Grow Write Guild Prompt #1: Write about your first plant

I was set up to fail with my first plant. Judging by what's aimed at kids I think most of us were. Novelty kits, beginners kits, Venus flytraps with colourful labels. Notoriously picky plants, vague instructions (water when needed but take care not to over water) and badly thought out pots seem standard.

 I once owned a gorgeous, beautifully designed novelty plant in a can. The instructions told me to add water to the odd mix of perlite and seeds and from that I would be able to grow lavender. It's just that easy. It just never germinated. But that wasn't my first plant. My first plant was back when I was a spotty teenager.

I really, desperately wanted my own herb garden but with no space for an inexperienced hands in our garden I was given a windowsill growing kit. It had compost, a tray with four sections, more seeds than strictly necessary and sparse instructions.

I can't even remember what all the seeds were. One was chives. I remember because it was disappointing.  Growing chives from seed is painfully boring. I've done it a couple of times and you can pretty much bet you aren't going to get a harvest in your first year. Ultimately worth it for an adult, not so much when you are still getting told off for scuffing your school shoes.

'sokay chives, I love you now

So I started my seeds at the wrong time of year, watching them as the germinated and did... not much for a long time. Eventually I killed them but if I didn't they wouldn't have lead much of a life. They would have been painfully cramped, lacked any nutrition, and any attempt to out them outside would have been met by winter. Perhaps they could have been micro veg but even if I'd known the term back then it would have been a ridiculous price per serving.

I never did get to figure out how to eat them. Probably for the best. They were put out of their misery when I tried to close my blinds one night. The tray knocked from the windowsill, all signs of life extinguished, compost in my carpet, me about to be yelled at.

 As you can see I was never cut out to be a gardener.

[This post was written as a response to the 1st prompt of Gayla Trail's Grow Write Guild. Check it out.]

Potatoes in the sky

There are challenges unique to growing on a balcony and there are challenges that every gardener faces. This year a very hot late spring/early summer has left a lot of us suffering. On a balcony that is compounded by the already dry and hot nature of gardening on our balcony and... nothing, nothing has done as well as in the previous two years. And this has got me severely down, I don't want to go outside and I apologise to everyone who accidentally sees the balcony.

But there has been one bright point in an otherwise dismal year: or first crop of potatoes. I planted an seed potato from this years box to grow and covered it, as it grew, with more and more compost. It got to work. We didn't get a massive amount but 800g is nothing to complain about.

More Rainy Days

It's officially an annual tradition! March rain bring all sorts of loveliness with it. The extra water seems to give plants an excuse to throw out lush leaves. Seedlings take it as a opportunity to poke their heads up. We've even got some flowers forming.

mini meals

I finally got around to thinning my lettuces. Which is about time really. I'm very lazy with thinning and I just won't learn when it comes to sowing sparsely either. Oh well.


I tried to put some of the orphans in other pots but most of them got washed for a micro lettuce layer in my brie sandwich. It's an accidental micro crop. But I have micro crops growing on purpose too. These are carrots sown for their mini leaves. I got the idea here and as carrot seed can't be stored one year to the next I thought I may as well go for it.

Grow Box

Around here exciting things come in boxes. Today especially. Our Box To Grow came. It was packed with all these goodies

"Lettuce Eluarde (Red Oakleaf) x 3
Lettuce Hardy (Green Oakleaf) x 3
Rocket x 2 Mustard x 3
Rainbow chard x 3
Swiss chard x 3
Spring Onion x 3
Beetroot x 4
Parsley x 2
Mint x 2
Coriander x 2
Parsley (Pot) x 1
Mint (Pot) x 1
Coriander (Pot) x 1
Peas (Packet of seeds) x 1
Radish (Packet of seeds) x 1"

I have some space in some pots going free and I went out to buy one more. But I knew it was going to be a squeeze. I didn't know it was going to be this much of a squeeze though! I sat there, the plants and myself wilting in the April sun trying desperately to invent room. Here is what I went for...


