Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Overdue

Long long time overdue. I had my month in China during April and my housemate was incredibly dulleg and kept all of my seedlings alive. Since then I have repotted and hardened off various plants.

Early May provided an unseasonably warm week followed by a reminder of where we live with below freezing temperatures and even a sprinkling of snow. This royally terrified almost all plants and trees which were excited by the sun. It almost killed all of my courgette plants. I had 15 out in my cold frame, 5 varieties and now I only have 4 plants left. At the very least I can share the fact that the variety Cocozelle seems to be to most frost hardy with all of the 3 plants surviving.

Almost all of the rest of my plants are doing incredibly well. I sadly dropped and destroyed my iphone so have no way to take digital photos currently. I took a large number of photos on my film camera which I will get back in the next day or so and upload on here.

Descriptively though, most of the salads are 'baby plants' as my 2 year old calls them, the pak choi is almost pickable and the peas are about 15cm high. Inside my apartment every windowsill is rammed with tomato plants. I am growing no less than 11 varieties of tomato and 9 types of chili. In addition there are 2 types of aubergine and 2 of pepper. I am going to try and keep these indoors for maximum crop this year and use my darling plastic greenhouse and new plastic cold frame for squashes, baby sweetcorn, herbs and more. I have also invested substantial effort in flowers this year, something I have never really done previously. My focus has of course been on edible ones. I have 6 different types of nasturtium, 3 types of sunflower, camomile, cornflower and lavender. There are also a few flowers for flowers sake including sweet peas, aster and forget me nots. The weather has been epic the last week and is supposed to continue for another week at least. Its brilliant.

This week I have been eating:

  • Demon Red chilis
  • Pak Choi
  • Corriander
  • Spring onions - white and red
  • Chives
  • Basil
  • Rhubarb
  • Sorrel