Well lets try and keep this up, I cant promise it will last but hey I will give it a great try, blogging can take up alot of time when you are a dyslexic! tip for any Dyslexics that stumble on my blog, just keep at it and write and read about stuff you love, sod what teachers tell you to read unless you are getting marked on it! There is nothing worse than reading / writing when you dont like the subject!

This little lot of pictures from my garden where taken today after what was my last mega mission in the garden for 2010. From now on its a little planting here, a little weeding there and just alot of minor stuff from week to week. The morning started early with me cutting back the weeds behind the fence, hoeing the weeds on the various plots and more weeding, got to love the weeding. Its really nice to see clear soil but  I just cant stand doing it. After weeding I planted some of my shallots, lettuce, monge tout, radishes, (red, white, lisbon) onions and cucumbers. I think there was more but its been a long day and I cant be bothered to think any more. I know there is no need for poly tunnels in June but due to the cats pooping on my plot I have had to do this so that they dont dig up my lovely little seedlings / seeds when covering it up.

Well this is all the trees, bushes and plants in there green wonderfully state for you viewing pleasure:

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The seedlings are doing really well, the cucumbers so well infact that they have had to be put into their very own little 3 inch pots already. The rest of the seedlings have been watered and next week either given some feed or will be moved into individual pots and placed in the cold frame.

Progress

The seedlings on the whole are doing well. Some of the pots are now showing growth and we are looking good apart from one area! the herbs. I struggled last year with them and this year its proving even harder as they are all doing really badly, just dying so much. The spring onions are following suite pretty quickly so I hope the ones I plant straight into the soil outside do the business for me! The cucumbers, tomatoes, chillies and courgettes are all doing really well and last years speedy growers the sweetcorn are having a slow start this year. We wont panic as I planted them quite early so we still have time to use the heated propagators with a new batch if any thing really struggles!

TOP tip

After looking around on the net I found a few good little tips that will save you some money and get you some good guides at the same time. After looking around I found a magazine subscription that gives you free seeds and a book worth £25. Its called GROW YOUR OWN and is really cheap, its £17.50 for 6 months so with the book, mag and free seeds and vouchers you will be quids in!

Tip 2, go to allotment.org.uk and buy either or both “Veg Growing Month by Month” and “Essential Allotment Guide UK” you get about £10’s of Sutton’s seeds and also the books! they are £7.49 each including delivery so you get two books and £20’s of seeds for £15! perfect way to start your green fingering future.

Tip 3, want to get cheap seeds and fruit / veg feed? well go to the 99p store and you get 4 packets of seeds with the longest dates I could find with 2/3 years and they grow well. The feed is really good, it works as good as anything else you can buy from places like BnQ. Obviously the more expensive stuff is alot better but for the first timer or semi-pro gardener you wont need the posh stuff any how.

Today’s pictures

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Nothing goes 100% perfect all of the time. Its only my first year and yes I still have a few issues going on. Some of the seedlings have died due to the plants falling over and loosing their base in the soil. Still got plenty growing so when thining out I will try to use all my little seedlings to make sure we get a good lot of crops. I am also going to use my pound store 4 for a pound seeds to try out a few different growing times and techniques this year but that s for another day and another post.

So enough of the chit chat, remember to water them all really well but not over the top! plus the pots are not featured in these images as there is no growth yet but week two images might just have a few little gems to show!

1 Week and this is what we have got to show for it.

** Use picture lense to view photos as its better than clicking on them! its a nice little slide-show / viewer

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Well this was about 5 – 6 days ago now but I thought I would share with you what day three looks like for the propagators and the pots are just not showing any thing but they will be slower due to not having nice and warm soil and the things in the soil will grow slower any how.

Day three growth

** Use picture lense to view photos as its better than clicking on them! its a nice little slide-show / viewer

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Well I am going to try and make my posts on this years crop really easy to follow so that newbies to gardening can pick up just as easy as I did!

The first thing to remember is that if you water, feed and look after the soil, plants and seedlings you will get plenty of crops! Last year was my first year and I had way too much. During the summer and warm days you must water every day! if in the ground it does not matter if the ground is soaked. The plants, weeds and everything in the surrounding areas will suck it up before the next mornings sun was fully risen.

BTW the week that I started planting I also weeded and prepare the ground outside for this years crop. Will place compost and feed in the ground a couple of week before sowing seeds and seedlings outside.

