Planting Out
A couple of weeks ago I decided to leave one of my purple sprouting broccoli plants to grow into flowers. Well just look at this beautiful show! The bees are loving it and flocking to the garden.
Elsewhere the blueberries are also smothered in blossom, it looks to be a bumper harvest this year for soft fruit - right across the board!
This week I will plant out my sweet corn 'Conqueror' the plants have been hardened off in the last week and are ready to stay outside. I will also plant a second planting of sweet corn seeds direct into the ground elsewhere. I am going to plant them in the same bed as my pumpkins.
These courgettes 'Black Forest' have been outside for a couple of days now, protected for a week more with these plastic water bottle cloches. During the day it gets quite warm inside the cloches and they are growing fast. These climbing courgettes were amazing last year, incredibly productive and apparently resistant to mosaic virus too.
My other pumpkins have been hardening off outside too. The pumpkins rouge vif d'etamps and the lovely Queensland Blue pumpkins too. I just don't have enough space for all the pumpkins I would love to grow, they just ramble everywhere!
This little tomato plant Golden gem really wanted to be a bush! Even at a few inches high it was sending out little side shoots. So if it really wants to be a bush - I will let it! planted out in a hanging basked, let's see how it enjoys life!
posted by Matron @ 8:01 AM
13 Comments:
You are much further south than me Matron so I'm hanging fire with my Summer Softies that can't take a frost! I'll start to harden them off over the next week or so and plant out at the end of May. Couldn't bear to lose them now.
I left my kale to flower and they look very much like your brocolli. And, like ylour flowers ,the bees have been going crazy about them at a time of year when there isn't a greadt deal for them to eat.
I've noticed my blueberries are just covered in flowers this year too. I'm getting reading to plant out my Great Wall of China tomato plant. It's looking great!
That's the trouble with Squash - they take up loads of space and never go where you want them too. My planting with Sweetcorn last year did not go as well as expected - the Squash spent all their time crawling into the next bed and the Sweetcorn were left on mostly bare ground.
Nice to see all the warm season crops growing. The broad beans are flowering, half are red and half are white. Did you grow both last year or did I end up with some albino crimsons? :-)
Same report on bees and broccoli here (not that I have any flowering here). They go crazy. We've been distracted by our greenhouse building (& cool weather), but you're reminding me that I have to get more things started. Love to see the water bottle cloches. Nice size indeed for courgettes.
Dan - it is possible that some of the crimson broad beans cross pollinated with some white ones. If you collect seed from the crimson ones and grow only these you should come true in the next generations.
That is such a good idea using water bottles for a cloche! I have three in the shop already and may purchase a few more because I was just getting ready to plant out the zuchinni, pumpkins, and winter squashes and they could use a few more weeks of protection before going solo.
Hi Matron, looks like things are coming on well. They say its going torain these next few days so that should give everything a good watering.
I will make sure to mark which ones are crimson's for seed saving. Either way it is nice to have the variety of blooms. Maybe once they all start blooming I will have a hybrid!
oh i can't wait for my blueberries to, umm, blue up! We have loads this year too and they're my favourite, eek! so excited.
Everything looks well in your plot, we are doing good too but it's really all down to the hubby, I have to be honest.
Wow, your sweetcorn looks good, we're growing it for the first time this year but one of the dogs managed to knock the tray of seedlings over and broke about four of them, I don't know if they'll recover. Also, I just wanted to say that I finally got the link done to your site!
Hoorah, you have been nominated for a garden blog award
GMx
http://fingmonkey2009awards.blogspot.com/2009/04/gqt-panellist.html
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