BS: Propogators

Subject: BS: Propagators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 05:12 AM

I've got our Stewart heated one out for the season. In it, I have a couple of my favourites. Topepo Rosso a sweeet pepper that works really well for us - better than my experiences with bell peppers - get a good yeild of thick juicy flesh from these. Hansel, a small aubergine which I find works well for our small greenhouse container growing. And I've started off some safari mix, marigolds.

All have germinated. It won't be too long before I move the seedlings to pots which will occupy windowsills in the house for a while before they go out to the greenhouse.

Anyone else got things in one at the moment?

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 09:36 AM

I'm on the fence. Shall I start tomatoes this year or not? The variety I like (Park's Whopper) is now available at the nursery.

Thanks for the trip about Topepo Rosso peppers.

What is safari mix?

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 10:04 AM

Peppers grow well here in Texas and sometimes I start from seed, sometimes from bedding plants that I start in the window of my sun room. The greenhouse would be good for that if I remembered to go out every day and check, but I don't. I do walk past the window several times a day. So that window is my propagator.

My onions are in now, and I have been meaning to get the potatoes planted for as long as the onions have been in. Maybe this weekend now that the snow has melted.

SRS

Subject: RE: BS: Propagators
From: maeve
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 10:54 AM

leeneia- https://www.harrisseeds.com/storefront/p-2576-marigold-safari-mix.aspx

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: sciencegeek
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 11:06 AM

with 3 feet of snow & ice, I'm trying very hard not to think about planting. folks I know who have commercial greenhouses are getting started & hoping that fuel bills will stay manageable... unlike last year.   the whole northeast is taking a real hit with the cold... we'll see how it affects pests this coming season.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 02:26 PM

Leenia, the marrigolds are supposed to be good companion plants.. Whatever, they add a bit of colour to the veg plot and do no harm. As you'd phave seem from the link, Safari mix has a nice variety of colours.


For tomatoes, I will be growing 4 varieties again this year.

Ailsa Craig. A standard variety and one of the long standing favourites in the UK.

Ferline. Another standard type. This one has good blight resisitance and we use it for the few standard types we plant outside.

Roma VF. A plum type. Good for cooking.

Tumbling Tom. A cherry fone for a few hanging baskets.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 02:36 PM

And thinking potatoes, not in yet but I think it's looking like we will have 2 this year. Charlotte and Anya. We don't do a main crop mum likes to have some of her own and
goes for small patches of tasty salad ones.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 06:10 PM

Hi Jon. I gave up trying to grow maincrop spuds years ago because of slugs and blight. I like to get my spuds to a good size before the blight hits, which it generally does early to mid-July. You should try Sutton's Foremost as a first early. Beautiful flavour, quick to bulk up and, crucially, they keep their new potato flavour and texture even if you leave them in right through July and August. Charlotte are very nice and you get some lovely big spuds, but I think they are trumped for flavour and texture by Nicola. Nicola are fantastic for jacket spuds, potato salad, gratin dauphinoise and oven chips done in groundnut oil, or just boiled or roasted as new spuds with lashings of butter. Great too for Mediterranean potatoes baked in the oven with olive oil, loads of garlic cloves and rosemary. OK, not so good for mash, I'll admit, but who wants mash in summer anyway!

As for tomatoes, I grow Sungold every year because I always plant them in my greenhouse soil and Sungold are disease-resistant. Plus they're as tasty as it comes. They have a tendency to split, no matter how careful you are with watering, but they're so tasty I'll forgive them that.

I love those Padron peppers that the Spanish have as tapas and I'm having a go at growing them this year. The humidity and summer coolness in Cornwall makes it difficult to grow peppers and cucumbers, but I always have a go, living in perpetual hope of a long hot summer!

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 06:33 PM

Thanks Steve. I've already got the tomato seed for this year and I think Pip has the potatoes and space is a bit limited. But I've noted these varieties. Maybe next year we will try at least some of your reccomendations. They soundgood. Thanks again.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 06:48 PM

Just one more comment. We are a different area to you (we are Norfolk) but we have the same seasonal problem with blight.

For cucmbers, our outside ones rarely do well but we had a few last year - may have been "marketmore". I think a problem is I want to get them out too early and they really do not like a chilly wind.

This year, I'm trying one called something like "Green Burpless". Other years, at least in the greehouse, Passandra has done well. I've also grown the round ones "Chrystal lemon?""

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: Steve Shaw
Date: 07 Mar 15 - 07:21 PM

I tend to grow the mini-cucumbers, the all-female F1 varieties, as there are only two of us. I've tried outdoor ones but it's just too cool and breezy this end. Likewise outdoor toms. Hopeless here. I lived in Loughton, Essex, for eight years and had an allotment, and outdoor toms were a cinch there. Probably a similar climate to yours in East Anglia. Usually, I see blight on my spuds first, and they are doomed. As long as it doesn't strike too early, and I've cut the tops off in good time, it doesn't get to the spuds and I get at least something of a crop. But it always gets to my tomatoes. I won't spray them with that horrid copper sulphate stuff, so they just have to get on with it. I take off the blighted leaves as much as I can. Tomatoes are very resilient though, given good feeding and watering. My tomatoes got blight in the second week of July last year, but I was still picking embarrassingly-large crops in late October!

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: Musket
Date: 08 Mar 15 - 03:53 AM

My propagators in the utility room have various chillies, courgettes and lots of tomatoes seeding away right now.

Next week the greenhouse will get its spring clean and tidy, and prepared to receive the plants, once I know there will be no more ground frosts. (I don't heat the greenhouse.)

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 08 Mar 15 - 07:52 AM

I don't know how you go but my target for the greenhouses (we've a small upright and a small lean to) is around May 1st.

Greenhouse have had their clean but I've still got to recoonect a watering system we use for the year.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: Charmion
Date: 08 Mar 15 - 04:50 PM

I'm jealous as hell.

We have a completely shadowed handkerchief of back yard that accommodates a barbecue and about a dozen hosta plants.

And the snow is knee-deep out there.

Phooey.

Subject: RE: BS: Propogators
From: GUEST,Jon
Date: 08 Mar 15 - 06:10 PM

Charmion our own veg growing is on rented land. Very lucky there. The property backs on to a field. There is a strip the farm doesn't use because of a pipe to a septic tank. It was all overgrown when my parents moved here but, my mother and another brother cleared it up. It's really nice out there in the summer, especially when you have say 40 acres of barley growing.

Some of is gradually getting wound down. My mother is in her late 70s and can't do as much as she used to and she fancies more fruit trees. I don't have her level of enthusiam (she is an in the garden from morn to night type) but certainly want to keep the salad stuff going and the aparaguss bed... We'll have to see.

One thing I forgot when mentioning the greenhouses and with regards to the spring clean is I planted cabbages in some of the containers this winter. Mice destroyed some some of my efforts (which also included winter gem lettuce) pretty quickly with bothe being uprooted and being nibbled but I've got 5 that are hearting nicely. When they are harvested, that will be another tidy up.