• Everything other than hot peppers. Questions, discussion, and grow logs. Cannabis grow pics are only allowed when posted from a legal juridstiction.

Comptine's Veggie Glog

skullbiker said:
I wouldn't trim them back any shorter than the length of your index finger. Your's may just need better light. If you put them out I would go through a bit of hardening off to prepare them for extended cool temps. They actually grow best in cooler temps. Also, they don't have much for roots so I try to water the top soil some until they get a good start.
I posted a pic of some of mine here:
http://thehotpepper.com/index.php?/topic/59188-ONIONS%21%21%21
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for the tips. I've been following your veggie glog, your onions seem to be a little further along than mine still. As for the light there really isn't much I can do, all my plants rely on natural sunlight, and the windows are now crowded, with peppers and tomatoes and other things already. 
 
Got my sweet peppers started today, they are all Russian varieties, one I don't have a picture for, but three will be purple and one orange. Growing all of these as a novelty. 
 

 
I wanted to share my little life hack, my seed box. It's an old shoe box, and I have made partitioners with cardboard. I taped a few loose seeds onto the lid. It works really well, and it's essentially free to make.
 
Update time again. The temperatures seem to slowly be rising, I'm thinking that once it starts hitting 6C at night consistently I might be able to start moving plants out to the conservatory full time. There are a few 6C nights predicted, as well as 1C, so it's still a bit soon. Wishful thinking has me hoping for 2-3 weeks until greenhouse plant out. In 2-3 weeks I should be able to start cucumbers and courgettes hopefully too. 
 
The repotted tomatoes seem to look so much better now, as do the ones that are still in trays. They are getting to a decent size now. I almost had one casualty, it looked like the stem broke, but it's still alive so maybe it was able to quickly shoot out some new roots along the stem or something. 

 
The aubergines are setting true leaves, that's also a welcome sight. 

 
I gave the greenhouse interior a scrub today, to get in ready for spring. I also moved all my large pots out. 

 
This gave me an opportunity to see how accurate my plan sketch was, and I was able to squeeze in a second large pot between the pots I use for my cucumbers. The two square ones are both 14 litres each. Does anyone know what pot size you need for growing aubergines? I'm thinking maybe I could pit two plants in one pot maybe? Or will that make it a little crowded for them? 

 
The onions are looking really sad, none is standing straight, which makes me think that maybe they don't do that as seedlings. They have a second 'leaf' now though. The leeks are coming along really nicely, I'm really happy with their progress, they too have a second 'leaf'. 
 
This is where it's at right now. Oh, and I gave all my raised bed a turn over today, they look much nicer now. I'll top them off with some fresh peat before I start planting things in them, but I'm really happy with the looks right now. 
 
I forgot to include a picture of my raised beds. One of my garlic bulbs has failed to fire, and it breaks my heart. 
 
Got my kale and cabbages started now. 

 
Tomatoes are doing great. 

 
The onions are looking miserable. Their first 'leaf' has started wilting, I'm assuming it's the same as for normal plants that they do that, and that they are not dying. Could be wrong though. 

 
Leeks are getting tall too, looking forward to planting them out soon.
 
All of my tomato plants got gathered up so that I could organise them, because the great tomato plant giveaway is about to start. About half of them are leaving tonight. So I repotted the ones I could. The plan is to keep 14 cherry tomatoes and 10 large for myself. Keeping a few extra to give away to some other people later.
 

 
 
And i built a trellis! For my pole beans! Could not be more excited!!! I drilled in screws every 10cm (3 inches maybe?) at the top and bottom so that I can draw vertical strings later. The poles are 220cm long (7.2 feet), so roughly 180cm (5.9 feet) is above ground. I think it should be enough. Best part is that I got the wood for free, my friend's husband works in construction, so he took me to his workplace and cut the pieces up for me and everything. I'll add the string closer to plant out. 
 
 
Not a lot is happening at the moment. Tomatoes are growing, we started giving some away now. Peppers are growing too. Onions looking sad as ever. I did transplant my leeks though, into pots. I've seen someone else grow them in these exact pots, he did an experiment with 10 leeks in one pot, but seems to do 4 now. I'm experimenting with 4-6 in each pot. They've been out in the greenhouse 4 nights now, I did not harden them off at all, so we'll see how they do. I'll eventually move them outside when the weather gets better. 

