How Does Your Garden Grow?
With the new house having a garden, Karl and I are both keen on doing a bit of planting and in my case, growing vegetables/salad stuff that I can fill my fridge with. As neither of us have actually done much gardening before it’s all a big experiment really. Today we ventured out into the piss-pouring rain to buy a DIY portable greenhouse and some general odds and sods. I bought some tomato seeds, and a grow bag for when the little shoots are ready, but forgot to buy a little tray/little pots to put the seeds in so that’ll be another trip next weekend.
Sarah (Stuff by Sarah) already gave me some good advice on her food blog in Gardening with Pots but apart from that I’m pretty much a total n00b at this and don’t really know where to start. Do those of you who’re old enough for this apply to have some tips for starting my garden (bearing in mind it’ll mostly be in pots and grow bags)?
I wonder if this is exciting enough to warrant a new blog category…
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My dad grows things… tomatos and green beans etc. And he’s pretty big on gardening in general. I’ll ask him to give you an email some time (well… ask him to tell me what to write, he isn’t good with computers :P)
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 7:26 pmI know a lot about gardening in a garden bed, but not in pots
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 8:23 pmYou say “to fill my fridge with” and I guess you may not mean it literally, but it brings to mind that veg’ start to loose their goodness and flavor only minutes after being picked. So leave it where it grows until you are ready to eat it! I have used egg cartons to start the seeds off sometimes. Happy growing!
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 8:50 pm“Garden bed”. *imagines a big bed full of flowers* My parents have had a garden for longer than I have lived, same with my grandparents. An important thing is to make sure your plants get the right amount of sunlight, not too much nor too little. Another thing is watch for potential attacks from furry things. While I’m sure any cat would run away from the plant after tasting just one tomato, the fact still remains that 1. you will be growing other vegetables and 2. you don’t need to take a bite in the vegetables to use their earth as a litter. My cat always loved using plants as a litter, so if your cat (or cats, if a second one comes!) has any interest for that kind of things, make sure that their actual litter is always as clean as possible and that there is some sort of put-off (a particular smell, for example) around the plant. Oh, and if you grow cucumbers, watering their leaves can leave (!) stains, but it’s nothing bad for the taste, as far as I know.
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 9:33 pmI could write an essay on this, since my mum has a vegetable plot in our back garden, only I won’t
I recommend you go to your local library and pick up gardening for Dummies or something, because it takes a helluva lot of words to explain it 
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 9:39 pmCheers for the mention Jem. Once I get over this flu bug I’ll finally start getting a few pots and hanging baskets sorted (strawberries in hanging baskets, should look cool!). Whilst seed trays are handy as Peter mentioned, egg cartons can do the job pretty well as can clean yoghurt pots (just stick a couple of holes in the bottom of the pot). Also any old cartons from the bottom of a water bottle, washed out milk carton (the plastic ones), icecream boxes. Heh who needs seed trays? Otherwise, well it’s mid March so maybe start with planting out a few seeds. Your tomato seeds will need doing as you’ll need about half a foot to a foot high plants before you want to get them in the growbags, and aim for that to be around the start of May. A good windowsill may be helpful there. Same goes for chilli plant seeds. You could also start on your salad plants - lettuce, spring onion, radish etc. in the greenhouse. It’s not excessively cold now. Which reminds me, really must get my ‘getting started on gardening’ posts done!
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 9:46 pmJem, if you want to keep Hex out of the garden then put rocks (not smooth pebbles, rocks) around the pants. He won’t like digging in them. Or at least out outside cats won’t dig in the flower beds. We also will put sticks in the ground around the plants. Good luck on the garden, Jem. Just don’t plant catnip or you will never keep Hex out of it.
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 10:15 pmTomatoes require poles to tie them to. That’s all I know. My mom used to grow tomatoes.
Response posted: March 15th, 2008 at 11:24 pmlol @ gardening. You’re turning into a real house mom! (without the kids).
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 3:21 amI don’t really have suggestions RE: growing things in pots (as we grow our produce in huge plots of land in our back yard), but like Arwen said (three times!) about tomatoes - you’ll need to stick a pole in the soil next to the plant, and as it gets taller, fix it onto the pole, otherwise it won’t grow properly. I also suggest lots of fertiliser - we find that only when we use a lot of fertiliser, do our produce actually taste good. Without fertiliser, tomatoes aren’t juicy, our cucumbers are tiny, our lettuce heads don’t have enough leaves, our potatoes are floury etc. I’d probably start off with the easiest things to grow - herbs, etc, and then work your way up from that. Chinese spring onion is easy, you just need to take a cutting from it, stick it in the soil, water it, and a week later, you can start cutting from the plant and use it to flavour stirfries!
