Wednesday 27 April 2011

Moving fast

A quick update on the garden. Today I fed my tomatoes for the first time! Not strictly following the rules, I suppose - I saw good-quality tomato feed in the local discount store, so I got some, and the three trays of plants (around 50) that have been outside in the daytime (except yesterday when it was too cold) needed a boost, I thought. Several plants have flowers forming now, and you are meant to start feeding around the time of the first blooms I think (or maybe when they start to 'set', i.e. when tiny fruits form). I have to say, I thought they'd stopped growing appreciably, but when I brought them in the day before yesterday, I realised the largest were nearly knee-high! That was a shock - they are absolutely big enough to plant in their final positions already, which is on time in fact (I set the dates in my computer's calendar), but it's amazing nevertheless.

My brother visited for the past couple of days. He has a car, so I was able to buy 8 grow-bags, in preparation for the finishing of the greenhouse towards the weekend (work was halted for his visit). I haven't decided yet how to divide them up - they are meant for three plants (which is too meagre), but I will either split them, or use one per plant (I need to try both). Maybe a combination, to see which is best over the season.

Spinach, chard, shallots, broad beans, peas, flowers and weeds grow apace - a great deal of weeding, digging, planting - and a little harvesting - are the order of business in May. And my next building project: an outdoor pizza oven!

2 comments:

Sally said...

Hello
I tried to post a couple of comments at the end of last week but for some reason the system didn't want to know and they were lost! Now it seems to be working again - I just wanted to say I am so in awe of the scale of your growing -and all the garden construction work that is going on along side it...Pizza oven!!! Wow!

Scyrene said...

Lol, thanks! It's probably amazed anyone wants to comment on my posts! ;) I don't think awe is appropriate until I've actually managed to grow stuff to harvest, though - it's easy to sow a seed, but to coax the plant to fruit is another matter!

And the pizza oven seems the best way of using up all the pure clay I dig out of my garden... ;)