Kitchen Gardening

[psyanojim]

Good news is, the tomatoes look delicious.

Bad news is, the weather has played havoc with the timing of my harvest. I have 300-400 of these things coming ripe in the next couple of weeks, then the batch planned for September has been badly messed up by the wet July weather.

Oh well, better start eating the ones I have. 20+ tomatoes per day for the next couple of weeks

[Jubal]

I picked two tomatoes today which looks like possibly being my whole crop for the year. Urban gardening is brutally low output a lot of the time

[psyanojim]

I have the complete opposite problem with potatoes in this climate.

The last couple of pots of kitchen waste I left out to compost, I had entire potato plants growing out of them simply from potatoes that got thrown out with the waste. The weather has been so wet, I didn't have to water or look after them in any way, and they yielded about 5kg of potatoes after a couple of months!!

On that note, it has just started raining again. *sigh* my poor tomatoes

[Spritelady]

I am hoping to visit a garden centre this weekend and purchase some things to begin my own kitchen gardening quest! If anyone has any tips, tricks, suggestions for good and interesting plants etc, please let me know!
Ideally, I don't want anything that will require an awful lot of extensive gardening work, as I have limited free time. I intended to start myself off with some herb plants, which I've had some success maintaining previously, but any other suggestions will be happily received.

[Jubal]

I am hoping to visit a garden centre this weekend and purchase some things to begin my own kitchen gardening quest! If anyone has any tips, tricks, suggestions for good and interesting plants etc, please let me know!
Ideally, I don't want anything that will require an awful lot of extensive gardening work, as I have limited free time. I intended to start myself off with some herb plants, which I've had some success maintaining previously, but any other suggestions will be happily received.

Probably all basic thoughts but in case useful: at this time of year you probaby don't have many other things to plant anyway - e.g. tomatoes, cucumbers, most other veg tend to go in much earlier in the year. In general, checking good time of year for things is worth doing, herbs being a fairly good semi-exception because you're just eating the leaves. For herbs having an idea of where you're going to put them and thus what light levels are available also matters, as does thinking about soil drainage, most things in the herb line want pretty well drained soil/not to get waterlogged.

[psyanojim]

I am hoping to visit a garden centre this weekend and purchase some things to begin my own kitchen gardening quest! If anyone has any tips, tricks, suggestions for good and interesting plants etc, please let me know!
Ideally, I don't want anything that will require an awful lot of extensive gardening work, as I have limited free time. I intended to start myself off with some herb plants, which I've had some success maintaining previously, but any other suggestions will be happily received.

Do you like spinach?

Its a good spring/autumn crop (it doesnt like hot mid-summers), so can be started once the weather begins to cool down. It grows quickly in small pots, yielding tasty leaves within 2-3 weeks of germinating.

Quick lifecycle and low maintenance, so an easy crop to experiment with.

[Spritelady]

Ooh both suggestions duly noted - I do indeed like spinach, and have procured a selection of herbs to begin growing.

I have also procured some strawberry plants that were on offer, believing them to be at the end of their season. I was then pleasantly surprised when a quick Google search suggested that they might go on producing strawberries until September! I shall see how that goes!

[Jubal]

I had my whole tomato crop for the year as part of tonight's dinner, both tomatoes were very good, I'm just kind of gutted I don't seem to be expecting any more.

Generally my plants aren't flowering much and the flowers aren't setting well. I wonder if I'm just really short on pollinators here in the centre of the city.