Have I sold 16 people a pig in a poke?

[PiggyPokkyFool]

Name changed as this is very outing.
The facts: Saw YouTube video about growing tomatoes from a slice of tomato, had some v tasty cherry ones from supermarket so planted 3 slices with low expectations. 3 weeks later, 54 seedlings, transferred to larger pots expecting to lose half, 52 survived - nearly all grew looking super healthy - had 49 tomato plants. Couldn't possibly use all so planted some, gave away some and had 28 tomato plants left. Got the bright idea of selling them on our local group for 50p each - sold all bar 3 which I offered some to my much older, much wiser chum and he said " Oh, no thanks as they are probably F1s so won't produce anything". Have I sold 16 people a pig in a poke? Never mind friends who think I am a great grower

Thank you!
Today I have sown lots: about 8 varieties of chilli, the same of tomatoes and a whole load of zeebrune onions that will be planted out in clumps. And Tesco has fruit trees, £6 each or two for a tenner so I've now got to find somewhere to plant them! I think I'll end up putting a table with seedlings and an honesty box at the end of the drive...

Wow Snausage - Your lucky neighbours!

Just checked on my indoor calamondins - 10 more healthy seedlings to go with the bigger 8 outside everyone is getting a calamondin tree this year. They were germinated in an icecream tub because I also love a repurposed container. Got delicate baby calamondins and strawberries in yoghurt pots, chillis go in noodle pots to give away. We wash and reuse every year. Basically I love free stuff (especially if it's seeds)
I am jealous of the cauldron plants though

Just a heads up for avid growers: This week, lidl are selling germinating trays with lids, 4 for the £3.99!

I appreciate the heads up wasn't particularly useful on a sunday evening 🤦🏼‍♀️ I'm on night shifts. DH informs me that its growing month though so maybe there are still some there.
Also many small pots (card and plastic) in my local B&M for extremely reasonable prices.

@BumblebeePlantMum it's Lidl propagators my seeds were sown in! They're tucked up in the boot room which is quite warm, so fingers crossed they'll start to poke through soon...

Anything popped up yet @Snausage? We filled two of ours last night, one with pretty flowers and stuff for pollinators, one with nasturtiums of different kinds (for reliable salad greens and capers! The existing nasturtiums are so cute I can't tell them I am going to eat them!)

Baby strawbs are all on their second true leaves, strawbers outside have buds (hooray!) So I'll have early fruiters and year round fruiters.
Tomatoes and chillis of many varieties all lovely little proper plants now.
Cucumbers are popping up.
The sun is out and I am so excited to get out sorting the garden ready for our crops... and I am on night shifts again

@BumblebeePlantMum yes! So exciting! About 90% of my tomatoes are up and my shallot seeds are well on their way. No sign of the chillies yet, so may move them to the airing cupboard for a bit of heat to get them going. My dahlias are starting to wake up so will be taking cuttings from them in a couple of weeks, I think. Fruit trees are in (supermarket bargains!) and we've had some lovely sunshine in fits and spurts so the garden is definitely starting to wake up!
Looking forward to getting my squashes and pumpkins sown soon!

Ooh how exciting! I love this time of year, everything waking up and feeling warm again. Yes Chillis appreciate a good amount of warmth don't they. We usually have very good success rate (90% ish) with bottom heat. They are usually up between 2-3 weeks.

Do you grow them outside? We put them out in huge pots and they basically grow to fit the pot. We've had some mini-trees which produce hundreds!

We are considering a cucumber arch
Got a little dish of spare seed compost left over from the big trays. I can't decide whether calendula, marigold, nigella or lupin (from last years stock, so free plants!) Or some pretty poppies from a seed packet.

I've also been outside digging up volunteers in old scrap pots and potting up. Free plants! This year I found a nemesia and some violas. Violas and forget me not everywhere. Good job I love them.

Or some pretty poppies from a seed packet. I don't think poppies like being transplanted, if they're an annual variety.

@MereDintofPandiculation oh, they don't, do they? Thanks for making my choice easier. I'll scatter them strategically in the garden instead. Love a surprise poppy.

