4th June - Plant swap & garden at home

This week it was the first plant swap for the allotment society.  The aim is that people who are growing from seed and have extras can swap them for something they haven't grown.  The society have previously had BBQ's and events but this was the first plant swap and the first event organised by the new committee.  It was a really successful, plenty of people came and brought plants to swap; we had a lovely BBQ and it was an opportunity for people to meet, get to know each other and have a chat.   

 I spent most of the day on Saturday preparing for or working at the plant swap so really didn't get to my plot at all.  At the end of the swap however, all of the leftover plants were gathered together and I will be taking them to the local primary school who have just recently set up their own garden.

On my own plot I was very pleased to find my very first cauliflower starting to form, it's only tiny still but as I have never managed to grow one before I was absolutely delighted.  The other 5 aren't yet showing any signs of a head but all of the brassicas are growing well and so fingers crossed for a good crop.  On the brassicas I also have 6 savoy cabbage in the polytunnel and they have gone mad!  Hopefully they will start to form heads soon but if they mirror the size of the leaves so far then they will be very big!

The polytunnel is still chock full with various things ready to plant out.  I have loads of peas but actually I've run out of room so I might pass those on to the school as well.  My beetroot are still a little bit small to plant out but all of them have germinated so I'm happy about that.  Weirdly I was careful to only put one seed into each cell and in most cases 2 beetroot seedlings have come up so I've thinned them out before I plant them.  I therefore think that the seeds must have the potential for 2 plants in each one.  I also wanted to give you a quick update on my living wreath; the flowers are really blooming now and I'm really pleased with how it has turned out.  I have worked out that the easiest way to water it is to put it in a bucket full of water so that the bottom of it is sitting in the water.  When I was watering it from above I felt as though most of the water just ran off and that the wreath wasn't really getting the water it needed.  Since I changed the way it's watered it has definitely improved.  The only thing I need to think about is how I'm going to get my flower power into it because the bucket is pretty deep and I think it would be too much to add the flower power to.

Finally, I am embarrassed to say that my garden at home was pretty awful, full of pots that haven't been properly watered and therefore the plants have died in them.  That's partly because my watering system had failed after the storms in the winter when the feeder tube was pulled away from the pots and I hadn't realised.  I have therefore emptied all of the pots, including the guttering that I've used as living fence.  I have added strawberries to the living fence instead of bedding plants and I've fixed the watering system to ensure that they are properly watered throughout the rest of the summer.  I have fixed the feeder tube properly to the fence so that hopefully if there are further storms it won't be pulled away again.  I've also  ensured that the automatic watering system reaches the Acer in the corner which currently looks very sad because again it hasn't been watered properly.  I'm hoping that regular watering (and leaving it in a sheltered corner) will bring it back.  As you can see I've also moved the water fountain into the middle of the mini patio area and that really looks nice now too.  The fountain is a Bernini Florentina all weather rechargeable water fountain that I got from QVC (item number 506 454), it was around £70 and I have been really impressed with it.  The battery lives in a little space at the back of the pedestal, and I leave the charger in there too so it doesn't get lost, I haven't used it at all over the winter and I recharged it today and it worked really well this evening.

I have brought home 4 tomato plants and 2 cucumber plants that I'm going to put into the greenhouse at home, I decided not to plant them in the polytunnel because the only person who eats cucumber is Littlest L and she likes to just go and pick them when they're ready.  Part of the reason we ended up with cucumbers that were too big was because in a week between going to the plot they went from not being ready to being too big; so having them at home means she can pick them when they're ready.  I wanted the tomatoes at home because I like to go pick them and immediately eat them which is always easier when it's at home so I will be sorting those out this week.

I think that's all for this week so I will leave you for now, I hope you all have a wonderful week gardening.