WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8 WEEK 9 WEEK 10 WEEK 11 WEEK 12
Welcome to the thirteenth ‘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!
Daytime temperatures have leapt into the mid 200C this week, and been accompanied by a marked increase in humidity. The irrigation system has been turned up a notch to 2.5 litres per-container-per-day, to meet the increased demands of the crops - especially the lettuces which are presenting an extremely large leaf area from which to transpire, right now!
‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1 is being picked daily with whole baby lettuces being removed in order to reduce over-crowding; despite this, the impact of this is slight due to the very rapid growth of the remaining plants which infill any space that is created. The mix contains 7 or 8 varieties of lettuces and all seem well adapted to the relatively high temperatures being experienced. This may well be the advantage of using an Italian mix with varieties bred to tolerate far higher temperatures…? The lettuces taste great as a mix but do need to be rejuvenated in iced water before serving!
Carrot ‘Imperator mix’ is growing well and as these are so well spaced we’ve held off thinning this week; by doing so, we hope to be able to thin and set up the plant training at the same time. There shouldn’t be too much collateral damage when we do the thinning; carrots are horrible to thin when the seedlings are too dense as that are very easily damaged.
Lettuce ‘Green Salad Bowl’, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ and ‘Oak Leaf Green’ in Planter 3 are being harvested in conjunction with the ‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1, but are much easier to pick. It is simply a case of picking larger leaves from the outsides of each row in order to maintain their separation. This can be achieved without breaking any remaining leaves. Snapping leaves at their base as close to the stem as possible definitely promotes regrowth, prevents decay and limits the opportunity for disease to strike! The ‘Red Salad Bowl’ is bleaching slightly in the full sun and doesn’t have the intense depth of colour of the red varieties in the Misticanza di Lattughe’ mix.
The surviving seedlings Dwarf French bean ‘Speedy’ in Planter 4 have improved markedly in strength and colour this week. However, thanks to our spiteful blackbird we have ended up with 9 good plants located mostly at one end of the container! We’d ideally like 11 plants with 4 plants in the outer two rows and three slightly offset plants in the centre. Our ‘Purple Teepee’ beans in a planter nearby remain better in every way and the likelihood is that in order to get things back on track we’ll reposition our ‘Speedy’ seedlings in the first two rows and add a couple of ‘Purple Teepee’ seedlings to make up the numbers. We’ll do this first thing one morning when temperatures are cooler and take a generous amount of soil around the seedlings in order to minimise stress.
Our star of the show this week is the dwarf pea ‘Half-pint’ (syn. ‘Tom Thumb’), which is producing an abundance of double white flowers and small pods which will (if they are left in peace, and not eaten as a snack every time anybody passes by) develop into full sized podded peas. The back story to ‘Half-pint’ pea is fascinating as the variety has been grown for at least 400 years having been recorded in the 16C. It has survived in its original guise only because it was considered too unpromising to breed from and yet today these same characteristics make it ideally suited to container growing!