Vegetable crops under glass

auberginesIt has been almost a month since you saw the crops growing in the potting shed.  Things are moving along mightily.

The brassicas are up and out. Well, I still have about thirty plants left – some to give away, others to harvest straight from their pots.  The swiss chard is in the ground, as is the spinach and some of the nasturtiums and the climbing beans.

I’m still dithering about a few of the tomatoes.  But the dwarf French beans have been shoved out to survive our rather dessicating winds. And the slugs. arturtomatoes

Golly it is the slug season Every time it rains I race out and inspect all the peas and beans in the potager to see what is eating them.

Once the plants get to about half a foot high they seem to be safe. But until then, it’s inspect and destroy whenever I can.

And the lovely grafted aubergines are not quite ready to greet the world.  I am nurturing them in the warmth of the potting shed until I can really be asured of consistently warm weather.

brassicaforestThese are the only plants I buy. The rest I sow from seed.

Perhaps I ought to earn the grafting technique used to get an aubergine plant onto a faster growing tomato root stock. It would save me the 20 euros I spend each year on these young plants.

I just find that the season is over by the time my grown from seed aubergines really get going.  And when barbecue season is upon us, nothing beats thickly sliced aubergines grilled over aromatic herbs on the coals.nicotianaseedlings

The flower seedlings (apart from the nasturtiums and sunflowers) are getting there. Slowly.

I have phlomis and agastache and nicotiana and dianthus. Plus knautia macedonia.

I have to put sticks all over the trays to stop you know who from snoozing on them.

Here he is carefully supervising the tricky task of getting the nicotiana seeds up a size.

The seeds are titchy sedumsuccessand once germinated hard to tease out of the compost. I used to laboriously move them up one size and then transplant twice before putting them out.  But there is competition for space right now in the potting shed; so I just space them out into a large tray and then move them into larger pots once I am sure they are growing well.

The best news is all the sedums I took from cuttings a month a go have grown roots. So pleasing to be able to pot them up into individual pots.

potagerredlettuce