Regular followers of my blog will know that this year we are experimenting with a selection of produce picked from James Wong’s book Homegrown Revolution. We chose Inca Berries, Chinese Chives and Cucamelons to give us some variety amongst our normal crops. The details of sowing and potting on are shown in the table below.
So far so good as we've had no disasters and all three varieties have germinated. Due to rather poor germination, the most disappointing so far is the sowing of Chinese chives. It may be that more will germinate over the next week or so and I still have more seeds so definitely not a disaster and hopefully we'll have something to try.
My original plan was to grow these to maturity in this terracotta pot but I will need to seriously review this as these are described as deep rooted plants that should be planted in soil enriched with plenty of organic matter. The good news is that six plants will provide more than enough flowers and leaves for the average family. I might not need to sow any more seeds after all.
Next in the table are cucamelons. These are supposed to be easier to grow than outdoor cucumbers being more cold tolerant than cucumbers. They need support as they grow as tall vines and the suggestion is that they should have their main growing shoot pinched out once they reach 2.5m.
The cucamelons have just moved from under the indoor growlight into the cold greenhouse. They grew a little slowly after germination but they are now growing extremely quickly. They will be potted on over the next few days into reasonably large pots where they can grow on before planting out in the plot. Hopefully we will be picking cucamelons by the beginning of August and they should continue to fruit until the first frosts.
Finally our Inca berries are also doing well. They too went through a stage where they seemed to stop growing soon after they had been transplanted. They're growing really well now though, probably due to the warm spell of weather or hot in the case of our Inca berry plants as they're growing in the greenhouse where it been exceptionally hot through this recent spell of good weather even with the door and windows wide open.
Inca berries should be grown on similarly to tomato plants except that they should produce a good crop outside in the plot or grown on in tubs. I've still to decide exactly how to progress to the next stage but perhaps I'll try some in pots and other planted directly in the plot. The berries should be ready to harvest by late summer or early autumn.
Finally the weather. Wednesday was another sunny mild day but in the early hours of Thursday morning the well forecasted rain arrived.
By 10:00 Thursday morning we've had 8.8mm making it the wettest day of the month. We need another 1.0mm then surprisingly it will become our wettest day of the year which currently stands at 12 February 2014 with 9.6mm.
Posts
Gosh you are growing some interesting things this season - the cucamelons sound particularly interesting!
ReplyDeleteThe taste tests are going to be interesting!!!! Presuming we get that far.
DeleteIt's always nice to try new things. I'll be interested to see what you think of them.
ReplyDelete