Keith's Blog : 2013

Sunday 10 November 2013

2013 Review

Well as i sit here on a cold crisp October Sunday evening it is time to reflect on 2013 and another some what challenging year.

First we had the Spring that barely never was the coldest in 50 years and boy was that cold and all that snow i think we have become to accustomed to mild Winters so when we get a bad one it comes as a bit of a shock

This was our garden at the height of the snowy weather although we missed some of the really bad snow that seemed to skirt around us.

To make my life easier i decided i needed to put a greenhouse up at home after a few hitches i eventually got a nice 8ft x 6ft greenhouse up at home and benched it out ready to get sowing, which i was also able to heat with a 3.5kw propane gas heater which was badly needed with the weather not letting up well into Spring and even in May we were still getting ground frost so i delayed sowing as long as I could.

The biggest problem i had was heated space I have nowhere at the derelict nursery we rent to heat so once things were up at home they really had to take their chance. It did cause me some major headaches and was one of the toughest starts to Spring i have ever had even worse than when we got snowed in for 2 weeks in March down in Cornwall.

Then out of the blue we had a glorious Summer i think that was as much a shock to most people as was the cold Spring.

For us it was the latest we have ever started dispatching plants I usually manage to start dispatching at least something by the end of March but this year it was the last week in April when the first orders went out and we never really caught up from their.

We launched two new websites this year one dedicated to Tomatoes with now over 250 varieties listed and loads of information on the Tomato and how to grow them as well and the other website for flowering plants I have also dramatically reduced the number of veg varieties we have on the vegetable website for 2014 we are in a restructuring phase of the business at the moment with some major changes before next year that I am still working on.

The launch of the Tomato website came as a bit of surprise in how it took off I did not expect it to be that popular that quickly and the demand alongside the cold Spring did cause us a few supply issues.

By all accounts it has been a really difficult year for Tomato growing even the professional growers have had huge problems even with the highly technical climate controlled greenhouses they say that growth was poor early season and they have never caught up and i know many people have reported that crops ripened very late this year.

I will be starting my Tomato sowing much earlier next year and on a much larger scale to hopefully be ahead of the demand .

The flowering plant website is more to give me something to sell during the leaner months for veg plants and we have some lovely perennial plugs ready now from a massive sowing in seed trays that i did back in August that have now been pricked out into 44mm Jiffy plugs

www.tomato-plants-direct.co.uk/
www.vegetableplantsdirect.co.uk/
www.mailorderplantsdirect.co.uk/

Tuesday 26 March 2013

Well this has been an interesting March !! Looks likely to be the coldest since 1963 so i guess that makes it the coldest March in my lifetime then (just) and boy has it been cold even over here in the west the wind cut through you like a knife so I dread to think what it has been like for those of you in the East !

Fortunately we have not had the snow here that many of you have had either we had one lot of snow in January and a few flurries since But nothing like what a lot of areas got this week we had torrential rain instead.

However it has been cold enough for me to be once again struggling with my growing But I did always have a plan to get a greenhouse up at home this year to make heating and propagating easier. I did start this process at the beginning of March and purchased a polycarbonate greenhouse BIG BIG mistake it was very complicated to erect and utter rubbish with just a narrow channel to hold the polycarbonate sheets in place the first puff of wind blew it to bits that one has now been demolished And I am now wrangling with the company what they are going to do about it.

I have since bought and erected and nearly filled a glass one which is being nicely warmed day and night by a 3kw propane gas heater Most of the Tomatoes, Peppers and Aubergines for March/April are sown and some Tomatoes are up and a fair bit else has been sown as well and we have lettuce and peas up so I think by Mid April I will have some things ready to go It will depend then on the weather and if people have the ground ready for them we will probably e-mail people prior to dispatch to see if your ready for them as the weather is so iffy and not forecast to change much any time soon. We would hate to send things out and find your still under two feet of snow or have hard frozen ground and no where to put them.

Thursday 21 February 2013

13 Tips for Growing Better Tomatoes

Why In February ??

Posted on 7:19pm Thursday 21st Feb 2013

One of my biggest bug bares over the years has been young plants early in the year the relentless earliness and rise of places doing it in February it is utterly ridiculous and unless you have a heated greenhouse a complete waste of money for the customer.
For goodness sake these plants can't go out into the garden until at least May when all risk of frost has gone what on earth do people do with them for three months like i say unless you have a heated greenhouse it is pointless. But even then you then have these plants clogging up your valuable growing space for three months when it is best served growing other things like food for the table there is plenty you can grow in a cold greenhouse for early veg.But it is a long time to have these other plants in there let alone your heating costs trying to keep them alive and if you don't have a heated greenhouse and are going to attempt growing these on indoors then they will end up a pretty sorry state if you have the heat indoors you certainly won't have the light and they will just stretch.
The likes of the big sheds are the worst they take these poor barely seedlings from a heated nursery and stick them at best in a freezing doorway like my local store had last weekend with Courgette seedlings (in Feb come on please we don't even sell them until April) if they were animals people would soon be reporting them to the RSPCA maybe we should have a Royal Society For The Protection Of Plants I hate going into these places in March and seeing all these dying seedlings that either have not been looked after, baked in a hot store or killed off by the frost in an outside plant area
The temp this week is barely above freezing and you have to wonder why they do this, is it so you all by them now loose them and then come back for more whatever it is a practice I do not agree with it is fine if they want to put easter eggs out before new year and christmas cards in August But plants in February what next buy a Tomato plant for Christmas instead of a poinsettia.
So far on my rounds recently I have seen all the usual tot pots of basket plants and now traditional bedding seedlings which will seriously struggle being kept for 3 months But now were getting tomato seedlings, pepper seedlings, Courgettes i have also seen last week, and numerous packs of brassicas some of which should not be planted until May/June for next winter
Here at Vegetable Plants Direct you will not find these items available at this time of year we only sell our plants during the seasons that they are supposed to be planted in and we always will, as seed breeders tell us various varieties can be sown earlier or later we offer them But only if they are recommended for use out of what you would call their normal season.
So please choose wisely when buying your plants the choice is yours But remember it is a long way to Summer !!