Container gardening

Food, Nutrition and Agriculture
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Container gardening

Post by GillyBee »

Every year is a learning year - and is not always the same as the year before.
This year looks as if it will be a dead loss for outdoor tomatoes. I am already on my second batch of green tomato chutney as I have had to cut my losses, grab any undamaged green fruit and pull the blighted plants. It is the weather that has been the problem. Last year they did great. The year before was good until it started raining hard in September and I lost the lot to blight within a week of it starting to rain. Every year is different.
I still have a few plants left from "blight resistant" varieties so it will be interesting to see if they last long enough to crop properly this year.
Meanwhile last year's courgettes were poor while this year they are doing much better. it seems that the milk and bicarb spray really does help kill off the powdery mildew. I just wish it killed blight!
Moorland Prepper
Posts: 102
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2020 8:43 am
Location: On the edge of the Pennines

Re: Container gardening

Post by Moorland Prepper »

I think that it was the weather here that was a big part of the problem. It was a long, cold and rather wet spring and it can get a bit wild at times in The Moorlands. We did not give some of our plants the early shelter that they needed, unlike our neighbour. It was blistering hot last week, but last night's temperature was down to single figures - we actually put the heating on! We will be much more careful next year.

Two pots of tomatoes (always keep outside) have just a few green tomatoes on them, so I don't hold out much hope. We bought a tomatoes plant from Lidl (£3.50) and kept that in the greenhouse. It produces a few small but very tasty cherry tomatoes. The seeds we used for the rocket were quite old, so this may have been the problem there. The spring onions that we grew from seeds aren't doing much, and yet the ones we planted from the roots of consumed spring onions grew very well (and have now, themselves, been eaten).

This year has made me realize how precarious a living an agricultural society must have been in the past (and still is in some countries). A bad harvest and you didn't eat very well for quite a while!
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Container gardening

Post by GillyBee »

Exacty. I would not want to be reliant on only what I could grow even if I did have enough land to try. But I would be much thinner!
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Le Mouse
Posts: 427
Joined: Mon Mar 27, 2017 10:39 am
Location: Area 4

Re: Container gardening

Post by Le Mouse »

This was my first year of trying gardening really in any form. So far *touches wood* the tomatoes are doing OK - there's even a red one about to be ready!! I had planted mustard greens and they were doing really well and this morning I realised they were a) covered in bugs and b) those bugs were decimating them :cry: . Interestingly though, in the same trough, I have plantain and the bugs haven't touched them. I think the bugs actually moved over from the radishes and broccoli in the next trough, where I think they were kicked out by the cabbage whites! :lol: I suspect the rubbish weather hasn't helped my attempts. It's been rainier more than sunny. Oh well. It's all a learning curve. I've been lucky enough to get a crop of microgreens from thinning out the seedlings, so it's not an entire disaster.
GillyBee
Posts: 1047
Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Container gardening

Post by GillyBee »

The weather is definitely not helping. Warm and wet means tomato and potato blight and I have never seen such large slugs - they are clearly reaping the fruits of my labour. I have been using the "organic" slug pellets but am beginning to wonder if the bigger slugs can sense that they are bad news and just skirt round them! I am also noticing that some plants have rather yellow new leaves which suggests that all the plant food I put into my free draining soil has been washed through and they are now running short.
Moorland Prepper
Posts: 102
Joined: Fri Nov 06, 2020 8:43 am
Location: On the edge of the Pennines

Re: Container gardening

Post by Moorland Prepper »

Just started the big clear out, getting ready for the winter veg.

Quite a disapointing first try, but we have learned quite a bit. Our problem was the summer, it was the coldest and wettest that I can remember. Even now, at night the outside temperature is down to single figures and the wind in the last few days has flattened plants - we have decided to remove a large crocosmia as it just gets destroyed every summer by the wind.

Failures have been runner beans, spring onions, tomatoes, French beans and rocket. About half of what we planted outside!

Success - cucumbers (greenhouse), peppers (greenhouse), aubergine (greenhouse) and,outside lettuce, spinich and potatoes. Why the lettuce and spinich thrived and the rocket didn't is a mystery.

As I have mentioned we are over 700 feet up - the car's temperature readout show a rise of 2c - 3c when we drive down to the village below (about 250 feet lower I guess). Not the best place to be for a cold summer.

We'll look for hardier summer veg. next year, there must be some.