 
I've been trying to find odd jobs to do in the garden, so I decided to start filling my pots up, to have it done, I mixed in various nutrients in the peat soil, most of them have perlite, blood and bone meal, neem powder, a bit of bat guano and a general veggie slow release fertiliser. I topped them off with just plain peat. 
 

 
I finally decided what to put in the two square pots, I'm thinking bush beans. So I started mine yesterday! I've got Red Anasazi, Zuni Gold, Calypso and Russian Negros. I'll probably start a few more later, I'm thinking of putting a few on our balcony as an experiment. 
 
Beans started popping up yesterday, so roughly 5 days. I think I'm still waiting for two to come up. Sowed a second batch today, mostly to give to people. Will do a third batch of the bush varieties as well I think. Once I figure how many I can actually fit. 
 

 
We decided to try growing things on our balcony, it gets half a day of sun, so it'll be mostly green things. I'm going to try growing beans up there, kale, maybe carrots, chard. Went to IKEA this weekend to pick up some boxes I'm turning into pots. 
 

 
Carrots were sown this weekend, but nothing has come up quite yet, it's a bit soon.
 
May kicked off with beautiful weather here in Sweden, full sun and temps getting close to 20C, night temps have been 4C at the lowest. I've had my plants spent the nights in the conservatory now. Our last frost was supposed to be May 1, and the forecast for the next 10 days looks lovely. Things are being potted up. 
 
I had bad luck with peas sown directly in the ground last year, so this year I'm starting them in pots. The pea trellis went up and I've strung the bean trellis. In a few days I can plant out my first runner beans, I've not sown too many yet in case the weather would take a turn for the worse. In front of the beans I've sown carrots and a little spinach, now I'm playing a game with the carrot called 'veggie or weed?'. 

 
Dad cut the grass for the first time this year, so I've covered everything with clippings. My garlic bed. I've lost a few plants, I can't figure out why. I've seen some ants around, could they be causing it? 

 
This is my problem bed, I call it that because it's been taken over by weeds. What I did was cover it in clippings, and part of it in black plastic. I'm thinking that I'll just cut a hole out later to plant things in there. Most likely chard and pak choi, I've got a few started in pots now. The uncovered end has parsley and mint from last year growing there. 

 
Got some of the greenhouse plants covered in clippings too. Now, can someone chip in here, I know that beans are not supposed to have high nitrogen, and I haven't fed the soil with any, but I did cover it with clippings just now to keep the water in. Bad idea? 

 
7 out of 11 large tomatoes potted up into 12 litre buckets. I've only got one more 12 litre one left, the rest will be 9 litre. I try to plant them a little deeper. I also thought that I'll give them a chance to grow a bit more and then I'll top up the soil so that it's almost to the edge. So far I'm only bottom watering, and there's a generous amount of perlite in the soil too, as well as bone and blood meal, some neem powder and epsom salt. Last year all they had was the peat soil they were in, stepping up my game! 

 
Some of the tomatoes I need to plant up. A few I'm saving to give away to friends. 


 
Various seedlings, at the far left I've got peppers. Got chard, silver and yellow, in the seed starter trays. In the air pots are two of my aubergine plants, I did not realise how slow they grew, but they finally seem to be taking off. The little bush below them is a mini pomegranate, it suffered quite the aphid attack over winter, so I'm happy to still have it. To the right we have the cucumbers coming along. 

 
Got my leeks and tomatoes in pots outdoors. The leeks seem to have gotten taller in the last two weeks, but I'm still only seeing two leaves on all of them, is this normal?

 
My little shelf in the greenhouse. At the far end we have two pots of leeks, one early and one late variety, Lancia and Lungo d'Inverno. Coriander. The rest are kale plants and two cabbage plants. 
 
So much stuff going on inside this glog! How did I miss this earlier, keep us updated everything looks great and love your updates!
 
dragonsfire said:
Lots of blossoms her too with the hot weather, smells wonderful!
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Damn hayfever though, can't smell anything as soon as I go outside. It sure is pretty. I'm looking forward to the fruit, forever forward thinking. 
 
