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henny penny

What are you sowing now?

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I planted

1 row of King Edward

1 row of Hunter free from Fothergills as advertised by Poet ages ago on this forum

1 row of Pink Fir Apple

1 row of Maris Peer

1 row of Rocket

1 row of Vanessa

Some Sungold,Red Cherry and Gartenperle

Some Burpless Cucumber

and some wonderful looking Verbena seeds I pinched off a plant in Turkey last year

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Lots of potting up and pricking out. Yesterday planted outside, under cloches, the first lot of broad beans. Sowed:

Carrots - Autumn King, Oxheart and Chantenay (in tall flowerpots)

Runner bean - Desiree

Caulis - Idol and Igloo

Cabbage - Celtic

Dwarf French beans - Ice/Crystal Wax (thought I had done those already!)

Finally some hollyhocks - old seed that I found, so taking a chance. Why am I doing flowers when there might not be any room for all the blooming veg? :roll:

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We planted all the potatoes yesterday - I already have some coming up in the polygreenhouse and some Charlottes in one of the outside beds. The rest are now in the big plot outside the poly g/h. We would have done them over Easter but we will be short on time and yesterday I had 'helpers' Lauren and Jake are very handy with the rake!

 

Lauren managed to sow a pack of 1100 carrot seeds in just a 6' row :roll: - I'll have a bit ot thinning to do there!

 

We also sowed Kelvedon Wonder peas and Nantes and Autumn King carrots in the big plot.

 

We also tried to battle the wind and cover the 'next plot to be' area with a 20m x 20m silage sheet - 6'2" son, Carl, me, Lauren and Jake nearly all ended up in the next village :shock: We've put all the spare railway sleepers, fence posts, metal farm gates and old tyre we could find to weight it down. It has stood up to the gales we had overnight and hasn't spooked any of the ewes into having early lambs! :D We want to grow some fodder beet in it next year.

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I'm after some advice, please, all-knowing Omleteers :pray::) .

 

We are complete veg novices and are only at the stage of preparing our veg bed. We don't have a greenhouse or room to do seeds indoors (and we're still getting frosts here :roll: ). We plan to buy little plants this time round till we know what we're doing.

 

When we eventually do grow from seed, can I ask all you experts ....

 

Could I put seed trays in our garage in front of the window on some shelving units? Would it be warm enough? I could tack something round the back of the shelves if it needed some shelter.

 

I've just bought one of these too - can you sow seeds in this or only put them in it when they've grown a bit?

 

mini-greenhouse1.jpg

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My brother has one of those and was successful, so he bought my folks one. Dad grew lots of things like petunias, French beans etc in there. The only problem was that the plastic got brittle after 2 years and it is being held together with all sorts of tape (that's my dad for you) and the door is non-existent now. But my mum has grown sweet peas indoors and they are hardening off in the little minihouse.

In our last house our garage window faced north east and I successfully had loads of cuttings from geraniums (pelargoniums) in there - they didn't suffer from frost at all - mind you, we are quite lucky because the winters haven't been as harsh this neck of the woods. Have a try, as I said before, nothing ventured nothing gained. If it fails try something else, but you can always have plan B and sow indoors and take over the children's window ledges!

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I've used one of those for the last 2 years ANH and it is fine for starting off seeds a little earlier. But most things can actually be sown straight outside if you are patient and wait for the frosts to pass! Or you can use cloches - that clear, plastic roofing on your run makes good cloches! I planted broad beans outdoors in October and they were fine with cloches over them through the winter :D I also used the mini greenhouse to grow pots of cut and come again salad leaves.

 

I've just been in the greenhouse and sown: 4 varieties of chilli (not sure why I bought 4 varieties :think: ), 2 varieties of peppers and 6 varieties of toms; some more trays of salad leaves; cucumbers; melons; fancy squash; yellow courgettes.

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I've just bought one of these too - can you sow seeds in this or only put them in it when they've grown a bit?

 

 

 

I'm in a slightly warmer Surrey, but have found that sowing the seeds indoors for most things to get them started, and then transferring them into the plastic greenhouse works well for us. Cabbages I put straight in the greenhouse, and they all came up no problem.

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Still a bit early for beans to be planted out Emma. The cloche will work, or some fleece if you remember every night. Any frost will kill the bean seedlings, so best to cover them with a cloche.

 

I do use plastic bottles to cover my delicates (!) but make a couple of extra cuts near the top to allow slight more air to circulate.

:D

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An exciting trip to the garden centre yesterday saw me coming home with 2 Globe Artichoke plants & a Cape Gooseberry too :D

 

I won't be plating the Artichokes out just yet, but am very interested to see how they will 'do' in my garden.Apparantly they grow to 4 foot tall & come up again year after year 8)

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OK - here goes another session:

Sunflowers - Velvet Queen (via mum and Gardeners World) and Giant Single

Cabbage - minicole - old seed so bunged the whole lot in a pot.

