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Saturday, March 21, 2009

Greenhouse gardening March

I really don’t know how I coped without my greenhouse. Six months after I cursed it roundly and retreated to the house to make tea and treacle tart for my other half – who then spent two days putting the 471 piece monster together while regularly being fortified with said tea and tart, I spend at least an hour a day in it.

Here’s what I’ve got going on:

• Three trays of broad beans
• One tray of native trees - a sort of goody bag of who knows what? So far what = one seedling ...
• One tray of passionfruit seeds (an experiment – can a passionfruit vine be grown from the seeds of a supermarket passionfruit? We’re going to find out …)
• Six pots of sweet peas
• Thirty-six pots of nasturtium seedlings (don’t ask, other half got carried away with himself)
• Three pots each of Love-lies-bleeding, sage and dill, which will be the nucleus of my new herb bed
• Twenty-four pots of seedling alpine strawberries
• Twenty transplanted celeriac seedlings
• Thirty-six pea seedlings in toilet roll inners
• Three over-wintered fuchsias
• Two tubs of wallflowers

The passionfruit is going to be interesting because if they do grow I shall probably have to give them all away, not having a single south facing fence that isn’t already covered with: jasmine, winter-flowering clematis, pyracantha, Iceberg rose and fig tree. All the people I’ve spoken to say that the secret to growing passionfruit is heat and freshness of the seeds, and as these went straight from fruit to pot in about forty-five seconds, I’m confident that freshness isn’t an issue.

There is a bit of an issue in the greenhouse though – I can’t actually turn round in a hurry because if I do, I end up knocking something to the floor. I just hope that the weather remains gracious so that I can start planting things out next weekend!

Labels: broad beans, fuchsia, greenhouse gardening, iceberg rose, march greenhouse, passionfruit, peas, wallflowers

The All Seasons Gardener at 5:55 AM 0 Comments

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Friday, February 20, 2009

February Greenhouse Gardening

I’m starting to watch the calendar, wondering when our last frost date will be this year. It’s reckoned to be around late April, but often those last frosts in Sussex, or at least in my bit of it, are only air frosts, not ground frosts.

It doesn’t matter so much this year, because I’ve got my greenhouse! I’m just starting to realise how valuable it is going to be. Instead of having to guess the latest possible frost date and count back in weeks to work out when seeds can be planted indoors so as to avoid frost when they begin hardening off, I can relax, knowing that the seeds will be frost-safe, in their polycarbonate home.

So this weekend I’m starting off some more sweet peas, as the ones I planted under glass in October didn’t germinate as well as I’d hoped (the seed was donated by a friend who obviously hadn’t kept it in the best conditions). I’ve also got viola nauticalia, which are F1 hybrids that I got free with a magazine – it says they are cool ‘watery’ colours, which doesn’t sound too appetizing, but hey, they were free!. And there are marigolds to be started as companion plants for my tomatoes as the marigolds are said to save the tomato plants from whitefly attacks and I’ve got some new nasturtiums, because our self-seeding ones have all reverted to mustardy-orange, and I like the dark orange and red ones too.

I’ve also got some cucumber seeds to start off. We’ve never grown cucumbers from seed before, so that will be exciting.

But I’m starting to wonder if there’s enough room in the greenhouse for all this, and the alpine strawberries I’m growing from seed, and the peas that are already shooting up from their toilet rolls, and the hardy trees I’m growing from seed …

Labels: greenhouse sowing, nasturtium, peas, sweet pea, trees, violas

The All Seasons Gardener at 12:52 PM 0 Comments

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Monday, January 12, 2009

January in the greenhouse

I wish I’d had my greenhouse long enough to actually be doing anything in it, but all I can do, at present, is go and gaze at my pea seedlings (22 at this morning’s count). The rain is unbelievable – 2009’s weather is setting out to be as horrible as 2008: heavy frost for days on end, followed by torrents of rain and mudslides everywhere. Ugh.

Anyway, if I’d had my greenhouse a bit earlier than November, I’d have been taking any container-growing peaches and nectarines out from the conservatory to the greenhouse. This is because while keeping rain off these fruit trees prevents the spread of spores of peach leaf curl disease and protects from frost, letting them get the maximum light now also toughens new growth and encourages good bud development

I am also be getting my hyacinths and crocus out of the plunge box and into the greenhouse as soon as the leaves show above the surface, after brushing the loose compost from the posts with a soft brush. As soon as they hit the high light levels of an unheated greenhouse they really go into insane flower production. My plunge box is simply a big wooden box in the shed, filled with compost, into which I sink the early bulb pots so they are completely covered. Old fashioned gardeners used to do this with a pit dug under a beech tree (dry and soft soil). It’s a much better idea that the cupboard under the stairs because that is usually too hot and dry.

Labels: autumn crocus, hyacinths, january greenhouse, nectarines, peaches, peas

The All Seasons Gardener at 8:06 AM 0 Comments

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Saturday, January 3, 2009

New Year, New Greenhouse News!

We couldn’t wait to try out the greenhouse, so we decided that even though December is the month when NOTHING germinates, we’d try and get something to grow for us from seed.

We started with peas, hardy peas. Now they aren’t going to grace the garden (because they are going to the allotment) and they aren’t even a variety that I particularly like (because they are early hardy peas and I like the later super-sweet petit pois) but my impatience knew no bounds and we’d been assured that if there was anything other than mustard and cress that would germinate in the dark of December, it was hardy peas.

And our advisers were right. As of this morning, with icicles forming on the inside of the greenhouse glass, the pond frozen over and even the dogs not very keen on going outside in the chill air, we have fourteen pea seedlings.

Suddenly all the money we spent on the greenhouse seems worthwhile …

Labels: greenhouse, peas, winter garden

The All Seasons Gardener at 9:34 AM 0 Comments

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