WEEK 1 WEEK 2 WEEK 3 WEEK 4 WEEK 5 WEEK 6 WEEK 7 WEEK 8 WEEK 9 WEEK 10 WEEK 11 WEEK 12 WEEK 13
Welcome to the fourteenth ‘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 remained slightly above 200C this week and been accompanied by high humidity; this prevented night-time temperatures falling below 150C, which is well above the seasonal average! Impressive thunderstorms and torrential rainfall were much vaulted in the media but failed to materialise, so the dependency on the drip irrigation to maintain the water supply to plants has remained.
‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1 is being still picked daily with whole baby lettuces removed in order to reduce over-crowding, but the gaps created are rapidly infilled. All of the 7 or 8 varieties of lettuces appear adept at dealing with the ‘high’ temperatures (albeit 250C would be unseasonably cold for June in the Tuscany!), with the red lettuces maintaining their startling dark crimson colour with no evidence of ‘bleaching’. The mix is really growing on us as its reliable, trouble free and has a great flavour profile lent to it by the inclusion of bitter chicories, we suspect…
Carrot ‘Imperator mix’ is growing well and have reached 50mm in height, which is sufficient to set up the plant training. We have carried out thinning to reduce the number per row to 16 and replaced a few carrots in Row 3 uprooted by our resident blackbird, who has lost any charm he might have had! The colour of plants is excellent. Leaving thinning a bit longer than normal was possible as such a small number (10 or 12) seedlings at most had to be removed. While it might have been argued these could have been left, the resulting overcrowding would result in a large number of small and stunted carrots. The correct spacing is everything in container growing and the spacing we suggest is really the maximum – made only possible by selecting varieties that suffer no ill-effects from having overly close neighbours!
Lettuce ‘Green Salad Bowl’, ‘Red Salad Bowl’ and ‘Oak Leaf Green’ in Planter 3 are still being harvested in conjunction with the ‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ in Planter 1. The three lettuces don’t appear to be as comfortable at high temperatures as the Italian varieties, with the ‘Red Salad Bowl’ slightly bleached and even the ‘Green Salad Bowl’ and the ‘Oak Leaf Green’ far lighter green than green lettuces in the ‘Misticanza di Lattughe’ mix. The use of Italian salad varieties, especially those from northern Italy, seems an easy and obvious means of dealing with the warming trend. Franchi – Seeds of Italy are a great supplier who are extremely generous in their packet size. Some home-grown seed suppliers might want to follow suit!
The surviving seedlings of Dwarf French bean ‘Speedy’ in Planter 4 have improved and now are every bit the equal of the ‘Purple Teepee’ seedling to which they have, up until now, compared unfavourably. It seems to be the case that ‘Speedy’ take a bit longer to find their feet while the ‘Purple Teepee’ hit the ground running! The seed we planted in the gaps in the rows germinated early in the week and the seedlings have grown rapidly which has avoided the need to infill with ‘Purple Teepee’ seedlings. This may ultimately be beneficial in staggering and possibly extending the period of cropping for the beans as long as they are not suppressed in the interim. They shouldn’t be as they’re all in one end of the planter.
Our star of the show this week is Courgette ‘All Green Bush’. While this doesn’t have the most compact form it’s still great for container growing and produces very large generous flowers that are great for filling. Soft goat’s cheese with honey is a favourite but our strike rate is not very good (one in three maybe stay sealed and don’t burst) but they all taste great.