The experiment continues

Due to the fact that I was busier than a ... urm, a busy thing having a busy day ... I didn't have a chance to make a post last week, so now you're going to have 2 one on top of the other whilst I play catchup One of the main reasons I've been busy is that I've been designing a brand new blog skin specifically for the growing half of my blog. It's still in final testing so it hasn't been officially launched yet, and it may contain a few bugs ... ohh and I haven't tested the commenting system to see if you get munched by the spamhound, so if you stumble across the skin before it's published and get chewed by the hound ... urm, sorry huh?

Back to the point

The tomato experiment has now reached the end of week 1 and things are mostly going right. The seedlings are a smidge leggy because they were to far away from the lights when they first came through, although this was rectified when I recycled the odd beer can and made a platform to put them within inches of the bulb, it's a fish tank bulb so there's very little problem with heat. As soon as they're old enough I'll be potting them on, at which point I'll bury them up to their first set of leaves, the stem will just turn into more roots, and hopefully they'll be sturdy enough to be planted out some time in March.

Some of the chilli seedlings, which are also a tad leggy but less so than the tomatoes, we're big enough to pot on, so they got put into some 3" square pots and given a good watering. These are now back in the light room and are doing well. I'm hoping that rest of them, or at least some of each variety I've germinated, are big enough to put into pots next week, they look like they should be, but only time will tell. I also found a few more seeds from other varieties hiding under the sink, so I'll be trying to germinate these as soon as I gain a smidge more room in the light box.

Seeing as how the optimistic basil plant was still alive I decided to take pity on it and threw in a few more seeds to replace the ones that had died, they should soon germinate and then it'll have some company and, seeing as I had a spare bit of shelf in the light box I decided to germinate some coriander seeds as well. The shallots and onions in the back garden are storming along and the rosemary plant is looking a lot better since I potted it on into a 50/50 mixture of compost and gravel last year.

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yabba_hh: you could kill half your email spam just by rejecting messages flagged as "important!"

Gary shows off the results of his brainwave

The experiment begins

As I mentioned in my previous post I'm having a go to see if I can get tomatoes to fruit by the end of May beginning of June by starting them off this month, although I'm only going to spark off half the plants I want just in case it all goes tits up. The rest will be sparked off around the end of March, which is the normal time to do these things. After deciding that it wasn't worth switching the heated beds on early, they'll be switched on in a couple of weeks for the dahlias, in the potting shed for the small area of it that I'll need I had to come up with another solution.

At first I was considering putting them under my computer desk, where they could keep the 77 chilli pepper seeds company, as this seems to be pretty successful so far at being warm enough to germinate seeds, but there's only so much room and lots of seeds. Then Gary had a bit of a brainwave! As you may or may not know Barry ( that'd be Gary's dad ) runs an aquatics business which has a pretty big tropical & marine fish room which is kept at a constant 22+°C and the excess heat is vented down a storage corridor and then pumped outside ... so, the corridor should be about 22° as well, and my seedlings need a heated area, and it's the off season so there's a fair few empty shelves, and my seedlings need a heated area, and they'll easily fit in the empty bits, can you see where this is going? ... so, now the corridor has become a propagator. Hopefully, by the time the seedlings germinate the heated beds will be switched on so I can move the plants in there and put them in one of the light tents otherwise my computer room is going to become very full very fast and I'll be getting a tan as I sit here pretending to work.

The other problem I'm going to have to overcome is at planting out time. As I'm starting them off this early they're really going to be to big for the light tents come March and will need to be put into the small greenhouse which is unheated, but it is near the outlet vent for the corridor so I'm going to see if I can find a way of redirecting the warm air into the small greenhouse to help keep the temperature a few degrees higher, especially at night. IF it works then bonus, if not then I have the other half of the seeds and I'll just have to wait until later in the year for my first crop, but if you don't try you can't fail huh?

Onions and Leeks

I've also sparked off about 300 onion seeds, half of them are Ailsha Craigs and the other half are Red Baron, the good news is with these is that they'll be happy enough in the potting shed under the lights without needing to turn on the heated beds, and by the time they're ready to be hardened off the small greenhouse should be warm enough for them to be happy. We'll have to see how that goes I guess.

Being the dumb blonde that I am I managed to misread the date for sowing leeks, so now I've got the best part of 200 of them starting to germinate, which will be interesting as they're faaaaaaar to early and I won't have the space for them in the beds until about June, oops. Rather than try to shove the seedling back into the seed I've decided to grow them on and then just use them as baby leeks when they're big enough, so at least they won't go to waste. It'll be interesting to see how long they take to get to baby leek size, as we like leeks and I'm considering successional sowing specifically for baby leeks.

