Blimey, one only has to give seeds half a chance and they’re off like rockets…

The gardening effort last year was a huge success, so this year I am being more adventurous.  I’ve planted tomatoes, peppers, chillies, courgettes, carrots, mixed salad leaves, sweetcorn, basil, and cucumbers.

I have no idea how I am going to fit them all on my balcony when they’ve grown a bit more (I have no garden), but that’s a challenge for another day.  The results so far look quite promising…

It will soon be Spring.  OK, perhaps that’s a bit of a premature statement, but I’ve realised that the rain will eventually stop and I shall soon need to plant things.  My first season of vegetable gardening went well in 2009 and I shall be having another go in 2010.

I did however find the continual effort of watering things rather tiresome, so for the coming year I have a plan.  The plan involves a water tank, some hose, a float valve, some cunningly drilled holes, some plastic trays, and strict adherence to the laws of physics. Yes, I’m going for automation!

It’s all in my head at the moment, but provided that gravity doesn’t do something unconventional in the next few months, I think I should have a working solution by April.  Now then, where’s my Two Wests and Elliott catalogue?

What do you do if you want to grow your own vegetables but you live in big city with nowhere to grow them? Renting or buying land for growing vegetables is often expensive, and even if you find somewhere, it can be difficult to regularly tend to the plants as they grow. Faced with these problems most people would simply give up, and resort to buying vegetables instead.

But perhaps the less obvious solution is to fill the back of your old Dodge pickup truck with soil, plant seeds in it, and then simply drive the truck to a water tap when the need arises. Obvious huh?
So with the seeds planted all that remains is to install a solar powered camera in the truck’s cab which takes a picture of the ‘garden’ every 5 minutes, and then publish the whole thing on YouTube for the world to see.

Sounds crazy doesn’t it? Personally, I think it’s absolute genius!

Subscribe to the Truck Farm YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/wickedelicate

A while ago I wrote about a bay tree that wasn’t looking too good. I think the end may be near, so if anyone knows how to revive something that looks like this then I’d welcome the advice please.

On the positive side, it appears to be making an attempt at reincarnation, because there is a small shoot which has just broken through the soil. So now what do I do? Hack off the old tree trunk with a saw and nurture its offspring instead? Oh I’m no good at this stuff – it’s all too complicated!

OK perhaps “gardener” is a bit strong. Let’s just say that I’ve grown something, from a seed, and it didn’t die, which in itself is something of a personal best. Anyway it’s the right shape and almost the right colour and it has many siblings which seem to be hot on its heels. All in all I’m really quite surprised and I think I need to go for a lie down to get over the shock. Or perhaps to buy some mozzarella? Mmmmm….. cheese.

I seem to have grown some tomatoes!  To be quite honest this has come as a shock, because I had previously considered myself to be one of the least green-fingered people on the planet.  In fact – I am the person who has previously managed to kill a spider plant, despite the fact that I have been assured that this is impossible.  Following on from that unfortunate childhood herbicidal experience I had resigned myself to the fact that gardening was completely beyond my capabilities.  However things, it would appear, may have changed.  So how, you may be wondering, did I end up with some tomatoes?  Well it all started when I popped in to a garden centre to buy some gravel.  Yes, it’s an odd link, but stick with me on this one.  For Christmas last year I was given a couple of bay trees by the in-laws to put on my balcony, and very nice they were too.  The only problem I had was that I got the occasional weed growing in the pot and pulling them out was getting a bit tiresome.  Someone suggested to me that a thin layer of gravel around the top of the pot would prevent the weeds growing by blocking out the light.  Fair enough – so I decided to give that a try and the gravel was purchased.  Stupidly I then fell into that age old trap of wandering around the garden centre to “see what else they had”.  Foolish I realise, the garden centre staff clearly recognised me as an easy target as I walked in, and frankly I ought to know better.  Nevertheless, 10 minutes later I somehow found myself loading the car with a 1 metre long potting trough, six garden canes, a packet of tomato seeds, some chilli seeds, some basil seeds, some coriander seeds, and a colossal bag of compost.Oh yes, and a very small bag of gravel.  Having carted this lot back to the flat (not easy when you live several floors up) I began to wonder what on earth I had done.  Not wishing to admit defeat before I’d started, I saw it through and I’d soon planted all of the seeds in the trough and put it on the window sill.  Some water was thrown in the direction of the pot and with a dismissive cry of “that’ll never grow” I walked away.

Slightly to my surprise it’s all worked out rather well.  It’s only been a few weeks and I now have a varied collection of green things springing up from the smaller pot on the window sill, none of which sadly yet qualify as a herb garden, but I’m a patient man.  The chillies are doing quite well, and I now have a few 2’ high chilli plants with 4 or 5 fairly impressive looking chillies growing.  Admittedly I can’t remember whether they were green or red chillies, they’re certainly green at the moment, but if they survive long enough time will surely tell.  But the tomatoes?  Oh my goodness, what happened?  They are clearly keen because they have sprung up very quickly indeed.  So fast in fact that I had to move the tomato plants out on to the balcony after only a few weeks.  The little buggers are now growing so fast that they have climbed all the way up the garden canes, and are now threatening to make a bid for freedom over the edge of the balcony.  I just can’t stop them, and I’ve done pretty much nothing to aid their progress.  This isn’t supposed to happen!  Did they perhaps not get the memo that tells them that all plant life in my care is supposed to shrivel up and die within two weeks of it becoming resident?  It would appear not.
So now I’m quite scared; I fear that I may soon be faced with the dilemma of what to do with huge quantities of tomatoes.  I’ve probably just jinxed them by writing that, but we’ll see.  The gravel experiment has certainly been effective in solving the weeds problem, but may have resulted in some unwanted side effects.  One of my bay trees is now starting to look very unwell indeed, the leaves are going very brown and even my limited gardening knowledge tells me that the poor thing is not happy.  I don’t know why, because it’s been treated in exactly the same way as its brother  (which is doing just fine).  I’m hoping that the introduction of the gravel is circumstantial, but if anyone can explain it, I’d be interested to hear from you.