Hello all. I was here last year but name changed. I am absolutely determined to have a productive veg patch this year, think it might come in useful. Sowed some lettuce beetroot spring onions, peas and spinach outside yesterday. Today I bit the bullet and cleaned the greenhouse. It was vile, but very satisfying. Tomorrow I will start my more delicate seedlings. I need to get my beans started. Decided last year that potatoes and carrots are too much trouble when they are so cheap to buy, but now I think I might be glad of them.
I am generally very haphazard in the garden with lots of flowers in my veg, this year, I may try to be more organised.

@BumblebeePlantMum I will be growing some outside and will probably put a couple in the greenhouse. Your cucumber arch sounds great! I am thinking of doing a butternut squash arch!

I've got an apple tunnel, 4 trees each side. Lovely now, underplanted with daffodils, then lovely when the apple blossom opens, and again when the fruit is ripening.

Well, my tomato and chilli seedlings are all up and have been potted on, and the clump-sown shallots are getting bigger by the day! This morning we sowed leeks, butternut squash, courgettes, basil, thyme and oregano. Next up today will be my other winter squashes and Brussels sprouts. The fruit canes and bushes from Lidl desperately need to be planted out, but I need to dig a couple of beds first!

Hard to believe I lost my own thread - oh the shame.
Hope everyone is ok and surviving covid - relatively unscathed.
Life is in a bit of a state of flux here with DD1 waiting for A Levels and praying she doesn't lose her Medicine place and DD2 waiting for GCSE results and praying that she gets the grades she deserves. I have felt a little down(not like me at all)but am coming out of it.
I hope my strawberry hanging basket will cheer people as it has done me over the last 6 weeks. if anyone is still around I'll post more. @BobTheDuvet I see your deletions and I hope you are alright x

Nice to see an old and welcome thread reappear! I've seen this thread being recommended several times to people having difficulty buying seeds during lockdown.

"@BobTheDuvet I see your deletions and I hope you are alright x" I always make a point of reading your posts @BobTheDuvet

Hello @MereDintofPandiculation - so so good to see you. How is your growing season going?
Please do let us know you are ok @BobTheDuvet as you are one of the leading lights of our thread x
@Snausage - would be lovely to see how your tomatoes and chillies are looking now.

May I join? Those strawberries look lush - are they full size or alpine? Mine are failing but I ate my two first garden cucumbers today! They look spikey but we're actually not and we're edible with the skin. Very exciting.

I also tried a green tomato, because it had got a slight yellow blush (it's a green variety) - it was not ripe. I'm not sure how the hell you're supposed to tell when they are. It sounded so nice and fun - Green Zebra - but I now realise I will potentially have a few mishaps in learning when they are ready Could have sworn I had a picture of it but I don't seem to.

You are welcome to the thread @BewareTheBeardedDragon.
They are alpines - going for 10ish years now in my high quality Poundland hanging basket(s) - this is basket 2 as the first one fell apart after only 6 years(you don't get much for your £1 these days).I think this may be the best year yet as we are picking 20 a day and some are as big as my little finger(though some are as small as the nail on my little finger!).
I used some cucumber seeds that were three years out of date and one germinated and then when it had four leaves was eaten by slugs - no cucumbers this year in the Pokky home. Cucumelons are progressing well though so....

Ooh I'd never thought of growing alpines in hanging baskets. I may nick that idea. I have made a miraculous discovery recently - that spraying plants with strong coffee repels slugs while being harmless to the plant! I have bought some cheap instant purely for this purpose. It has to be strong coffee because it is the caffeine which puts them off being poisonous to slugs. In this way I have managed to successfully raise a Dudhi - having last year lost all of my young Dudhi plants to slugs.

Oh Beware you will learn that I am the Queen of unusual growing locations. I have a very small London back garden and a paved front one so I grow in containers a lot - tomatoes in an old toy box, cucamelons in the kids halloween cauldron that they used for Trick or Treating, french and runner beans growing through the hibiscus bushes.

Hello, all! @PiggyPokkyFool my tomatoes have been a great success. The ones I started earlier are fruiting in the greenhouse and the ones from the slices I planted are small but perfectly formed! I will keep those in pots. The chillies, however, were decimated by aphids. I bought some lacewing and ladybird larvae but I fear they are beyond redemption. I will be bringing a few indoors to mollycoddle and see if we have any luck in rejuvenating them. I am very disappointed, I had such high hopes for them. Aphids have also attacked my brassica seedlings, so I have planted out the ones that were less affected and am hoping the larvae rescue some of the others.

