Making the most of the sun

Well what a lovely weekend it has been. Glorious clear blue skies, lots of sun and good temperatures 18 degrees plus. It has been a little breezier today and the weather forecast shows that temperatures will drop again later in the week (boo). However, with the temperature supposed to be 18 degrees tomorrow and above 10 degree's for the rest of the week I think I will allow my tomatoes, peppers and chillies to go in the blowaway during the day and then bring them back in at night to get them to toughen up. I hear tomatoes will be OK as long as they are in temps above 10 degrees. However, maybe when the temp drops to the 12/14 degree mark on Tuesday/Wednesday I will not put the peppers and chillies out as I think that would shock them a bit too much.

I have been away this weekend so I was keen to see what a good dose of sunshine and (hopefully) watering had done for my plants. I was very pleasantly surprised as everything has really had a good growth spurt. I also brought home some strawberry planters full of plants which I added to the front of the house.

Front of the house in full sun. Definitely a good place for the vegetables as they are all looking healthy there.

Early Onward Peas still doing nicely and putting on some new growth over the weekend

First peek of broad beans flowers :-)

Red Baron Onions

French Cristo Garlic

As the sun was still shining on I thought I would move the blowaway into the sun and get all the tomato, chilli and red pepper plants into it for the day. With a fair breeze I thought this might also start to toughen them up a little.

California Wonder Red Pepper

Chillies

Gardeners Delight Tomatoes

California Wonder Red Peppers

All seven plants looking good. Four of the plants now have 5 true leaves. With three of the plants with 4, 6 and 7 true leaves. 

Red Chillies

All five plants look well. All have 7 true leaves.

Gardeners Delight Tomatoes 

All 7 plants looking very strong now and had a great growth spurt this weekend. 2 of the plants are a good 7-8 inches tall now with lots of leaves whilst the other five are at least 4-6 inches now which is great.

All of the above plants enjoyed their day in the sun but I brought them back inside onto their sunny windowsill at about 6pm once the garden begun to cool quite a lot. 

Strawberries

Strawberries I already had looking good!

With my two new strawberry planters full of three varieties of strawberries (although I can't remember the names) I thought about what I could sow in the top of them. It seemed a shame seeing all that lovely surface area with nothing happening in it. Obviously I didn't want to sow anything which would take up too much energy from the compost or that would have huge roots. So I settled on some catch crops and sowed:

Approx 18 Cherry Belle radishes in a circular row in the top of one planter (an inch apart)

4 x Wild Rocket seeds approx 6 - 8 inches apart

After sowing I watered each planter after the long hot drive home and made sure to water in each pocket too. So I guess we will wait and see whether the catch crops work. 

I wanted to make the most of the weather and get some more things sown including some crops to keep a steady supply of veg. So here is what I did:

• Sowed 10 x Spring Onions in one row in a trough planter (I plan to sow 10 a week from now on to give us our weekly supply of spring onions for our salads. Watered in and put in the blowaway to germinate. 
• Sowed 14 x Early Onward Peas in two rows in another trough planter to act as second crop of peas to be ready when my current crop are finished (hopefully). Sowed 2 rows of seven seeds each. 2 inches between seeds and 6 inches between rows. Watered in and put in the blowaway to germinate.
• Sowed some additional wildflowers. Some in the same pot as my first sowing (as instructed on the packed) and some in a new small wooden planter. Watered in. 
• Planted 6 x Bambino main crop potatoes (chitted) in an Ikea bag of compost. Watered in. 
• Planted 4 x very small Vales Emerald first early potatoes in a 12inch by 12inch pot as an experiment as to how many small new potatoes you can crop from one of these (and due to nowhere else to plant them). Should be interesting. 
• Sowed 1 x Courgette in a 4 inch pot, watered in and put on sunny windowsill to germinate.
• Sowed 5 x Basil and 5 x Moneymaker Tomatoes in one inch modules. Watered in a put on a sunny windwosill indoors to germinate. 
• Sowed 15 x marigolds, 5 x Lollo Rossa Lettuce, 5 x All the Year Round Lettuce, 5 x Chartwell Lettuce and 10 x Boltardy Beetroot in one inch modules. Watered and put into the blowaway to germinate.
• Sowed 6 x Sutton Broad Beans into plastic bottle pots (same as ones used for broad beans the first time around). Watered in and put into blowaway to germinate. Hopefully these will be cropping about the same time as the current plants have finished cropping to give us a continual supply. 

New strawberry planters with some catch crops sown in the top.

Sowing sowing sowing

Wildflowers have now germinated and are poking through.

Potatoes relocated to end of the garden which gets sun all afternoon.

Blowaway moved into a sunnier position so that new sowings will hopefully germinate.

Last but not least, I also tackled sorting out a climbing jasmine plant which came down some time ago along with the fence when it was windy. Some of the roots were pulled up and broken meaning half of the plant had died. So I cut it all back and did a temporary tie up job.

That's all for now. :-)