My exotic chillies – 33 seeds germinated and 31 of them have their first set of true leaves. Looks like my bathroom experiment is working. At the weekend Jalapeno, Serrano, Cayenne and sweet chilli seeds were sown, potentially adding another 25 pepper plants this year… better get my preserves book out then

Browsing through the sale section of B&Q I found boxes of grow your own mushrooms half price at 3 pounds. Only in one branch of B&Q I hasten to add, another three I’ve been to have all been full price. So being a sucker for a bargain I bought a box.

A few years ago I bought Claire a box for Christmas, and despite being normal white cap mushrooms the taste was far superior to shop bought. The only reason we’ve never bought them since was a combination of living in a flat and the flies it produces was not good.

Is it as cost-effective as shop bought? Probably not as you only get 2-3 harvests and even at half price it’s not much cheaper.

I’ll keep you up to date with how it progresses…

My project over the last 2 weeks has been to restore it to a useable condition, but also to restore it spending as little money as possible.

The main issues were on the entrance side where one large window was missing (smashed probably, after finding lots of broken glass!) and 3/4 of the door frame was missing. I was reluctant to use glass due to having to get the sizes bang on plus the fragility of it. Being an engineer I was able to lay my hands on some clear polycarbonate, both easy to cut to size and less fragile. And it was free! The door frame too was free, with wood that was getting chucked out at a customers factory.

All I need to get is a piece or polycarbonate for the top part of the door and then it’s pretty much complete. The windows all need cleaned and there are a few roof leaks which should easily be repaired and finally just some putty to seal the new windows – my only expense.

Of course I need a potting bench in there too…

Again all the wood was free as it was left over decking from the previous owner! Not bad for less than a tenner, now to fill it with plants

I have different growing conditions for the chillies this year and I’ve also tried a new method for germination. The exotic varieties of last year have all been started in the hope that a longer growing season will help, coupled with the fact that the bathroom in my new house seldom drops below 15 degrees and is can be as warm as 20 degrees even in the winter, and has a south-facing window.

I started the germination process 3 weeks ago taking some tips from a chilli growing book I got in a gift set for Christmas. I placed the seeds in zip-lock bags with warm water, then placed the bags inside a flask of warm water to maintain the temperature. The seeds were then placed inside a normal propagator in the bathroom.

Thus far? 29 out of 48 seeds have germinated after less than 3 weeks! Very pleased at this, and I’m not finished as I’ve still got Jalapeno and Cayenne to start of next month and also sweet peppers.

Next to construct some selves in the bathroom to cater for all these…

So, I was busy *cough* at work this week  but made full use of any spare time by making a rough drawing of the veg plot and where plants are going to.

Nothing’s final yet and there are still other ideas, like do I have an experimental bed, do I grow some unusual veg? Then of course there is how many plants do I grow. At a rough estimate in my sketches there will be 108 each of carrots, parsnips and leeks, plus 200 beetroot!

Maybe I’ll scale it back a bit

As you know the garden is a blank canvas for me now due to the recent house move, and, after the initial dig to get garlic and onions in, it has been neglected. After several attempted plans of the layout of the garden, I finally settled on a plan.

So today I went from this,

To this,

I still need to put wooden borders around what has been dug – I’m hoping that makes it look more symmetrical And this is only half of what I have planned!

Not 100% sure what will be going in the beds, I’m thinking that the middle if the 3 square beds will be a permanent bed for the asparagus I bought recently.

I’m trying to hold off starting seeds to early, but the anticipation is too much! I have more news to follow on that

2010 – May was a great month and June wasn’t too bad. July we had really strong winds at the start of the month (which damaged my tomato plants) then I never had to water the garden until September when we had a bit of an Indian summer. I was working away in Craigellachie (North of Scotland) in the middle of October when we had the first flurries of snow, then this:

That was a year ago today, me in my van going along the M8 motorway to Edinburgh. This year?

I have a chilli plant flowering! Didn’t have much success this year with my chilli plants but this is one of two ‘Ring Of Fire’ plants still going strong.

The weather this year has been… well, not good. Sunny days were few and far between, the warmth was there sometimes, but rain dominated. Then of course several occasions of strong winds – May when my young sweetcorn plants were blown flat in their pots whilst transferring them outdoors, then August which broke all the terracotta pots which had tomatoes growing in them.

Unfortunately I can’t predict the weather next year… Maybe this man can help?

As you can see, a bit overgrown with thistles and the dreaded bindweed. So last weekend I got stuck into it to get it ready for… well I ended up getting some cheap herb plants in the clearance sale at my new local Dobbies 8 plants including oregano, sage, thyme, tarragon, marjoram and curry plant for the bargain price of 6 pounds!

A lot better! I’ve also decided to add the wild garlic bulbs to this bed and I’m also thinking of adding some flowers too.

Mr Rotavator has helped me immensely thus far and will do for the grand designs I have for the garden The first attempt in the garden resulted in a small square of garden dug, but now I have a good routine which means just taking the turf off the top and the rotavator doing the hard work of turning over the soil.

My first ever wheelbarrow! Again helped me immensely, at first when I was removing turf it was a case of one spadeful at a time, whereas now I can load it all into the wheelbarrow

So, yeah, without these 2 progress would be slow, but now I can plough on… Plough, now there’s a thing…