Selfsufficientish.com

13 degrees and brilliant sunshine here.
Although I must admit it's only just cleared up after 36 hours of continuous torrential downpour and storm force winds.

I'm sure we'll have a visit out to the place apart sometime soon. Till then, stop rubbing it in. Please ;)

Obviously I got far too excited with my lettuce seed, serves me right!! I have spent two hours pricking out, every year I try and be more disciplined, sow less seed, oh and I fluid sowed my parsnips, but not quite in the right place, I poured my potato flour gelee into a bag I found, bag had a hole in the side and it shot its load all over my potting shed bench, so spent another messy ten minutes scooping it all back up, not easy this parsnip artificial insemination!!

I've been snappin dogs off lamp posts for a month...

diggernotdreamer wrote: I fluid sowed my parsnips, but not quite in the right place,

I chit my parsnip seeds on a paper towel in the airing cupboard and then pot up the sprouted ones in toilet roll tubes.
Although I admit I don't grow that many, probably no more than 30, but I find that the easiest way for me.
I won't start them until mid April, as I find they grow too big and get canker if I sow too early.

Never heard of 'fluid sowing' - what is it about?

NorthernTeacher wrote:Never heard of 'fluid sowing' - what is it about?

I just bumped a topic called seed sowing in wallpaper paste, gives you all the details in there, hope it explains

Ta very much :-)

Set some tomato seeds to chit this morning for my winter tomato crop.
If my timing is right they should start to ripen in early December and carry on through to April.
Then the summer ones take over and that's another year gone.

Corn salad (lambs lettuce), and winter radish.

sowed coriander, bullblood beetroot, spinach, oriental saladini, snowpeas, radish and gourmet salad mix in boxes in the little tunnel about 5 days ago and they are all up, going to be used for adding to my salad bags the radish is ready for cutting and hopefully will have pea shoots and beetroot leaves to add in about 2 weeks

I forgot, I also sowed some spring cabbage earlier in the week.

Nothing, as I'm rethinking the entire garden to take account of the fact that human joints can be a pain in the arse (not a good anatomical description, but I'm sure some of you know what I mean). I've got a fair old collection of "stand-up-straight" tools, so I'm looking at "stand-up-straight" crops now.

Bushy things are good. Tall things are good. Things which embroil me in a weed battle are not good, although some low things (think swede and new potatoes) out-perform any weeds all by themselves. In fact, I think I've found a whole range of new stuff (the Real Seed Co. - they're pretty good) which will preserve my bending abilities long enough to grow the perfect parsnips in accordance with Odsox's pending instruction course.

The greenhouses will continue as per normal - tomatoes (but I'm chucking the huge beefsteak varieties in favour of smaller ones which will ripen over a longer season), aubergines, strawberries, and the reintroduction of chilis - and I might sneak in a new crop or two there, I'm just not sure what. Yet.

Onions are the big problem. I can't not grow those. I may have to spend my last ration of bendability producing a very raised bed (like three feet high) for them to go in - and if I did that, I suppose it wouldn't be too great a burden to extend that to accommodate those parsnips.

Actually, I should really produce those three-foot raised beds for everything ... NOOOOOOO! - far too much work

Well of course you could always build a hydroponics system, gardening at waist height ??

OK, sensible (ish) suggestions, carrots, onions, strawberries, dwarf French beans, dwarf runner beans (Hestia) for instance can all be grown in containers. Befriend somebody who works in a canteen/cafe/restaurant and ask them to let you have empty mayonnaise buckets, or buy ! some plastic troughs. This year I trialled growing stump rooted carrots in 5" deep plastic troughs to combat root fly and it worked very well with Chantenay Red Cores and Early Nantes root fly free, 4 foot above ground level.
With troughs and containers you can sit them on tables, benches, window sills (inside or out) at whatever height you can contrive.

Watering can be a problem, especially during tropical Nottinghamshire summer weather, so get yourself set up with drip feed irrigation of some sort.
It can be fun this unconventional gardening, honestly.

All the suggested vegetables above I have successfully grown in standard 5" troughs.

Thanks, Tony - some very practical suggestions there. I actually thought of upending a bunch of 3-foot lengths of drainpipe and growing parsnips in them. Then I got optimistic and thought "What if they grow fatter than the pipe? I'll never get them out". Just shows how wishful thinking can hold you back