The Beefsteak Tomatoes where also due out today so I desperately thought what the hell can I inter crop with them. The tomatoes take up lots of vertical height but they are thin enough to have some company, at least with some fast growers. In the small pot I spread around some spring onions and beetroot. The beetroot will only end up small but I have another two varieties elsewhere so I'm not loosing anything to produce jewel like little ones.

The large pot has one of the Beefsteaks towards the camera. Again it's the idea of tall and thin. Surrounding it, again quick croppers, are spring onions in a rough semi circle. Beyond that, on the side with the sea, I went for fat but short as not to overshadow the toms. I put in the Chard and some Rocket which I put next to the chard and then got muddled with... oh well, it will live. With luck.
The next planting point was around the Blackcurrant. In it's first year it's going to be unproductive so some short lived Green Oak Leaf lettuce, coriander and parsley will give us something from the space while hopefully keeping weeds down and reminding us to water.

Then I really was just inventing space. I filled up one of the boxes it came in with the mint, and one of ours from last year. It may get a more permanent home. We'll see!


Then with some of my perennial herbs went the mustard and the rocket. The space was kindly vacated by the mint above and a rosemary that we have stripped this winter. I think I'll have to get a bigger one this year. But for now I'm glad of the space. Another box I sowed peas for pea tendrils. Yes we did watch The Edible Garden last night and I am wondering what the chances of an non-alcoholic peatini. Again, as for it's longevity we'll just have to see.

Okay now everyone, group shot!

Everyday Stuff

Gardening, unlike blogging in some respects, isn't just about the exciting first steps, the big project and the grand finale. Especially at this time of year it's more to do with the little steps. The unglamorous jobs. So in that vein here is half an hour in the life of me and my plants.


The Preparation

It's the start of April so I pull my lists down off the wall, unearth all the seeds that I'll need for the coming month. I do my daily task of putting out the babies in their little cloches. I pick jobs for the day. I need to sow beetroot later this month in my salad trugs so the winter salad needs to go. My butterfly annuals also need to go in so I'll manage some nice, nectary colour later in the year.The Legacy of Winter
Butterfly annuals sown it's time to take up the winter rocket. Now is a good time to take stock of the winter crops. My insurance policy of kale failed. Most likey drowned out by the spinach beet and chard who have grown vigorously in November then steadily over the cold season. I've been eating the chard over winter. It's livened up my plate to no end this week. And the spinach made a special appearance at Christmas.

The salads where less successful. Mainly through neglect. I never did get that jumper for them. The lettuces survived until, as I mentioned, they where snowed on. The onions came to nothing. The rocket on the other hand could not be stopped. Until it bolted that is. I left the flowers untill I needed the pot for something else and pulled them up today.
The Appreciation

No trip onto the balcony is complete without an appreciation of all the wonderful things growing out there. For special mention I selected this Snake's Head Fritillary which was planted from Sainsbury's own bulbs. Looks good enough to be made into a handbag. Between this and the crocus I think I did well with my bargain basement bulbs.

Coming into The Warmth

The newly sown babies and indoor plants needed a good water. Can you tell what this one is? It's a peanut, just opening. There are two others in the pot and they make attractive plants. And good conversation pieces. You know, if we weren't antisocial and had people over.

Rainy Days

One of the things I'd forgotten over winter is how a rain storm can have the most beautiful effects. Sure, the view is a bit dimmed and we can't see the sea, the mud off the building site may be clogging the roads but things are growing.


The shallots arrived in January, briefly living on some kitchen paper under our sideboard until planting out in mid February. I was worried. Had I done something wrong? Turns out all I needed was a storm for them to oblige me with their beautiful green shoots.


We saw last year how lettuce would grow like mad after a storm. Even when it was lashing it down, with thunder, with lightning, with harsh sea winds. The lettuce revelled in it. In fact the only thing that killed my crops last year was too much sun, on a baked balcony it didn't survive after mid May, and only snow falling directly on the leaves had any effect in winter. True to form the last two days have seen my formerly pathetic seedlings double in size.