Let there be light

Due to the fact that the chilli pepper seeds germinated a lot faster than I expected I now have another problem! They should have taken a couple of weeks before they poked their noses out of the seeds, by which time the heated beds would have been on and I could have moved them out from under my computer desk and into one of the light tents in the potting shed ... ahhh well, time for plan 2 ... unfortunately I didn't have a plan 2 so some rapid thinking was required. What I needed was a warm place with plenty of daylight.

The "warm place" bit was easy, it's more than warm enough under my computer desk, unfortunately it's a smidge lacking in daylight under there, mind you it's a smidge lacking in daylight outside as well. So, I needed some daylight, and I was stood in an aquatics shop that's full of bulbs specifically designed for growing aquatic plants. Time for another chat with Gary ... Half an hour later I was wending my way home with a four foot light setup which was going to be the start of my home made grow box.

As well as the light I also managed to acquire some 2 inch thick sheets of polystyrene that were big enough to do the job. After spending 10 minutes with a tape measure and an old knife I'd reduced them to the sizes I needed. I then ransacked the kitchen cupboards for some tinfoil and sellotape and proceeded to cover both panels with the tinfoil. Hopefully between the tinfoil and the light there should be enough daylight available to the seedlings for them to grow without stretching. At the same time I also raised the seed trays up so that they were about a foot below the lights, as the seedlings grow I'll gradually lower the tray so that the tops stay about the same distance from the lights.

So all that's left to do now is to wait and keep my eye on how things go ... and hope it doesn't all go tits up, even if it does though I have plenty more seeds I can sow at the right time, I'd just have to wait for my first crop of tomatoes

¥

• Sown169 Bleu de Solaise leeks
• Sown11 Rose de Berne Tomato
• Sown11 Galina Tomato
• Sown11 Gold Medal Tomato
• Sown77 Various test seeds
• Germinating11 Orange Bell Sweet Pepper
• Germinating11 Pretty in Purple Chilli Pepper
• Germinating11 Lemon Drop Chilli Pepper
• Germinating11 N. Napia Sweet Pepper
• Germinating11 Unknown Chilli Pepper #1
• Germinating11 Unknown Chilli Pepper #2
• Germinating11 Unknown Chilli Pepper #3
• Growing1 Optimistic basil Plant
• GrowingThermidrome Garlic
• Growing10 Jermor Shallot
• GrowingThermidrome Garlic
• Growing10 Jermor Shallot

Sponsored by Topanga @link tenderfeelings.be

As the title says, you have Topanga to thank for this plugin because she paid us to code it, with the explicit condition that it could be freely released to the community once it was finished^(a), because thats kinda what OSS is about huh? As a part of that condition the AstonishMe Team has decided that we won't fully release^(b) this plugin on BOPIT until after the value of it has been made in donations to Topanga. Now, before you all start shaking fingers at us and prodding us with sticks, I should tell you that Topanga will be donating all of the donations she gets for this plugin to Kiva.org and, because we didn't really want paying for this in the first place, we'll be donating the fee to Kiva ourselves .... who said life was simple?

On with the Plugin

This plugin allows you to add custom fields to your posts, so if you're the sort that likes to add "mood", "listening to" and all the other stuff then this is the plugin for you! Once you've installed the plugin you'll be able to add fields to any/all of your blog posts by clicking the nifty little "add new field" button somewhere under your post field ... exactly where kinda depends on if you're in simple or expert mode ... but it'll be there

To make life a little bit simpler each user can have a set of default fields that are added to every post, the fields are only shown if they're filled in so it doesn't really matter how many defaults you have. To make things slightly easier for blog admins they can use the plugin settings to specify the default user settings.

