Success!

What I harvested from my garden this evening:

It's not perfect, but there's enough for a portion of potatoes, a portion of carrots and mange tout, and rhubarb crumble for me and my wife tomorrow night (plus some strawberries). And it all came from the magic seeds* I planted in my garden. Hurray!

PJW

*Technically speaking, the mangetout comes from magic seedlings bought from the garden centre as the slugs ate the ones I grew from seed. Still totally counts though.

More promise, fewer results

Long pause between updates, as the play I've been in came to conclusion. Great fun to do, but massively tiring and hasn't left me much time for anything that's not play or daughter. On the bright side, I've been surviving mostly on junk food, so the continued lack of vegetables hasn't proved too much of a problem.

Actual size

The carrots have continued to be pitiful, despite my attempts at appropriate fertiliser. I have some theories as to why that is - I think I've spaced them too closely together and have possibly pulled them up a little too early - but any suggestions from the audience would be appreciated.

On the bright side, the garden has flourished in the face of being neglected for a week or so.

From the humble original seedling of a few months back...

To the "Holy crap, broccoli!" of today

There's promise of broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower and also imminent courgettes and beans.

It still seems like magic to me that all of these came from tiny little seeds. Doesn't seem possible. Of course, the promise of  vegetables isn't quite the same as actually getting some. We'll see next month, I guess

The major change to the garden this month is that I've got rid of one of my many sheds. It was falling apart and a fortuitous turn of events allowed me to get it taken away for free by someone who thought they could rebuild it on their allotment, but it has given me the nice side-effect of giving me more room for another vegetable bed.

Spot the difference.

I'm resolutely not building anything there yet, as I want to see how this year's harvest goes before deciding what I want to put there. I'm currently struggling to fit everything in that I wanted to grow this year, especially the winter vegetables. The purple sprouting broccoli is going great guns and I've got nowhere to put it until I've harvested a few cauliflowers. At the moment, pots are my friend, but it's not a permanent solution. Hopefully, it won't stunt the winter vegetables; despite my appalling start, I really would like to have year-round vegetables.

Next challenge is going to be sowing seeds for the overwintering spring vegetables and then attempting to grow carrots that you can't pick your teeth with.

PJW

And the results are...

No, not really.

I should point out for the sake of perspective that that's my tiny wife's tiny hand. So they're even smaller and weedier than they appear.

To say this is disheartening is something of an understatement. I was hoping to get two, maybe even three meals worth out of those carrots, instead of a bunch of spindly little things which I'm scared to peel lest they disappear.

Nevermind. They shall be eaten in one glorious swoop this week and we shall go back to the drawing board a touch.

The problem with these carrots, I believe, is that they weren't fertilised enough. By which, of course, I hadn't got round to fertilise them at all. I thought they'd do all right; they were in pots of pure compost so there must have been enough nutrients for them to grow big and strong, right? Wrong. Well, sort of wrong.

Vegetables need three things to grow big: nitrogen, phosporus and potash (potassium). Nitrogen does the up - the leafy bits, phosporus does the down - the roots and stuff below ground, and potash does the all around - the general health of the plant. The compost which I planted the carrots in had a roughly even mix of NPK, which is great if you're growing a lettuce and find the green leafy bits just as important as everything else. Slightly less good if you're planning on throwing away the green leafy bits and just eating the roots.

I have since applied a good dosing of phosporus-and-potash-heavy fertiliser to the next batch of carrots to be pulled and will try and leave them a fortnight to put some bulk on. Here's hoping that the next lot are more like the first picture than the second.

On the bright side, I have rhubarb and therefore rhubarb crumble.

Tiny hands not shown for perspective in this picture, but they're a lot bigger than the carrots!

And rhubarb is technically a vegetable, so therefore I claim success.

I define my own victories.

PJW