I bought a whole load of pallet collars for instant raised beds, so have an actual vegetable garden, now. Things that are looking great: climbing French beans, chard and beetroot, carrots, dahlias, celeriac, mange tout, courgettes, shallots and winter squashes. Slugs ate all of my cucumber seedlings, so I bit the bullet and bought a couple of replacements. Slugs are also eating my strawberries! I will have to rethink their home for next year.

I have planted up the long border with some beautiful plants found at the car boot sale, and it's really starting to look good. Yesterday there was a lady selling delphniums, verbena bonariensis and lots of other bits, so I got some from her. Someone else was telling really big eryngium plants, and a New Zealand flax so I had to get those. Someone else was selling lupins and astilbe last week so I got those. I also raided the bargain bin at the garden centre and now have some asparagus seedlings, more bay than I know what to do with, and some lovely half price pots. Also, leftover gladioli corms, fill a bag for 20p! They need to go in to the ground asap but I have no idea where...

Did you know that you can root any tomato side shoots you remove!? I learned this about 4 weeks ago and now my side shoots have side shoots and are flowering. Amazing!

.I think this may be the best year yet as we are picking 20 a day and some are as big as my little finger(though some are as small as the nail on my little finger!). I've got alpines everywhere nothing else is growing. What a wonderful thought, picking 20 a day! I'm picking a basin full a day - Saturday it was a big two-pint basin. Took me best part of an hour. There is a definite down-side to fruit growing!

Dragon first reaction, wtf is a dudhi?! Google tells me it is a bottle gourd. And ASDA sells them.

Snausage Funnily, I take my chillis outside once they get smothered by aphids, in the vague hope that the birds might sort them.

I'm just coming to the end of last year's chard - it's all developing flower stems, but the small leaves and shoots on the stems are a good bulking agent in a salad, with chives, marjoram, bittercress, jack-by-the-hedge added for taste. I've still got lots of lovely crinkly cavolo nero, a mixed blessing as everything is in pots, and I'm wanting pots freed up for beans, peas, and , of course, this year's sowing of cavolo nero and other cabbages. I've also got a couple of healthy Asturian Tree cabbages which seem to want to live for ever - you just pick single leaves, and the stem goes on getting longer and longer.

This year's sugar snap peas and broad beans will start picking later this week, and the lettuces are doing well - a mixture of crowns and cut-and-come-again, oak-leaf and normal, dark green, lime green, red, purple, and green with red splashes and stripes.

piggy that sounds utterly fabulous and looks utterly beautiful and fab. Does growing in hanging baskets also keep the slugs at bay?

snausage looking really good! Your hen looks like a happy lady

mere Tesco sell them too - I love them. They taste like a milder sweeter courgette, and even my green averse eldest dc has deigned to eat them so that's a win! And they are like cucumbers in that the have next to no calories (I'm on a diet 😂). I got the seeds from the HSL.

I am also growing some other unusual edibles this year:
Achoca - which is a loofah type gourd that you can also eat when young.
Apios Americana - a climber that's develops edible tubers after a few years
Dioscorea Batatas - Chinese yam, another climber that develops tubers
Variegated daubentons perennial Kale
Hauzontle - Aztec broccoli
Crosnes - Chinese artichokes (tubers again)
Pignuts (can't remember their proper name ) - more tubers
Japanese ginger - you eat the shoots rather than the root
Rocambole - serpent garlic
Scurvy grass - a herb, seeds on a whim
Stridolo - another herb I can't quite remember the details of
Papalo - which is supposed to be like coriander but is currently refusing to germinate.
Im also attempting to grow Japanese Udo, Aralia Cortdata, which you eat the shoots and they are supposed to be like asparagus. But the slugs keep mowing it down every time it sprouts. I moved it to a pot in desperation, and it was putting up some nice little leaves and they they got fried by the sun in the hot spell. I'm beginning to give up hope. It's now in a shady corner, and I'm keeping fingers crossed. It's supposed to get up to 6ft+ in a season, and then die back below ground over winter but at this rate I'll be lucky if I get a 1ft plant out of it.

Lots of these are perennials, I'm hoping to be able to spread my harvest longer, hopefully over the hungry gap.

I'm also growing lots of annuals. I do love gardening.