Chilima said:
So much stuff going on inside this glog! How did I miss this earlier, keep us updated everything looks great and love your updates!
Click to expand...
 
Haha, good thing you found it now! I pretty much only grow edible stuff. My mum does the flowers, but I honestly have no interest in them. I like my plants to be useful. Also, nothing beats the taste of home grown veg, everything tastes better.
 
Right, I've not been as good updating this thread. We've had some absolutely amazing weather here lately so I've just spent a lot of time outside. I'm going to try and make up for it, a lot of things are happening in the garden now. 
 
I'm trying out a balcony grow, so far I've only got three boxes up here. Two are filled with beans and one with carrots. I read that they can grow with as little as 4-6 hours of direct sun. 

 
Most of the carrots seem to have come up, so far so good. 

 
The bread beans are actually getting ready to flower, I missed this earlier.

 
Moving on, I still have some plants in the conservatory that I need to do something with. Some I'm saving to plant over at a friend's allotment, some I just haven't found space for. The aubergines will go into the greenhouse, and they look like they need repotting soon. 

 
I've got large full size tomatoes on the conservatory, and they will stay here, since the roof is much higher than it would be in the greenhouse. I spotted the beginnings of flowers on one of them the other day. 

 
The greenhouse is doing well too. The cherry tomatoes are keeping up with the large ones, and I've spotted flowers on a few of them now. 

 
Along the wass I have my cucumbers, six boxes with 4 plants in each. We're going to be loaded with fruit later. I also have two pots with 3 bean plants in each. The orange ond black pots closer to the middle of the greenhouse contain kale, as soon as I've bough a net to keep the flies out I'll move them to the balcony as well. 

 
I believe they too are starting to produce flowers.

 
And I have 5 courgette plants that seem to be exploding with growth now. 

 
Could I get bump so I can post the pictures from my raised beds? 
 
Cheers! 
 
Onto raised beds! 
 
I caved and bought onion sets, mine from seeds look miserable. 

 
This is another early leek, I planted this nearly two months after the first, the idea is to get a somewhat continuous harvest. They were looking a little short and cramped, so I potted them up for now. I've also got starts for a winter variety sown at the same time, but I haven't done anything with those yet, I'm hoping to free up a raised bed at some point for them. 

 
It's hard to capture on the phone camera, but the first leeks I planted are finally developing leek looking leaves. The first ones just all looked like onion strands, these are starting to widen out.

 
At the far side we have my garlic which is looking great. And then I have a bed filled with radishes, they don't seem to do great in the summer heat so once these are done I'll probably plant some lettuce or maybe the leeks in here. Haven't decided yet. 

 
Half of this bed is herbs and the back half is beets. I've got three types of thyme in here over four plants, 3 rosemary plants I got in IKEA, dill and parsley that I sowed this year. 

 
This is my pea bed. I have pea in the back. In the left corner I have spinach and I recently sowed rocket, and to the right I have three rows of carrots. 

 
This is my bean bed, I've been planting beans out over the space of 3 weeks I believe, so this will mean that the harvest is spread out I hope. In front of it I've got three rows of carrots. Now, something annoying in happening here, I have a week called field horsetail, which spreads through long roots, they are so long it's not worth trying to pull them up. It also spreads through releasing spores. Only way to beat them is to get to the shoots before they can release spores, and deplete the nutrients that are stored in the roots, but this can take a long time. It's extremely frustrating as they popped up around the carrots, and I keep damaging carrots when pulling it up. 

 
Right, that's it for now I believe. 
 
I was repotting my aubergines into their final containers, finally. 
 
Most of them had been in 1 litre air pots. Two of them were moved into a 6 litre air pot, only bought two of them, they are new for this year, I'm trying them out. 

 
Nice roots there. 

 
If the airpots do well this year I might have to buy some more later. I like the look of them at least. 
 
That's an impressive garden you have. Beautiful! My son tried to grow some beans this year. They didn't look good. I think they got some kind of disease. I trimmed them back. I will try and find a isolated spot for them. That's great you have fruit tree's. Keep up the good work. Looks like fun.
 
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