Bob was telling me yesterday about some survey/ report/ program ( don’t know wasn’t paying attention to that bit   ) that says the average meal in a UK home takes 20 minutes to prepare! I find this a little disturbing. Does the whole country open a packet and wait for the bing of the microwave?! I find it hard because last night we had one of the quickest meals we do. A re heat roast with a few extra fresh veggies to bulk it up. It still took 27 minutes.
I have no Idea what our average time would be preparing a meal. It’s definitely more than 20 minutes! 
What about you?

Any ideas??
Just popped up in a pot of dead something.
I wondered about cow parsley but it looks to “fine and fancy” for that

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A garden I worked in 10/11 years ago! 


   

   

   

   

   

I built a bat box today out of scraps of wood. Very simple to to. I might make a few more.

   

Anyone else made them.

Anybody else fed up with all these mistakes.
How much do they pay the people to produce these glaring errors?
Don’t they have proof readers any more??

I’m going to be keeping a reference of how I’m growing Bombay bronze cockscomb. 

I had a feeling they were going to be tricky when the tiny seeds arrived in bubble wrap inside the seed packet. Never seen that before.

Attempt 1. sown seeds in a segment of a 6 cell tray in a bag in the airing cupboard. They germinated within 5-6 days. I then pricked them out into a pot of room temperature compost. Moved them to the dining room window. Under the grow light with the chillies. Within a week they were all dead. 

Attempt 2. Sown into their own pot of pre warmed compost. Pot placed with chillies under the grow light. Also added a heat mat underneath and put a designer cloche ( half pop bottle     ) over them. Again they germinated within 5-6 days. They’ve been going from strength to strength. The babies are growing nicely.

   

I'd like to make more compost (wouldn't we all?). Now that I'm chicken-free  the 2 runs are ripe for development. Both are shaded so not the best spots for veg/fruit growing - however, maybe I could "grow" compost there instead? 

I have 2 intact wormeries and another one that needs a lid and tap.  Only one has worms in it - but there are worms in the Hotbin that I've been picking out and adding to the wormery. My first step, I think, is to move the wormeries together - putting them on a raised platform/pallet so that the worm juice can be drained off. 
The second step is to be more proactive in collecting compostable material. Less Chop & Drop, more Chop and collect for the worms. 

Is there any benefit in having a conventional "dalek" bin nearby to dump fresh prunings into, before topping up the wormeries? Or putting it in a dustbin?
Should I have containers for coffee grounds, sacks for horse manure and for shredded paper, wood chip, grass cuttings or, in my usual way, bung it all in without a lot of success. 

All advice welcome but don't mention building a 3 bay pallet compost bay - been there, done it and not doing it again. Too much like hard work, turning it.

In case you're wondering, the Hotbin will stay in the GH for convenience.

I never expected the Oscars to include gardening advice!

"Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" sounds like a good idea for sowing random seeds. I've no idea what the film is about  however.

Bob suddenly decided at the end of the potato day, while we were helping load the car with all the spuds that hadn’t sold, that we could plant loads of the things all over the new site. So 25kg later ! …………
As I’ve only ever grown small amounts I don’t know what to do if you don’t chit first ( which I’m not doing with 25kg    ) . Do you plant them deeper? Do you plant them earlier if not chitted?

Hi all,

I'm trying to focus my efforts more on things that we really like to eat and use a lot of. Of course, we are deeply impractical and use lots of things that are not happy growing outside for the most part - tomatoes, peppers, etc. I have a small polycarbonate GH (6x6 ft, I think) in my back garden, situated on the patio in the shade of the garage. Yes, I know. It's adequate for starting seeds but it not ideal for growing the things I'd like to grow. I was hoping you can help me add to/refine my list of ideas for improving my tomato growing (as a general placeholder for many warmth and sunshine loving plants that also need plenty of water).

1. Choose outdoor varieties wherever possible.
2. Try again in the GH by removing all staging and shelves in the warm months, growing in the biggest containers I can (old recycling boxes and pots about the size of MFBs).
3. Add gravel trays or something similar under the pots?
4. Get a cheapish polytunnel for the plot - under £100 pounds and probably only 8 or 10 feet long. The site isn't terribly exposed but we do get a few 2-3 day stretches of strong wind each year, I'd say.
5. Try to improve the warmth around individual plants on the plot with some sort of mesh (?) surrounding them. I think pop-up individual GHs would be too prone to blowing away and/or boiling the plants. Maybe some sort of lean-to with a windbreak of mesh on the predominantly windy side and some plastic on the sunny side, but not enclosed so it wouldn't be as likely to fly down the site in a gust of wind?
6. Grow in pots in the back garden, in the sunniest area, then try to heft them into the GH if things take a turn for the cold?

Any other ideas or ideas that are definitely too silly to try in the list? Thanks for brainstorming with me.

Apologies for measurements in feet. I cook in metric and choose a coat in metric, but some things are ingrained from my early days