Thursday 9 May 2013

Win some lose some...

Having faffed around trying to develop a watering system for our new down the drive vegetable bed, it all fell flat on its face. We have decided to not use the system planned and instead, use something I have in use elsewhere (why don't you remember such things before buying something different?)

Anyway, all trees and large shrubs in the garden, have a half buried plant pot beside them to allow me to liquid feed/water down to the roots rather than just surface watering. This is what I shall do beside each bean or tomato plant. That way, I can assure they are getting what they need individually rather than waste precious water on the ground in general.

The bed is ready and waiting, all I need now are the plants to grow (or in the case of the beans) sprout and grow and then they will be ready to transfer end of May depending on the weather. I consider it a little too early here yet as we occasionally get frost late May or on rare occasions, early June.

Such a change in the weather today, certainly cooler and the cool wind is back. Meat has come out of the freezer overnight and I shall make us something hearty and warming for tea.

10 comments:

  1. Just found your blog after following a link from Savingfortravel's blog. I look forward to reading more! Definately colder today isn't it - I feel a comfort food meal coming up for us tonight - something with gravy!
    Stacey x
    www.stayathomemummy.co.uk

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    1. Us too, have just put a spicy casserole into the oven on a long slow cook.

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  2. Freezing strong wind over the border in Suffolk too today, hope it doesn't do to much damage. I KNEW it was risky putting those climbing french beans out.I reckon we will put something around them before the end of the day.

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    1. It is amazing isn't it how each year we get caught out with something in the garden. One year I sowed my tomatoes too early and they had to go out mid May with the whole bed wrapped in quadruple layers of fleece, including a roof. They survived just, some quite hard frosts.

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  3. We would love some kind of watering system for the greenhouse, just to use while we are caravanning, my daughter in law loves to come and do the watering but I dont like to ask too much. Our problem is that the greenhouse is right at the bottom of the garden and as far away as possible from the taps!! I put runner beans out too early last year and they were set back abit. Its very windy here in Doncaster and just starting to rain, I'm not really complaining because we do need it, the ground is so dry.

    Good idea to bury the plant pots, it will save the feed from evaporating in the sun from the top of the soil, I think I will try that with my french beans.

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  4. On a blog somewhere (can't remember where) they put guttering onto their greenhouses which went into a water butt - would that be possible somehow?

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  5. We use upturned 2 litre bottles with the bottoms cut off in the greenhouse when we go away. Things have survived that way during our last 2 holidays, but it hasn't been very sunny here during those summers, so that may have contributed to the tomato plants' survival. We've seen quite a lot of people lose all their tender plants down at the allotment because they get lulled into thinking summer has arrived, and don't realise that the allotment is on an open, very windblown site.

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    1. Luckily (or unluckily) we don't have a green house so don't have that problem. If I can get some pop bottles off someone they would also be good.

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  6. You can buy greenhouse guttering or it's quite easy to cobble a system togther yourself using bits of guttering and downpipes :-)

    I use the bury the pot in the earth next to plants method too, although I usually use the top half of an empty 2 litre sparkiling water bottle, any plastic bottle will do, just put it in a hole next to each plant bottle neck side down.

    Works a treat.

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    1. Hopefully Karen will read that Sue, thanks for the info.

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