Then Stephen's baby, his blackcurrant. It's been growing slowly but steadily since it settled in. The rain has seen it explode with green. It's making us giddy with anticipation.


Speaking of anticipation we were kindly sent some Oca which are waiting in the place vacated by the shallots for their turn in the pots. Hopefully we'll manage a decent, if constrained, crop. And with a bit more luck we'll have some tubers to pass on ourselves next year.

First Forage of the Season

When I saw that Riverford were selling their Wild Garlic I thought it was about time to drag Stephen to my favorite patch to see if the young leaves were in. Not quite up to last Aprils lushness yet but a few plants were ready for the harvest.

As the plants are young it is important to be extra careful. One or two leaves from each plant quickly adds up to a nice amount but without doing irreparable damage. It's important to be a responsible picker - trying to keep to paths, not talking an entire plant - both for the local environment and for the forager who hopes for a continuous supply.


I also helped myself to some of the young nettle tips we found. Returning form Cockington Supermarket I cooked up a simple, classic tea of pasta with wild garlic pesto (recipe on link above) I'm also going to try a recipe I have for nettle pesto once I'm feeling brave enough to get stung again.

See also: weekly crocus picture from the purple tub.


Post submitted to: Grow Your Own #40

Sweet potato, sweet plant

It was a picture in The Thrifty Gardener that convinced me that I wanted to grow sweet potatoes. Not for food, I doubt I could scrounge up both space and perfect conditions for that endeavour, but for the beautiful cascading foliage.

However I had only the beautiful picture to look at. Amongst the many 'grocery-store' plants discussed there was nothing on the sweet potato. Turn to The Window-box Allotment page 18. "sweet potatoes... can be started off indoors in water or suspended just above it, with its base touching but not submerged"

So I filled a giant jar with water and suspended the sweet potato above it. I didn't know quite what I was waiting for but eventually, and I mean eventually - it was a sweet potato I bought when I made these - I decided that the little sprout was enough and planted the bugger.


That was about three weeks ago and since then the little sprouts have got bigger, grown leaves got roots. I figured that was the end of it and I'd just leave it in that pot. The two little shoots growing together and playing together or whatever sweet potatoes do. But then I found a more comprehensive guide in this book and although the advice is for growing to eat I thought I'd take it.

After two weeks it recommends taking the babies from the mother tuber, keeping a little bit on the new plant, and popping them in six inch pots. So that is what I did. I now have two baby sweet potatoes.

Ready for the kill...

This post is probably the most icky thing I have ever written. It is not catching me at my most charitable moment or my most vegetarian.

I'm really quite ready to kill now.

All winter we have been dealing with fungus gnats. Which was all fine whatever when they where just hanging around the chilli (of chilli oil fame) that I was about to cut down. but when you attack my gorgeous, beautifully promising crocus bulbs it's time to get angry. And of course it doesn't help that they are in our bedroom now.

One of the most annoying qualities of these gnats is there lack of survival instincts. As in I'm boiling water for pasta and one flies in. Or a drink left on the side. Or mung beans sprouting. Which means a lot of waisted water, pulled faces and general shouts of 'ewwww'.

Summer numbers where kept low by a sticky sunflower on the window. In autumn I snapped and went mad with a can of fly spray. And as much as I love spreading poison around the house it's got to stop. And my current method of waiting till my skin is crawling and then snapping them out of the air is... well leaving me with messy hands.

Stephen has been making noises about carnivorous plants and I've seen this. I guess someone must find them yummy. And if they stay away from my seedlings well then...

Free Friday: Bread and Pumpkin

It almost feels like a betrayal to my blog title to admit that winter is coming. But it's true. I've crept under the covers early 'to read' a few times this week, the heating has switched itself on and we're now needing artificial light almost as soon as we get home from work.