Bloodred Redmate spring onions that did rubbish for the first session.

Calabrese - Fiesta, another sowing so I can get continuous pickings.

Turnip - Snowball and Tokyo Cross again (for successions - beginning to get the hang of it all now - only took a kazillion years to get to grips :roll: )

Cauli - Violet Queen

Leek - Pandora - very late variety

Spinach - Tetona

Lettuce - Bedford again - the first are looking good.

 

In the garden we chopped back the hedge next door and the dog went berserk - it had to be grabbed and taken indoors until we had finished - and even then throughout the day it tried to get at us.

The first of the caulis have been planted outdoors and so has one lot of beetroot. OH has made a corral around one of the new beds (shame it only has 6 spuds not showing yet) and is very proud of himself - I think we'll call the house The High Chaparral now. :D

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Hello ANH, We bought a little seed house like that a couple of years ago. Thw wind blow it to bits and ripped the cover to pieces :(:( However we repaired it and are trying it again in a different but still windy location. Hope you have more success :D How are you getting on with your WIR Is it finished :?: Any pictures :?: Allison

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I've just bought one of these too - can you sow seeds in this or only put them in it when they've grown a bit?

 

mini-greenhouse1.jpg

 

My first year too and I've also bought one of these.

So far planted into pots/trays

Broccoli, Parsnips, Leeks, Sweetcorn, Corriander (sp), Parsley, Peas & Beans.

All doing something but I'm not sure when they're supposed to go into the garden ?

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Thanks for the responses, Omleteers!

 

Hello ANH, We bought a little seed house like that a couple of years ago. Thw wind blow it to bits and ripped the cover to pieces :(:( However we repaired it and are trying it again in a different but still windy location. Hope you have more success :D How are you getting on with your WIR Is it finished :?: Any pictures :?: Allison

 

I was a bit concerned that they had more replacement covers for sale than actual mini greenhouses :roll::lol: .

 

Follow the link in my signature and you'll see my fab WIR (if I say so myself :whistle::wink: ).

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Planted up some planters that you can hang from a fence, with some nasturtium and some dwarf sweet peas which survived the wind. I was sent some free trailing sweet peas today. They are miniplugs, about 5 plants to a plug. I'm a bit apprehensive about trying to separate the plants but I'll have a go :!: Anyone have any experience with trailing sweet peas or these mini plugs. :?:

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Only 2 tomato plants left to pot into medium sized pots - some will stay in the greenhouse and once the roots appear at the bottom will be transferred to their final big flowerpots. The others will be planted outside when they are ready. Beetroots have been planted outside and some climbing French beans (some of which had been munched by slugs in the greenhouse! I think OH caught the culprit and dealt with it severely - I'll spare you the gorey details. Most of the spuds have come through - just one to go now. Finally my parsnips are coming up whoohoo! :dance:

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Hello ANH

 

We've been using the mini greenhouses for a few years now but have to keep getting new ones every couple of years because of the covers splitting. This year to try and solve the problem we sprayed the zips with WD40 so that they ran smoothly and didn't put extra strain on the plastic.

 

I'd be interested to know where I can purchase spare covers as we kept the old shelf units to recycle as greenhouse staging, but I could restore them back to their original state if the covers fit.

 

At the moment I'm using mine to harden off the plants ready for planting in the beds once all risk of frost has gone.

 

Last year we used them throughout the summer to sow 6 plugs of different types of lettuce at regular intervals and used them as soon as they were big enough to replace the ones we'd picked out of the garden. Just a few at a time so that you don't get too many to go in at once and you'll be eating salad for months.

 

Kind regards,

 

Christine

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I'd be interested to know where I can purchase spare covers as we kept the old shelf units to recycle as greenhouse staging, but I could restore them back to their original state if the covers fit.

Thanks for that, Christine :) . I bought mine from a local family run garden centre called Pentland Plants and they had loads of spare covers. Not much use to you unless you're coming up this way though!

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Hello ANH

 

That's made me :think:

 

We have a local shop who sell just about everything, if you can't see it they seem to go upstairs and find just what you're after.

 

Now that I know that they are available I'll pop in over the weekend and see if they can magic any covers from their secret stash of stuff.

 

Many thanks

 

Christine

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Thank you Blackgold.

 

We'd planned to go to homebase for more potting compost so I'll have a look while we're there and see if our local store stock them.

 

We're also going to price up the power washers as B&Q are offering 15% off and Tesco Direct have one at half price, it all depends on availability and offers on at the time. I tried to do an internet search but some items there were tagged as out of stock. Just a chance that the stores have a few left.

 

The patio is in need of a good clean after the chickens have made their marks, and OH likes the idea of making the car wheels easier to clean. Looks like we are 'win win' for this purchase :)

 

Kind regards,

 

Christine

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