My top tips:

1. Weed all the time, make sure the plants are not fight for water, nutrition and most importantly sun. If you leave them they will win and its alot hard to get rid of them when they are big with huge roots.
2. Make sure you water every day during the summer and every other day on the mild days where you can get away with doing it a little less.
3. Always use plant food. Not too much but every three weeks will keep the plants growing and happy. Its not expensive and if you go to the 99p store you can get it for a £1 a bottle. A small plot will only need one of two for the summer so you will not spend alot of money on that! but remember that if you grow toms that they love tomato food so buy some of that too in the 99p store.
4. Always harvest the fruit and veg as soon as you can, beans, tomatoes and cucumbers all grow lots of products and the more you pick the more the bush / plant can grow.
5. Look out for pests and insects, they are usually slow to move on in but when they do they can really mess up your crop so make sure you have treatment at home or can get it quick to stop the little buggers taking over.
6. Plant the crops inside in heated propagators or non-heated for slower results but make sure you plant them with plenty of time to get them established for the summer and stagger them going outside to get crops week after week and not in one go.
7. Enjoy it, its really easy and not every thing will work but if you follow my tips and step on time and in good time you will have a love crop and will get them “Green fingers” I cant shift!

So what did I do in week one (20th of Feb 2010)

1. Got my heated and non-heated propagators and 3/4inch pots ready in my spare room. I then filled them all up with compost (must be John Innes).
2. Read each packet of seeds to make sure you give them the right spacing and depth.
3. Plant them a little deeper and firm the soil! Gemma did not do some rows to deep and did not firm the soil making some seedlings die as they did not have enough root in the soil before they grew out the top soil.
4. Firm firm and top up soil where needed.
5. Water them very lightly and place in warm, bright and safe areas away from pets and children!
6. Keep them warm and at a constant temperature!
7. Tidy up the mess thats if you are like me.
8. Oh and label the seedlings!

Lets see what I did

** Use picture lense to view photos as its better than clicking on them! its a nice little slide-show / viewer

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I know this is very late, But this was meant to be the post to mark all of 2010’s new posts with a firm resolution that I would stick to. Thats to tweet and blog every day or as close as I could with interesting and not so interesting blog posts for both me and the Fish. I am going to kick it off today and see how it goes.

I have never been one for writing so may be thats why I have found it harder than taking to Twitter and Facebook. Dyslexia is a real bugger and hurts the type type tying alot. But the more you write and the more you read the easier it gets. If your dyslexic and fall upon my site and wish to chat about what helps to improve your English skills then please do, I got a grade C in English GCSE and 1st class degree in  hard degree with lots of writing so its very possible to do well with this disability.

So what is coming up, well my holiday pics and videos need to be uploaded with a little blog post about my holiday, so thats the first big task! In between that I think some garden news and some reviews will be hitting my blog and I will be launching the new site using Word-press in late 2010 so ideas and thoughts behind that very soon.

Other resolutions this year will include picking up my diet plan which I started towards the end of last year and I am going to reduce my web costs. I am currently spending to much money on hosting else where, so with Virgin installing 50 meg this month and a newish dell ubuntu server, I will be hosting my svn repositories and my development webserver at home. From there I can continue with my resellers account till the point I am happy enough with my skills to step up to the next level. Once there I will transfer all of my hosted sites to a virtual private server supplier, most likely Slicehost and only use what I need and upgrade as I go.  Realistically its going to be around  2011 that a full move over from the reseller account. The one thing I wont do is rush,  it will be at my own speed as I dont want to mess it up!

Another big resolution, is more time for other people in my life, plus the house DIY tasks must be fitted in too. 2007 till 2009 was so manic that my holiday to Florida is the only thing that slowed me down and has really settled me back down on planet earth. I was so stressed that 2009 was a shit year in some ways but 2010 has started alot happier and in a much better way.

I can happily say that I am a stress head that has aggression issues which I am very proud of??? I am planning my next holiday which is for Gemma’s 30th in-order to give me something to aim for and to again ground me when things get on top of me. 2010 brings controlled limits on Freelance work and that should kick in very soon, these are limits on time spent on freelance when I should be doing some me time or something just as important if not more so.

So thats 2010, it has resolutions but I dont like thinking that resolutions are limited to once a year, in a few months I might want to resolute my resolutions and try a different direction, thats just how I roll….