I seemed to have been delayed in getting everything into order. I certainly am not as organised as I was last year regarding what I was going to sow or where to put them. I had decided I wouldn’t grow some of the plants again because I wanted room to try some new produce. Of course it didn’t work that way, I wanted it all, now I have to find space for everything.
Because I am container growing, I can’t get big harvests of anything but it doesn’t matter, I don’t grow for mass production, just interest and to try to get others interested in growing their own food and experimenting with new tastes. There is nothing wrong with growing old favourites but when you try something different and it works, there is a sense of satisfaction. Flowers are nice to grow and look at but having a bite of one isn’t as nice as pulling a nice big red, juicy strawberry – so save the flowers to add to salad instead.
This year I have been shuffling containers around a bit to try to get better positions for them. There are some new seeds I will be sowing so I don’t know yet where best to place them but the joy of containers and pots, you can move them around. The ‘Greenwall’ planters on the wall of the shed are ideal to hold small pots. I have decided to put some of the flowers in tower planters on the other side of the shed. Over winter they held some of the milk bottles I was using for cold sowing, but they will be ideal for some of my bee friendly flowers. (My shed had a back door and a front door.)
I have added a composter to the garden after much deliberation. I recycle as much compost as I can, revitalising it with worm casts from the wormery and bio compost from the bokashi bin and any other nutrients I think it may need. I will be careful what I put in it and coarser material can just go into the council’s garden waste bin.
My fence has also been repaired (after a fashion). The wind had been blowing it further 
and further over and I was losing usable space because of it. My recycling instincts took advantage of disused fencing so although it may not be the prettiest fence, to me it is the most practical. I had a collapsible water butt by the greenhouse which saved running back and forward with cans, however, I have replaced it with a slimline water butt which is even better as I can get a watering can under the tap, I needed to use a hose extension for the other one.
I have found ho
mes for most of my excess plants such as tomatoes, yacón and oca. The tomato pots are filled ready for their plants but in the meantime I use grow-bag trays on top of the filled pots as a shelf for other seedlings and once they get established, it will be time to plant up the tomatoes in their forever homes.
Now that it is starting to come together I can think of making a decent plan of action. I planted peas indoors in a tray and cold sowed some in a water bottle. The peas indoors came up thickly and quickly but the outdoor sowing has only started to come up. Although the indoor sown ones are ready to transplant out now, I think I prefer the cold sown ones, they may do better with our cooler climate but I will plant some of each to see if it makes any difference in flavour. I did read somewhere that tomatoes are sweeter in cooler climates and I have to agree that home-grown tomatoes are sweeter and have far more flavour than shop-bought ones.
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