Seat of the pants gardening.

Having planted out 10 tomato plants before the weekend, I was away at the weekend and unsure what I was going to come back to. I hoped I had hardened everything off enough for them to survive whatever the weather was going to throw at them.

Thankfully the weather was great and everything was as it should be when I came back Sunday night.

The weather is so up and down, it really is hard to know whether the decision you make are the right ones.

 

Tomatoes in final position

Half of the tomatoes had flowers forming of opening so they needed to go out, these were from an early January sowing.
I was really surprised to find I had my first tomatoes,  ferline, which I'm not sure will work in my favour.

 

The broad beans and peas are all coming along.

I've used canes and shelves from the grow houses to help support the stems.

I've planted out the cucamelon with barely a whisper of optimism, they do look quite pathetic.

First strawberries

Future raspberries

Dave had shown a lot of interest in us growing red strawberry popcorn as shown in James Wong's book, I had wanted to grow regular corn but it's not recommended that you grow different variety close together.
So in the interest of matrimonial harmony I got the seeds.

The general advice on growing corn is to germinate in toilet roll tubes as they don't like root disturbance. I tried this but after two weeks nothing had happened so I tried again in a regular window sill propagator and they started to germinate after a week.

 

 

I was very gentle at lifting the seedlings and planted them out and now, nearly a week on, they are definitely getting bigger.

 

Indoor jalapeno, sown on the 5th Jan.

I am grateful that I have plants that are doing what they should be doing somewhat early but now is not the time to get cocky, very few things are a certainty.
I'll just keep doing what I'm doing and see where it gets us.

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