw on, so dry very quickly.

So I’m currently despirate to get these up to harvesting size before the winter fully takes hold

September 7th, 2008 | Tags: courgettes, watering problems | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment

Sadly not all of the crop made it the harvest, in one of the wettest coolest summers ive every experienced in the UK a few of them actually needed more watering than I was giving, due to weekends away and a few too many nights out I lost some of the flock.

The rocket - provided some harvest, had an awesome peppery taste, but after being planted in april/may, was gone by July.

The lettuce - also was gone by July but not before it had produced some wonderful little bunches of lettuce leaves. The lettuce also suffered due to the high winds, they will need more shelter in the future.

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

The Lettuce and rocket - 2/3 weeks in

I had several packets of seeds from several sources, I bought a selection pack on ebay for £5 and my sister gave me a magazine with some on the front.

As i had limited space I decided on

1. Carrots

2. Lettuce

3. Radishes

4. Rocket

5. Courgette (zucchini)

All of which would have varying success over the coming months

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

I thought the green house was a wonderful idea and a sure fire way to encourage me to care for and grow vegetables, a stake in the ground of my determination. Unfortunately the stake in the ground was not strong enough as due to high winds the green house snapped in half and blew down onto mrs garcias roof terrace. Standing at mrs garcias front door asking for my green house back is not something i had envisaged at the start of this journey, and looking at the damaged caused to it, it was very apparent that the green house was no more. on to Plan B.

I mentioned to a friend that the plants would have to live outside, due to the green house blowing away, after the fits of laughter died down, she said something which i had not really been considering, which was that these types of plants had been surviving for millions of years outside, despite my best efforts to destroy them their most likely outcome is success and survival. Excited by this i continued.

September 7th, 2008 | Tags: green house, mrs garcia, plan b | Category: Phil's first garden | Leave a comment