RIP Tomatoes

On Monday 2nd April I was having a good day. I'd done lots of planting:

• Spring onions in planter
• Calabrese broccoli
• Romanesco broccoli
• Purple sprouting broccoli
• Courgettes
• Sweetcorn

I also started off our first batch of salads:

• Lollo Rosso
• Rocket
• Lamb's lettuce
• Little Gem
• Mixed red and green lettuces

I then thinned out my tomato seedlings - they were doing very nicely and needed their own space.

Then disaster.

A few nights later there was a really bad frost. This was the end of the road for almost all my tomatoes.

Tomatoes with frostbite

Even more annoying was the fact that I had an electric greenhouse heater that was left from the previous owners of our house. I'd not given it much thought and just shoved it in the garage.

No more frost here - hopefully

Anyway, after that frost I dug it out and tried finding some instructions for it on the internet. Whist I could not find any actual instructions, I found out that it has a Frost-Guard setting to make it switch on if the temperature drops below 5°C.

So now, this heater is plugged in and on the frost guard setting. I've checked on my electricity monitor and it looks like it kicks in during the night.

I know it's a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted, but it's another lesson learned the hard way.

Been a while

My goodness I can't believe it's been sooooo long since I posted anything.

So, a quick round up of what's been going on is in order.

I've planted lettuces - lots of lettuces - and they've come up well and gone into the planter outside with a second crop in the greenhouse. I've been a bit more sparing with the seeds in this second lot as the first batch was far too many!

Hmm, maybe too many lettuce seeds

Last year's sweetcorn did not do very well at all and I think I read somewhere that they don't like their roots being disturbed so this year I've planted them in the inner cardboard tubes from loo rolls. You then put the whole thing in the the soil when you plant it out.

Sweetcorn, in toilet roll tubes

On the allotment front, the weeds and grass have been growing faster than I'd have thought possible - far faster than anything that I could grow myself!
I've been slowly digging out areas for planting, with this bed containing peas and runner beans. I've put mesh over the top to try and stop the birds having a free lunch.

Peas and beans under mesh

After a couple of weeks the peas have made an appearance - nothing much of note from the beans though. It's been far to cold and dry. May seems to have been quite a rubbish month so far.

The peas have come up despite the dry weather

The frost we had in early May has hit everyone's plants, potatoes especially. Luckily mine had not come up too much (they were planted on Easter Sunday) so the leaves they lost seem to have been replaced with new green growth. Hopefully they'll catch up. Somewhere I have a 'back-of-an-envelope' map of what varieties I planted where. I'll have to find it so I know what's what before too long.

Frostbitten potatoes

I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... I must update more often... ;-)