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

[View with PicLens]

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

[View with PicLens]

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….

Well thats what sums up my time off! think its getting worse too! Gemma is feeling pants, Andy at work was off ill too! Loads of people off at work with sickness, you just cant get away from it.

Fingers crossed, I am going to get some medicine and see if it clears it up for me!!!

Oh ho I hate being ill.