29th March "Grow your own" newcomers welcome here

[TalkinPeece]

In light of lots of posts on lots of other threads I thought I'd start one for those who are looking at their gardens in a whole new light this spring.

Rule One of starting to grow your own
do not be over ambitious
A couple of growbags and pots at the start will give better results than trying to dig up the whole garden

Rule Two of starting to grow your own
grow stuff that will actually cope with your conditions
Look at where the sun shines on your garden at different times of day and what access to water you have

Rule three of starting to grow your own
grow what you will enjoy eating fresh from the garden
as the crops will be smaller but tastier

Rule Four of starting to grow your own
prepare to develop an obsession with the weather forecast

HOWEVER
Tomatoes against a wall of the house are easy in most of the UK
Herbs in small pots on windowsills are easy in most places
Lettuce / salad greens can work in pots, tubs or even hanging baskets
Spinach can be seeded soon and every few weeks from then on to keep you in greens for months
Baby carrots are quick fun and easy to grow in a tub
Beetroot ditto
Dwarf french beans later in the year are well worth growing even in a tiny garden

If we assume that the biggest newcomer plot is 2m by 1m (or 8 feet by 4 feet in old money)

How much yummy veg can Mumsnetters produce?

Should I get an actual propagator, or just improvise with eggboxes, cling film, an old triops tank and a south-facing windowsill?

Broomstick - I’ve managed to get my chillies to germinate without a heated propagator. I sowed them in little pots with damp compost, tied a big clear plastic bag around them and bunged them on the shelf over my boiler. Seedlings emerged about 10 days later!

Next challenge is keeping them alive...

I’m off to stroke them now!

Hmm, I appear to have more seedlings than I planted seeds 🤨 clearly the compost was not sterile... now looking forward to trying to figure out which ones are chillies and which are interlopers!

post a pic...they are easy to spot.

About a minute in...this is not my video...seedling stroking.

Hard to get a good picture in the current light but... I reckon the ones in the two right hand modules are the chillies, however the ones in the left hand modules are a different type and I don’t know how different the seedlings would be. The seedling right in the middle of the photo has to be an intruder as I put 3 seeds in each module!

Yeah id agree. The thin stemmed ones are not chillis

That’s what I thought...grrr! That compost must have a shit ton of seeds in - I didn’t photograph the whole tray but there’s at least two in every module

Hello, joining in. Amateur/beginner but have grown various things over the years. I do everything in pots and growbags because despite mahoosive garden my soil is monumentally crap and chalky, and I don't have time or money for raised beds. One day...

In the meantime trial and error means that this year I am only growing things the children will actually EAT:

-Boston beans (massive hit last year, huge crop, actually worked out cheaper than buying from supermarket which isn't often true for grow-your-own!)
-Radishes, long ones more child friendly in taste terms

• Cherry Tom's
• Yellow courgettes

-lambs lettuce (never grown this, clueless)

• small peppers (clueless)

What I very much desire are zip up covers for the tomato growbags, in lieu of a proper greenhouse, but every single one on Amazon gets poor reviews. What to do?

Forgot to say - best thing ever to counter slugs is a pond. Ours is only the size of a kitchen sink, but it supports loads of wildlife. Toads/frogs literally eat all our slugs! Not a single plant got nibbled last year.

Hello, thanks for a fab thread! Last year I started growing my own potatoes, cherry tomatoes, strawberries and herbs. I didn't get to have any strawberries myself because the birds got them all even while nowhere near ripe... I have a wildlife friendly garden, the birds are fed seed all year round so on the one hand I'm fine with it and on the other they can bugger off and manage on the seed, cheeky sods!

Anyways I need an inexpensive way of protecting my strawberry plants. I only have half a dozen small pots of them, and a small garden, and I desperately don't want the birds to be able to get tangled up in any netting. I was going to make a frame with the net curtain I had replaced from a window but it fell apart royally in the washing machine! I've seen some like mini polytunnels in wilko, but am unsure how good they will be. I'm quite handy and can make my own, but am time poor. Also cash poor . Any suggestions?!

Chakra
Birds will not get tangled in a tight single layer of one inch netting
they land on it and take off again ...
Net curtains will get ripped open by blackbirds rapidly !

I use a bamboo cane with a plastic cup upside down on the the top
and then netting pulled tight over it down to the pot

How big should my tomato seedlings be when I move them to their permanent tub? They're currently like this

Hi there gremlins
wait till they have at least one pair of proper leaves
and then separate them each into a three inch pot and grow them on till they are about nine inches tall (so four pairs of real leaves)
THEN put them into a tub
as if you "over pot" them they will die

I tend to plant mine into final location in mid April

Thankyou!

The seed packet says when they're 10cm tall but they're so weedy and pathetic I was sure that doesn't sound right!

Sneaky, give them a twice daily wiggle and if they start to lean one way, turn them round, to make them put effort into their stem and first proper leaves.
You'll be amazed how solid they will look in a few weeks

I'm already turning them 180 degrees every morning before the sun comes up

I posted on a different thread, but I've just ordered a load of seeds and beans to eat as baby sprouts. Good way of reducing the impact of the "hungry gap". I'm a salad person, & would really struggle if there wasn't anything fresh & raw available to eat.

I have to say I've been picking greens all winter long. My top tip is sow a load of seeds of lettuces, spinach, spring onions, radish, more spinach, carrots, beets, coriander, fennel etc, around early september. It means you get greens all winter long.

How do you protect them from frost sackrifice?
We have had chard, broccoli, leeks, jerusalem artichokes, kale and spinach all winter, but lettuces (apart from lamb's lettuce) and coriander?
Our potatoes were lifted in autumn and lasted us all winter and the squashes are fine in the cold store.

Silly question but can I grow lambs lettuce in containers from seed? Also I keep reading it's a winter salad but presumably it will grow ok in spring too?

Grow winter variety lettuces, and i had photos of coriander poking out through the snow last year.

This year i transferred it to an unheated greenhouse around november time, and have been hacking it back for soups and curries all winter long.

a cold frame or upside down plastic container will do the same job.

Must have another go at coriander then. Especially as we can't buy it here!

I sussed coriander last year .....
Five seeds into a three inch pot.
The day the first sign of root appears at the bottom of the pot, transplant as a block into a deep seed bed.
Then keep chopping the leaves every few weeks.
It dies if the tap root is disturbed.
It goes to seed if it dries out.
I have MASSES in my freezer.