Saturday 27 April 2013

Planting Potatoes and other progress

It's been a frustrating couple of weeks, every time you think that the weather is warming up a bit the wind and rain and snow and hail comes back and I think "actually I'm not going to risk putting plants out yet".

Today I finally felt ready and so I have planted out the three different varieties of potatoes into planters outside.

The Rocket Potatoes have chitted the best of all the varieties; I'm planting five seed Potatoes per planter bag.

I have put one layer of Potatoes in about 5" of compost; this is one of the Rocket variety.

This first layer consists of three seed Potatoes, on top of which I put another 3-4" of soil, another two seed Potatoes and then another 3" of compost.

The Maris Pipers have also chitted well and are here ready for planting out.

I've planted the Maris Pipers in the same configuration; this is the first layer of three seed Potatoes.

Finally for the Potato planting the Charlottes....

...... and the first layer as per the others.

Once I had planted all the Potatoes I watered them in well and then positioned the planters thus:

The three Potato planters set next to the Lettuce pot.

So that is almost the last of my planting done for the year; I'm going to run out of space soon. Now for some more regular updates....

Seeing as I was outside I'll start this update from there, and show how the Lettuce has finally started to develop and look like more than a tiny little leaf; I will plant my next round of Lettuce soon I think.

I did take a picture of the Onion but it really did not come out; they have not changed anyway from the last photograph I put on here anyway.

Similarly to the Lettuce, the Broccoli is also accelerating nicely now the winter has (mainly) left us.

The self watering planters have really proven their worth with the Moneymaker Tomatoes; they are both flourishing; this is the one which hasn't been dropped on the floor (yet)

And this is the one which has been dropped. As you can see they are both getting quite big and may be getting close to needing repotting; at least I've not accidentally grown 100 seedlings this year huh...

Both Geraniums are looking very similar, no sign of flowers but some good sized leaves and looking incredibly healthy.

The tangle of Foxgloves have continued to do well since I realised I needed to water them more often than the other seedlings; I have worked out where I'm going to plant these out and am just waiting for the correct time to do so.

The Birdseye Chilli, which took so long to germinate, is still not really blowing my socks off with it's development and you can see from this detail picture that it isn't looking very healthy at all... I'm going to have to keep a close eye on them.

The other Birsdeye is slightly more developed but still looking sickly; I do hope they strengthen maybe with a little more sun we're getting now.

By contrast the Ghost Chillis are looking great; still very short but with strong looking wide leaves.

All six of the Crossley Special chillis are developing well; this picture is taken just before I watered them for the day and you can see it is slightly wilted; by the time I am writing this blog up it has fully extended itself out again.

The newest addition to my collection, the Bromeliad, is a delight. I am so happy we bought it. I do my watering every morning during the week and get to appreciate its bright colours every day, which is great. If you look closely on this picture you can see I've just watered it and the water is settled in the leaves and flower.

The Globe Artichoke is still growing well, sending out spiky leaves and developing fast... Sadly I think the cat which I caught sat on it has done something strange to one of the leaves (at the back on this pic, and below in detail).

The other leaves all feel moist and pliable; this leaf is completely dry and you can see it is patchy; there is cat fur stuck to it too. Any advice/suggestions would be gratefully received regarding this...

The five pots of seed grown Coriander have started shooting up recently; they are thirsty plants at the moment (this is the hottest windowsill in the house as well) but they are all looking very healthy indeed (unlike the poor shop bought one which is very sad looking, though not included as a photo in this update).

This is the first Begonia which sprouted and it has made incredible progress in the last week or so; such a pretty looking plant too.

By contrast this is the Begonia with the least growth which has only just started sprouting. The other plants are at varying stages between this one and the first.

So, that is the full update for this week; I think you can agree that there is some good progress starting to show, though it's so late in the year I would have hoped to be a little further along to be honest.

Trees locally still haven't got any leaves on them, and looking out my window now you'd think it was either November or February; it really is a late spring this year.

Anyway, keep growing, please do get in touch with your progress as I'm always interested to hear about what other people are doing.

Cheers

No comments:

Post a Comment