What a pizza good fortune!
I love my new planters – see if you can get your hands on something similar
I’m potting up a few micro tomato plants in the little greenhouse and was given a couple of commercial pizza sauce tins which I thought could look good if upcycled as planters. After drilling a few drainage holes in the base and adding a layer of gravel, I’ve used them as you would any plant pot, with a tomato plant in each and another layer of gravel on top to help preserve moisture. Why not ask at your local pizza restaurant for any used cans? I’m sure they’ll be happy to give them away and they’re perfect not only for tomatoes, but basil as well!
Over the last few months, I’ve been glad most of my veg are grown in raised beds, especially with so much standing water over the winter and early spring. A few friends on my old allotment have lost most of their overwintered brassicas due to them drowning or rotting.
I’m continuing to harvest ‘Sapporo’ cauliflowers, which have been under an enviromesh cage, but while the crops look good, the netting has started to turn green due to algae and all the wet weather. Once the final brassicas are removed, I’ll see if I can clean the material with the hose, or even the jet wash, to give it a new lease of life.
The lettuce seedlings I started a few weeks ago are being transplanted into the garden under wire cloches. This is because the curious blackbirds love to flick the small plants from the ground if they can, so by covering them with a cloche it gives them time to root and hold their own. While some go out, I’m sowing more, as it’s a constant cycle with lettuce to produce fresh leaves all year; adopt a ‘plant one, sow one’ approach, with modules, pots and even old guttering working well to produce cut-and-come-again leaves. The seedlings may look close, but this allows for several harvests from the plants. If you want to produce full heads of lettuce, space them out more to allow them to grow to maturity.
I’m also starting parsnips in a trusty zip-lock bag to chit the seeds before planting. By doing this, I can see which of the notoriously fussy seeds are
going to grow, as they produce a small white root, allowing me to pick them out and then carefully transplant them, knowing they will grow. I always start my parsnips like this, meaning I have full rows of plants, whereas those rows sown directly can be a little patchy after poor germination. One vegetable which is anything but fussy is my main crop potatoes. I don’t bother growing them in the ground any more, as most tubers had keel slug damage which meant I couldn’t store them. Instead, I grow them in large pots and old buckets, producing perfect potatoes every time. I’ll start them in 10cm of compost, with 10cm more on top, then once they emerge, I’ll earth them up.