Rain Rain Go Away

Most recent harvest - then it rained. And rained ...

This was our harvest from Matt's Patch last weekend. Lettuce, cucumber, courgettes, raspberries and some rocket that has come under attack from caterpillars. Not bad I think. Since then it has rained and rained and rained. I can't believe how much rain there is up there!

6 Pepper plants - all with peppers like these

In the raised planter I have 6 pepper plants which are doing quite well despite the efforts of the weather to stall their growth. They all have peppers of various sizes now but I know that if it warmed up a few degrees and stayed dry for a week they would come on tremendously.
I have toyed with the idea of putting perspex screens around the edges of the planter to give more shelter to the plants in there but it's just a pipe-dream at the moment.

DIY New Planter

On our patio are two old and decrepit planters. They are falling apart and too rotten to mend so we decided to replace them. Over the glorious weekend I set about building a new one from scratch. With a length of 2x2, two decking boards cut in half for the sides and a sheet of plywood I was ready for action.

Getting things set out

Four lengths of 2x2 were sawn to join the decking boards at the corners, with the screws offset from each other on each side. After a while I had the main frame completed. This proved a little more tricky than it looked as it was quite hard making sure everything lined up straight. The paved patio is not perfectly level so I couldn't really use that to get square.

The outside frame is complete

Once the frame was done it was time to cut the sheet of plywood and screw it into place. Due to the dimensions of the board, there was a slight gap down the center but this was good as it will be used for drainage. Honestly, it was planned that way.

The plywood base is on

I cut the remaining length of 2x2 into 4, mitred at 45°. These were attached to the corners of the base. An additional length of spare plank was cut and added across the base to support the plywood. I also mixed up some PVA primer with water to make a sealant and coated the plywood and any cut surfaces of wood. Hopefully this will help extend the life of the planter.

Added feet to keep planter off the ground

The decking boards had been pre-treated with preservative so to stop whatever chemicals are in there from leeching out and potentially getting into the plants I lined the whole inside with plastic. I then made a few cuts in it to allow excess water to drain out. Hopefully the plastic will help retain water too.

Lined with plastic

So with the planter completed, I started to fill it with earth reclaimed from one of the others that was being replaced. After a few bucketfuls had gone in it dawned on me that I should put in in situ before filling it any more! I'd never be able to move the thing when full!

Nearly there - filled with earth

Once in place and filled I added some bonemeal and mixed it in well, then gave it a good soaking. Then it was off to the greenhouse to transfer some of the lettuces that had been growing. I also put in the bell peppers than needed a bigger home. Phew! So there it is, woodworking lesson #2. It looks great and I'm very pleased with it.

Done! Instant lettuces too!

Nearly open!

My first courgette flower is nearly open! It's definitely a female one as you can see the little courgette on the stalk just below the flower. Hopefully the weather will get a bit better over the next few days, allowing it to open fully and also bring on some of the male flowers.

Female courgette flower, nearly open!

Two types of lettuce, Little Gem and Lollo Rosso

My tray of lettuces are doing well. I really must get the salad planter done so that these can go out into a bigger area ready for the beautiful warm sunshine we are bound to have. We must be owed it after days and days of nothing but wind and rain.

April Fools

Well it seems like ages since I posted anything but time has not stood still in Matt's Patch - far from it. We're into April and have had a good few days of sunny weather. A lot of the garden has sprung into life and it's very interesting seeing what happens. Plants that we never knew were there suddenly burst into flower. Even one of our strawberry plants has gone mad and produced a flower! They're still in their pots as we have not had time to plant them out yet.

The sole courgette plant has been re-potted into something bigger. Out of a packet of 6 seeds, I initially planted 4. Only one germinated. Boo. So the other day I decided to soak the two remaining seeds overnight and planted them the following morning, just to see if that would help speed up the process at all.

I have also planted some French Dwarf Beans, some straight out of the packet and some soaked overnight. There were a couple of days between the normal ones and the soaked ones being planed so it'll be interesting to see what happens.

After what seemed like ages of nothing happening with the pepper seeds, they seem to have decided that conditions are now right and have come up quite well. Which is more than I can say about the cucumbers. There were only 5 in the packet so they all got planted. One came up (eventually) so I poked around in the other pots. A couple seemed to have germinated but either were too deep and could not get above ground level. In order to help them I removed some of the earth from around the yellowish leaves (yellow due to lack of light) and they seem to be moving on a bit now. I'll be lucky if I get three plants from that lot.

Better news on the Broad Bean front. There are some decent plants coming along now. I'm still staggered by how complicated the leaf structure is compared to everything else which just seems to have a pair of leaves initially. The broad beans are more like a complete plant folded up very carefully which slowly opens out.

The lettuces are also doing well. The first crop have been moved out into troughs along with a few of the spinach plants that came up. As a little present for them I've just bought some nitrogen-rich fertiliser to help their leaves! As for the other salad crops the land cress is going great guns and I have planted a 2nd crop of them. Well, when I say 'another crop' I really mean another pot. I put some rocket seeds down last weekend and within two days they had germinated. They're doing very well. With such speedy growth it's no wonder it's called rocket!

Last but not least all the seed potatoes have chitted very well and will have to go in the ground this weekend. I think some can go in the now-redundant recycling bins but the main crop ones will have to go in the garden beds somewhere. I've got some bonemeal for a slow release feed and also some phosphorus which had pictures of root vegetables on the box!

The Greenhouse Effect

The people we bought our house from were kind enough to leave their greenhouse complete with aluminium racks and even an old wireless thermometer which looked like it hadn't worked in ages. After fitting new batteries to the thermometer it burst into life. There should be another part to it so that the greenhouse temperature can be monitored from the comfort of the house. We've never found this part - maybe it died some time ago. Anyway the main bit is working and the other day it reported that it was 25°C. Toasty!

Over the winter the only thing in the greenhouse was a couple of bales of hay for the guinea pig. Obviously that had to change so just over a week ago (Sunday 22nd Feb) Megan and I set about planting our vegetable seeds. So far we have planted some of the following:

• Courgettes (Astia F1)
  
• Broad beans - Dwarf type (The Sutton)
  
• Tomatoes (Shirley F1)
  
• Salads made up of lettuce, land cress (which is like water cress only ... on land) and spinach
  
• Bell Peppers of various types although they were all in one packet. Hmmm.

The first to show their faces were some of the lettuce plants. Well done, we have a winner!

With the salad plants I'm going to (hopefully) plant some every 3-4 weeks so that there is a nice steady supply. Once large enough they will go outside in a planter. Probably to be eaten by slugs. I think the pecking order will be slugs, us, then Patch the guinea pig.

This last weekend I planted some cucumber (Telegraph) seeds - all five of them! According to the packet, if trained properly they could reach 50cm! Which just begs the question how exactly do you train a cucumber?

I still have French Beans to plant but according to the packet it's still too early - even in a greenhouse. What do they know - I may just put some in pots just to see ...