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 4:57 amTomatoes get pretty big so you should aim for no more than 2 plants per growbag sized space. As it was suggested, they will need stakes or pole to use as support (tie loosely to the stakes as the stalks need room to grow too) When the plant starts to make side shoots between the main leaf and the stalk you need to pinch these out as they will slow down flower growth (the flowers turn into your tomatoes) and always water the soil, water on leaves causes damage. Cucumbers are easy too, also need poles/stakes and when they flower you need to look for the flowers with longer behinds, these will be the male flowers, female flowers don’t turn into such good cucumbers so need to be nipped off.Also stop the upward growth after 8 or so true leaves appear, this allows the growth to remain for the cucumbers instead of making plant growth Carrots, plant marigolds between rows, not only will this make it look pretty, they also keep carrot fly away. If you want radishes, when the first set of leaves appear, nip those out, this makes the bulb of the radish grow much bigger instead of being all long and thin (you will also need to take out the weaker shoots to make room for the bigger ones to grow) French beans are dead easy, they need shorter stakes as they only grow about a foot high, when the beans are grown you need to keep collecting them to make the plants produce more beans. Runner beans need 6 foot high poles, also don’t water the plants while they are making flowers as it knocks the flowers off-no flowers=no beans. Potatoes are simple…Use proper seed potatoes instead of shooting old spuds and once the flowers are appearing you need to pile more soil up to the plant to enable lots of room for the potatoes underneath to grow bigger. When the flowers have all died, then it’s time to dig up your spuds. Most veggies are easy enough to grow, leave the packet for each variety poked through a stake so you can refer back to it, remember spacing…plants need room to grow. Water sparingly to begin with and increase as the plant grows or the ground becomes drier. Feed with something like miracle grow and you will be amazed at how fast and big they become (on soil,not on leaves or flowers) As with all plants, it helps if you can start them off indoors in trays, makes them stronger when you pop them outside. You can always refer back to this page http://www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/htbg/ Alan Titchmarsh is one of the best gardeners I have ever had the pleasure of watching, his tips are so handy.
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 10:13 amMy garden doesn’t grow. D: We used to have these potted herbs on the sides of each cupboard next to the sink, right infront of the window. It was nice to have them and just pick some and throw it in a stir-fry or whatever you might be cooking. Then one day, my mother found a water bottle lying around. She didn’t want to waste, so she poured it in the plants. As it turns out, it wasn’t water in the bottles. It was Screech. Needless to say, we no longer have these plants.
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 6:50 pmOne thing that’s important here in Florida is creating the right soil. Our natural soil is sand, and the potting mix right out of the bag usually doesn’t have everything you need. What my parents do is get a plastic garbage can and fill it halfway up with potting soil. They then add some peat, cow manure, some perlite and maybe some potassium. They then mix it up with a shovel and use that for pots or the garden. Don’t forget to put down some mulch to keep out the weeds, cypress is best. Our city has a public yard where people take clippings and dead trees and it’s turned into free mulch and we sometimes use that. (But it can contain diseases from dead trees, so it’s not ideal.) If you have a local nursery, not like a store with a nursery on the side but a real family owned or small chain nursery, they can often tell you whatever you need to know about plants and your area. The plants may also be grown locally and be more hardy to your climate than large stores that ship the plants from who knows where. And of course there’s the internet which knows everything about everything. =D
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 9:47 pmSadly I have no wisdom to share as I’m a complete newbie too, but I shall be following your progress and pinching any good tips you find on the way
Good luck!
Response posted: March 16th, 2008 at 10:36 pmoh wow. it’s really good to have a vege garden at home. my mum is a very fond of it. she’s growing some raspberries, grapes and some herbs like oregano and some others. I forgot the names. some of the plants grow really well and some don’t, like the grapes. the fruits are very small and in a very little quantity but maybe that’s just because of the weather. but the grape plants do beautify the garden. hehe. anyways, good luck! there are a lot of shows on this you can watch of the TV.
Response posted: March 17th, 2008 at 4:36 amUnfortunately no gardening tips from me either; total n00b in that department. The thought of growing and eating fruit and vegetables certainly appeals to me, but all the digging around in the dirt doesn’t…fear of spiders and all that. I got a tomato tree once for Christmas and I was digging a hole for it and the most shocking spider ever crawled out. Nightmares, man. Long time no speak by the way, hope you’re doing well
Response posted: March 17th, 2008 at 6:07 amHaving lived in the city and in buildings for the last 5 years, I have no gardening tips to offer. My folks, however, have what I suppose is a garden (a quarter of which is a compost pit). Nothing edible there, though, unless you’re starving and strapped for cash. Oh wait. They have a chili pepper plant. I doubt that needs any real tending. I wish we grew our own tomatoes and lettuce for my salads =/
Response posted: March 17th, 2008 at 9:43 amI always loved the idea of growing my own food, except I am a big wimp when it comes to dealing with bugs.
Response posted: March 17th, 2008 at 2:20 pmI’d like to give some advice as I’ve tried potted gardens a lot before.. But, um… “try” is the keyword in that section. I usually end up killing them. The only thing i’ll add is to sing while you’re planting, weeding and so forth! The plans like music XD
Response posted: March 17th, 2008 at 4:50 pmMy grandma owns two allotments for which she’s won awards for growing fruit/veg/flowers. She grows marrow, cucumber, pears, apples, plums, runner beans, carrots, potatoes, rhubarb, onions, parsnips, strawberries, gooseberries, herbs and some other stuff including flowers. Unfortunately, I don’t know anything about vegetable/fruit growing except how to walk into my grandma’s allotment, harvest, and consume them all within five minutes. I do know how to look after a venus flytrap, though, and grow flowers from seed. There’s various ways to germinate seeds (some require an emulation of winter to summer before they’ll start to grow so you end up having to soak them in cold water, etc.) and you can get special seed potting soil that’ll give them nutrients to get started until you can transplant them.
Response posted: March 18th, 2008 at 1:14 pmI once tried growing something in one of those “water it every day and watch it grow” magic pots - it never grew and died. Then I tried growing sea monkeys - those died, too. Then my friend asked me to “watch” her ivy plant, and all it needed was water once every couple of days, yet it still died. In short, your level of gardening expertise is awe-inspiring
Response posted: June 4th, 2008 at 9:25 pm