Advice for a hopeless gardener

Food, Nutrition and Agriculture
jennyjj01
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Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by jennyjj01 »

jennyjj01 wrote: Thu Apr 07, 2022 8:43 am Joyous times. Seedling update:

...I just moved Curtis and Caz Courgette to their own pots. Curtis was the biggest at 8cm and caz was the smallest at 2cm. Both had only got their 'baby leaves'. This was a slightly heartless experiment to see which tolerated the move.
Curtis seems happy, standing tall, bending to the sun. First true leaf showing. But Caz looks a bit p155ed! if you can imagine an angry seedling. Baby leaves look a bit scrunched up. Sorry Caz. Please don't die. Lesson learned.

Fifth sibling Courtney now visible. 5/5 germination.

Many more tiny Gardener's delight and tiny bell peppers and even a couple of peas have shown up. Surprised how tiny the peppers are considering how big the seeds were.

Maurice Moneymaker still alone in his big tray.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

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GillyBee
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by GillyBee »

I sowed a big tub of mange tout peas a couple of weeks ago Half the pot are now an inch tall while the other side had nothing. I went to resow this just now thinking that the seeds had been eaten or rotted but it seems that they are just coming up now. It is amazing the impact of being 30cm closer to the greenhouse in terms of how fast everything has germinated.
jennyjj01
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by jennyjj01 »

GillyBee wrote: Fri Apr 08, 2022 11:20 am I sowed a big tub of mange tout peas a couple of weeks ago Half the pot are now an inch tall while the other side had nothing. I went to resow this just now thinking that the seeds had been eaten or rotted but it seems that they are just coming up now. It is amazing the impact of being 30cm closer to the greenhouse in terms of how fast everything has germinated.
I wasn't expecting the peas to show up so quickly. They were sown a generous 2cm deep in soaking wet compost. I like to think pre-soaking them helped.

Resowing: Yes. I've done lots of that where seedlings had not showed up after 3 weeks. It's a rather sad admission of failure. Onion seeds were spectacularly unsuccessful and those little tinkers were sown generously very close to the surface.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
GillyBee
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Joined: Tue Apr 07, 2020 6:46 am

Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by GillyBee »

There is an old country saying about sowing seeds. "One for rook and one for crow. One to rot and one to grow" So our great grandparents also complained about not seeing all their seeds come up.
But it does help improve the chances if you check timing and conditions for each seed type and don't try to force them to grow in conditions where they are unhappy to start with. It took me a while to realise that early spring on a seed packet means March - not January!
jennyjj01
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by jennyjj01 »

Another day: Another daft question:-

I cleared all the weeds from one of my beds, smoothed the surface and sowed it with rows of parsnip seeds, which I lightly covered. The soil has been around 5C which is low for germinating. When I look today, there's a sprinkling of what I believe are weed seedlings. I'm assuming they are weeds because they are tiny with two 'baby leaves' about 5mm across. They are also not in the straight rows that I sowed.

So..... How the devil will I know which are parsnips and which are weeds? I figure I'll be nurturing both until I can identify the leaves, which is silly? Is there a site on the internet with helpful illustrations?

If they'd been carrots or tomatoes, I'd reasonably expect to identify them from their first proper leaves.

I really need those parsnips to germinate and prosper ASAP. It would be just my luck if all the parsnip seeds rot and I just give care and attention to dandelions. :roll:

Another advantage of pre-germinating?

In the finest tradition of JennyHaste, I've just popped a few dozen extra parsnip seeds in with some damp kitchen towel to pre-germinate. If these survive and germinate, they will be used to over-sow the seeds that went straight into the soil.

I note that parsnips should be sown in spring, so I got that right. Gardeners World says
"Parsnips can be tricky to grow from seed. .... Parsnips can take several weeks to germinate, "
So I don't feel too concerned.
Last edited by jennyjj01 on Tue Apr 12, 2022 5:03 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
GillyBee
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by GillyBee »

This is why you sow your seeds in straight lines. Anything not in a line is a weed. Anything in the line is either a weed or a seedling but you will see enough seedlings to be able to tell the difference.

Real Seeds have just put together a seedling gallery to help newbies. I dont know if it has parsnips in but they may add them if you ask nicely.

https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlinggal ... eTZ8dkUGbs
jennyjj01
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by jennyjj01 »

GillyBee wrote: Tue Apr 12, 2022 5:02 pm This is why you sow your seeds in straight lines. Anything not in a line is a weed. Anything in the line is either a weed or a seedling but you will see enough seedlings to be able to tell the difference.

Real Seeds have just put together a seedling gallery to help newbies. I dont know if it has parsnips in but they may add them if you ask nicely.

https://www.realseeds.co.uk/seedlinggal ... eTZ8dkUGbs
Brilliantly Simple. Simply Brilliant. Thank you for yet another fine bookmark.

It featured a very happy picture of some baby watermellon. Favourite pic of the day.
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Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
jennyjj01
Posts: 3429
Joined: Sun Jun 04, 2017 11:09 pm

Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by jennyjj01 »

Another dumb question for the gardeners. How best to use my cloche/planter hybrid?

When I commissioned my hybrid planter/cloche, the idea was to fill it with compost like all the others (it has a floor) and use it for things that like to be in greenhouses. But it's quite a volume and would be expensive to fill with compost..400L or so.
So far, that's not how i'm using it. I'm thinking of treating it more like a greenhouse than a planter, a bit like the cucumber greenhouse pic we saw recently where there were huge arrays of grow-bags .
To explain, I currently have an old coffee table sized table in it, onto which I've moved assorted seed trays. I'm thinking 'why not put a bigger table in it and maybe four grow bags or some big bucket based plants on top of that. It would save a LOT on compost.
The table ide was just to raise things up a bit. Useful in having a bit of storage space underneath, too..

Is this a daft idea? What's the pros and cons to filling it with compost compared to filling it with things growing individually in pots or in threes in growbags?

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Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

Not Feeling Optimistic. Let me be wrong
GillyBee
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by GillyBee »

Nothing to stop you using pots or grow bags instead of filling the planter. Just make sure that they are raised enough that the sides of the planter dont shade your plants.
The planter itself looks as if it would be fantastic for tomatoes. You could try using grow bags - or my favourite which is B&Q builders buckets with holes in the bottom. THe buckets would be hidden by the planter and would make it easy to replace the compost at the end of the season.
ForgeCorvus
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Re: Advice for a hopeless gardener

Post by ForgeCorvus »

Can anyone suggest an onion variety that good for pickling??
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