I love this time of year but there is also a lot of work to do in clearing out from the last season and making way for the new. Spring flowers are being nurse on my windowsill while I pull down the last of the tomatoes. The indoor one was taken down today still with the gorgeous fruit.


I'm having to remind myself that autumn is a season in and of itself so I thought I'd do something incredibly autumny, something I've never done before. I ate pumpkin. No, never had it. And I don't know why. The dish was Pumpkin in Tomato Sauce from How to Cook Everything: Vegetarian served on spaghetti. Sweet, smoky, full of flavour. I knew it was perfect when I I went back to the pan after my first bite. I doubled my serving size. The rest of it made a nice lunch today along side some cornbread.


The other thing I wanted to share today I made for Guides. I thought these beautiful, delicious, rustic hand made bread sticks would go down well. And they did but only after a few jokes about how ugly they where. I think they are gorgeous. What about you?

Veg In Focus: Spinach

Picture the scene if you will. Dark green blob presented on the plates of the children. It's rubbery, flat, overcooked, and half water. In fact the spinach water will invade everything else on your plate. 'But Kieran likes it,' yes, but Kieran eats the vital organs of sheep (I know, eww) so he is used to something that tastes of nothing but iron and water.


Dark, heavy and unbelievably strong. That's what I thought of spinach as a child. Then I learned to experience the delicate, sublime taste of it. It's perfect paring with tomatoes, with potatoes, with spices. Cooked or raw it can - and should -taste fantastic.


This winter I was bloody well craving it. I was desperate for the time when it would reappear in the box. I'm actually hoping to grow it year round myself, banking on the coastal climate and - if worst comes to worst -my kitchen windowsill to keep me from spinach deprivation in the winter.

I actually don't grow true spinach. Easy to bolt was the warning of my gardening books and we've had a hell of a year for bolting anyway. It was imposable to grow a lettuce past may. I grow spinach beet which is a relative of Chard but has a more delicate taste. It's not as delicate as true spinach but there isn't much in it.


It's very easy to grow and seems somewhat of a darling of growers. Grocer stalls on Newton Abbot market were selling it sticking out of vases last time we went and it comes in our Riverford box as often as the true kind. As it's easy to grow and tastes fantastic I'm not one to complain. These shots are of it growing round our balcony.

And what do you do with it once it has grown? Well repeat offenders in my kitchen include spinach curry, spinach and cilantro coriander grilled tortillas, and these spinach and potato squares.

It may take a couple of months...

From here on out I'm going to be giving my posts a theme for Vegan MoFo.

Monday's will be Gourmet Torbay where I'll be talking about where to find ingredients in Torbay. Special focus on things ignored or done badly by Supermarkets.

On Tuesday our focus will be bread. Bread reviews, my bread recipe and me venturing out into new ones.

Wednesday's are for studying a seasonal vegetable. Most of these arn't lined up yet because the focus will definitely be on what is in the box.

I'll be praising the unsung heros of my kitchen on Thursdays.

And Friday - today - is free.

And today I want to show you what I'll be eating in the months to come. In front of the windowsill, with it's ragged looking summer crops I've turned over the two troughs, insulated their bums with polystyrene pizza trays and planted salad. Spring onions and three kinds of lettuce. If the winter turns cold I'll put a jumper on them but right now I'm seeing how long they can last.
A bit tougher is my rainforest of greens. The huge one in the back (which may have to be nibbled on early) is chard, bright lights. Along with the spinach beet in the front they are a bit of an experiment. I want to see if our mild coastal climate will keep them going over winter. In the middle (somewhere!) is kale. My insurance policy.


Can you guess what it is? I drilled holes in the side of a pound shop bin. They are in the side to leave room for the (hopefully) large tap roots diving down to get some moisture.


And the grown up version in my large roots tub. Carrots that can go on the plate today or can be stored for a hungry winter.

Little Blighters

Before I went away for my cousin's wedding this weekend I was a bit worried about the tomatoes. I harvested the red ones and cast a worried glance at the rest.

