Kitchen Gardener Rob Smith is doing the hokey-cokey with his plants!
Even though there shouldn’t be any more frost up here in Sheffield (touch wood), I’m still shuffling plants around and playing the ‘hokeycokey’ with my outside tomatoes as they’re being hardened off during the day, ready to plant out. The aubergines and peppers, which were destined for the unheated greenhouse, have finally been moved into their new homes. I’m growing my greenhouse plants in peat-free Dalefoot compost this year as it’s supposed to be more moisture-retentive, which means watering should be easier. It’s also got comfrey added to it already, which is great as I usually add my own halfway through the season.
However hard I try not to, I’ve done my usual trick and grown too many plants! Instead of composting them I’ve given some to friends and family as I normally do, but I’m also going to try growing some in the lean-to as well. It only gets full sun from around 11am, so it’s only the spare plants that have been potted up and put in there, but hopefully it will give me an extra harvest – us gardeners have to grow where we can!
The tomatoes in the unheated greenhouse seem to be growing well so it’s time to add a couple of companion planting friends to help deter pests during summer. I’ll be planting French marigolds under them, choosing the smelliest ones I could find. This is because insects get confused by the strong aroma and can’t find your plants to feed on. If you’re buying your plants from the garden centre I find it best to run your hands over the plants and buy ones that smell the strongest. If you grow your own I’d grow an older variety, as they’ll be stronger smelling – more modern breeding has tried to get rid of the smell as most gardeners who grow them as bedding don’t want the aroma. However, when it comes to pest deterrent, the stronger the better! I’m also planting some red and green basil with the tomatoes; they grow happily right next to the them and it saves me space at the same time.
It’s time to pot up the spare fig cuttings I took just before Christmas; not all of them survived, but the ones that did are producing healthy little plants that now need a larger pot. I’m planting them in a mix of compost, topsoil and gritty sand as they don’t like to be sat in soggy compost. They’ll stay in the greenhouse this year to get a little more established and will then make their way into the garden next year. Another fruit
that needs potting up is my black goji berry I started from seed. The plants really did look like they’d died during winter, but have burst back into leaf and are happily growing – they just need more space. They’re planted in the same mix as the figs and I’ll feed them every two weeks with a weak tomato food solution throughout the summer.