WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8 WEEK 9
Welcome to the tenth ‘Follow Us’ update of 2021, a space where we talk about how we’re growing in our own Ergrownomics raised planters this year, and walk you through how you can achieve the same results at home, yourself...Feel free to follow along, and be sure to follow us on Instagram & Facebook to never miss an update! As usual, key is at the bottom, so scroll down now!
Though hard to believe, the weather has somehow managed to get even worse this week, with heavy rainfall and temperatures barely above single figures (several degrees below the seasonal average!) With just a week of May left to go we’ve topped 300mm of rainfall, which is apparently two and a half times the average. While all of this explains why the growth of salad and vegetable crops in our planters is slow there is a plus side, and that’s that the ferns we’ve underplanted have never look healthier!
‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1 has grown slowly this week and is probably two weeks behind where we would expect it to be at this time of year. It should be ready for some selective picking after 6 weeks (42 days) but it is going realistically to be 8 weeks (56 days). Notwithstanding this, the mix is extremely attractive with a wide range of colours and leaf shapes. There is some crowding of the lettuces but we’ll probably work around this by picking the lettuce whole when we do start harvesting, in order to reduce the number of lettuces by another 25% to 45 (or thereabouts). The lettuce appears really healthy, having benefitted from the cooler conditions (and with the planter’s very effective drainage preventing extreme soil wetness which can cause plants to rot at the root collar).
Spring Onion ‘White Lisbon Winter Hardy’ in Planter 2 continue to be picked and we are now on the home straight with just one row left to go. We’ll have a concerted effort to get through these this week so we can sow carrots in this planter. These do particularly well in the planters as they have sufficient soil depth to allow carrots to grow upto 300mm in length, and as the planters are raised 700mm above the ground surface we are not troubled by carrot fly. We’ll probably go with a ‘Sweet Imperator’ mix to which we’ll add some ‘Purple Haze’, which always seem to be a little spartan in this mix.
Lettuce ‘Green Salad Bowl’, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ and ‘Oak Leaf Green’ in Planter 3 have grown slightly more quickly than the ‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1 but are still a couple of weeks behind where they should be. Notwithstanding this, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ is still noticeably larger than the two green varieties and might be a week earlier. We have fitted the plant training system this week.
Finally, we have harvested the last of the radish and replaced this with the Dwarf French bean ‘Speedy’. This is a slight departure for us as we are rather wedded to ‘Purple Teepee’, but we’re keen to see if the claimed 60 days from sowing to harvesting for ‘Speedy’ is really achievable. That being said, if the weather doesn’t improve the answer will almost certainly be no! We’ve chosen to sow directly rather than to sow in root trainers and to plant the seedlings out after 4-5 weeks, as this doesn’t seem worthwhile in this particular case. While the optimum number of plants in a planter is 8 (3 in the first 2 in the second and 3 in the third) we have sown 16 seeds as germination can be erratic in cold/wet conditions, which is precisely how the conditions can be described at present - and we are some way off the 180C which give us greater confidence in the reliability of germination. It could be a long 2 weeks waiting to see how we fair!
The ‘Star of the show’ this week is the fern Polystichum setiferum or ‘Soft shield fern’, which is very much at home under the planters. We have just tidied the ferns up for the summer by removing old growth but we leave this over the winter as we’ve found hedgehogs hibernating in the debris along with toads. As a point of note, the ferns are planted alongside rather than sown directly below the drainage holes in the base of the container, to get the benefit of the moisture this provides without constant wetting of the foliage itself.
Seed description: Medium sized (8-9 mm), white colour, elongate, smooth surface, flat lustre. Very easy to sow. (Thompson & Morgan, expiry Dec 22)
Method: Form hole 40 mm deep using a plant training rod at 6 evenly spaced positions parallel to the planting row and place one seed in each hole. Backfill with soil and consolidate lightly with rod to ensure good soil/seed contact. Water with fine rose to induce settlement and improve soil/seed contact further and to wet the beans skin.
Seed description: Medium sized (8-9 mm), white colour, elongate, smooth surface, flat lustre. Very easy to sow. (Thompson & Morgan, expiry Dec 22)
Method: Form hole 40 mm deep using a plant training rod at 6 evenly spaced positions parallel to the planting row and place one seed in each hole. Backfill with soil and consolidate lightly with rod to ensure good soil/seed contact. Water with fine rose to induce settlement and improve soil/seed contact further and to wet the beans skin.
Seed description: Medium sized (8-9 mm), white colour, elongate, smooth surface, flat lustre. Very easy to sow. (Thompson & Morgan, expiry Dec 22)
Method: Form hole 40 mm deep using a plant training rod at 6 evenly spaced positions parallel to the planting row and place one seed in each hole. Backfill with soil and consolidate lightly with rod to ensure good soil/seed contact. Water with fine rose to induce settlement and improve soil/seed contact further and to wet the beans skin.