As I got back my suspicions where confirmed. They had got blight. Crap. So every undamaged tomato was pulled off my ten Gardener's Delight and 2 Beefsteak plants.

A good quarter are red, some more turning and the green ones will be laid out on my windowsill. Then It's tomato sauce making time.

I've currently got 513g of ripe tomatoes, and a whopping 1242g of green ones. They may not make it all to the kitchen. I'll be checking back for blight.

The Gardeners Delight smashed the beefsteak in terms of yield but I did realise people aren't lieing when they say the fruit is prone to splitting.

The last month has seen heavy rain followed by ridiculously dry and hot. As well as blight that has given me problems with blossom end rot. Our position by the sea and adjacent to a biulding site had meant that the plants suffered from salt damage after every bout of wind.

We started sowing in January. Planted out under cloches in March and harvested, right now, in August.

Wild Outside

This week's Wild Wednesday is straight from the balcony. I'm feeling rather proud as my hard work from earlier seasons is paying off now. I find each and every flower so exciting. What was a building site a year ago is now home to bees, butterflies, moths, spiders, flies, ladybirds and yes, even aphids. Yay.

Rocket Redo

It's always a tragedy to chuck greens. It's worse when you grow them yourself. My rocket had just archived the perfect size when we hit a bout of unseasonal warmth. And it bolted.

I wouldn't mind letting it continue later in the year. It would be nice to watch it do it's seedy thing. See it grow big and strong. Taste it along the way. But it's early June. Space is very much needed as are more salad leaves.

So I pulled up the first lot and went for a second sowing. It's cloudy now so there may be some hope.

Space and aliens

All is not well on the balcony. Since noticing the first lot of greenfly we've found quite a few more. The mint has recovered from it's infestation but now I have aubergine, pot marigolds, strawberries and borage full of them.

I've been manually removing them and giving them a good spray with a mix of washing up liquid (of the environmentally friendly variety) but now I'm sticking to just manually removing them at the moment because we have some lacewing larvae coming. They were kind of pricey (we could have bought a Girlguiding UK centenary rose for that!) so I'm hoping to encourage the adults to hang around and lay (?) more without our intervention. We have an insect house set up for them. But what else would they like? What do they eat?

Until then our plants are over here in the naughty corner. I'm hoping they don't pass the green fly on.

In other news we where so incredibly lucky yesterday. Walking back from a trip to Cockington we found a skip. It was time for a good root. We where soon joined by another bloke who filled us in. From the 'for sale' sign we'd already guessed that this was a house clear out and we where right. The lady who lived their has left. There was plenty of good, almost new furniture in there. Like an almost new (still had it's energy efficiency sticker on it) washing machine.

We took two shelf unit things. I'm guessing they where shoe racks. Thinking they would also make good veg racks we carried them home. After a scrub with some soapy water and drying off in the Devonian sun we fitted them into one of our cupboards.

This rather large cupboard gets no heating, and there is no window. It was put on the plans to conceal the water pipes (which had to be re-routed at the last minute) Right now it's around 12°, the rest of the flat being 20°. We've kept our potatoes in it for a while but the shelving makes it a proper pantry. Well... if we took the coats out.

Right now the bottom shelf is the gardening shelf (it's perfect to keep seeds in) and the top three are for food. I know it's a little empty. We aren't due another box until thursday.

... and rescue missions

Another before and after post today...

Probably feeling a bit guilty about putting 3 or 4 dozen green fly out onto the streets I bought a very sorry looking Lavender.

Half dead, half price and promising pink feathery flowers my 'bosen berry ruffles' (is that supposed to be boysenberry?) came home with me.

I chopped off all the death I could find, removing the flower heads to make my sheets smell nice. I'm still paranoid about pests so I tidied up the fallen leaves from the soil and replaced the compost.

I'm currently babying it, hoping it gets healthy and lavender looking again soon.

But it was cheap.