Displaying the fields

Because of the complexity of what Topanga wanted, and seeing as she was paying we had to listen to her, we decided to make the displaying of the fields a widget. This allowed us to add in filters and custom html and other wild and wacky stuff that makes a sunday a brighter place, but because we knew that you lot would bitch if we forced you to add a container to all your skins, we added a shiny new plugin setting for choosing whether to automatically add the fields to the start or the end of your post content .... so new in fact that it's not in the screenshot ... so if you want the easy life just pick top or bottom and press save ... be aware though, if you choose automatic mode then it won't do anything as a widget

Widget mode

As mentioned, this plugin can also be used as a widget that can be thrown into any container you like. If you slap it in one that's inside the post loop then it'll strut it's stuff for each post, but if you slap it outside then it'll attempt to use a single posts stuff ... so it can survive happily enough in the sidebar of your page.main.php / single.main.php If you look at all the widget settings then they'll hopefully make sense to you ... if not then feel free to donate and then demand further instructions .... the chances are you'll pretty much just want to slap it in your container of choice and leave the settings at default

Download the plugin

You can get the latest version of the plugin here ( AM Custom Fields ). Whilst you wait for it to download we'd like you to consider hitting the donation button on the left and donating what you can towards our Kiva fund. This fund will be used to sponsor projects on Kiva. You can visit our Kiva Lender page at any time to see the current status of our ongoing projects.

^(a) Is this explicit enough?

topanga: if you work for me, then I'll pay you
topanga: if you give it away
topanga: then that is other things
yabba_hh: what if I work for you and then I give it away?
topanga: then at least, it will be something that is written especially for my needs
topanga: and if others want it that way
topanga: here they go
yabba_hh: you have no problem with that?
topanga: no I don't
yabba_hh: excellent, cos otherwise I'd do it for you for free
topanga: they can still paypall me 1 euro if they want
topanga: and I give those euro's to kiva.org
topanga: deal closed

^(b) BOPIT will inform you of any updates to the plugin but you will need to come back to this post to download them .... which gives us another opportunity to coerce you into donating to a good cause

• MoodHappy
• ReadingThe screen
• Listening toWater ... seriously

My New Year started months ago

After getting bitch slapped for having the most un-profound New Years post on the internet, I thought I should defend myself .... mainly because I can't afford a solicitor .... soooo, here's my shiny new New Years post ... pretend you read it days ago.

A very optimistic basil plant

So, my New Year kicked off months ago when I found out I had a smidge more room to grow in next year ( which is now this year ) than I normally do. No more playing around with a couple of small beds and just bringing to the table the successful bits, this year I've got to be FAR more serious .... and I'm not renowned for being shit-hot at serious ... Anyway, I was daft enough to ask, so the least I can do is make sure it all happens close enough to a game plan to declare a technical draw ... With this in mind I instantly went out and bought enough seeds to sink a small tectonic plate by several inches ... and in true blonde fashion I charged them to Barrys credit card ( must remember to pay him back ) .... and all of this happened before my holiday ... in october .... and so my new year began.

Shortly after the seeds arrived I came to 2 conclusions .... 1) I'd bought faaaar to many seeds, and 2) It was time to sod off on holiday .... anyway, after I came back, it was time to start planning the new year. Even with all the extra space that we have to grow in this year, the Mighty V and I decided that we need to make more use of our space at home to grow food in, as well as making as good a use of the field as we could. So we decided to slap in a couple of "raised" beds to define what was growing where. Being the total cheapskate that I am, I nicked a few pallets from the field and slapped enough planks together to convince the Mighty V that they were the best thing since sliced bread .... not much of an achievement when you consider the fact that she's blonde as well, but you take your victories where you can huh?

We promptly slapped some garlic and shallots into them, that the Mighty V had bought from somewhere, some of them even have labels, and then we sat for a bit and watched them ... well, we actually watched the cat and decided that it *really* needed to find a new toilet ... so I froze my arse off one day and put a net over them, that pretty much killed any "and last week I was swimming in the sea" mentality that was lingering, vainly, in my mind ... ahh well, at least it wasn't snowing.

7 Varieties of chilli peppers, 3 of which are "unknowns"

Then it snowed

It didn't really, that was just to cheer scott up .... it's to bloody cold for snow here ... anyway, a couple of weeks later the first "short 'n' green" bits, that'll eventually turn into summat we put on the table, arrived ... how cool, I can already taste it, even though it's going to be about August before they're ready. Continuing with my "I'm an optimist" / "make a concerted effort" mentality, yesterday I slapped some chilli/pepper seeds in .... I'm convinced they'll grow this early ... but just in case I only planted half of them .... but that's still 77 seeds! 11 each of 7 different varieties, Lemon Drop, Pretty In Purple, Orange Bell, N. Napia and 3 "unknown" ones that someone on the allotment forums sent me. I know 77 sounds a lot for an 8' x 6' greenhouse, but they have a poor germination rate so I'm only expecting about 1/2 of them to make it ... if not then I guess I'll just have to sneak a few into the potting shed.

During the next week or so I'll be trying to spark off some very early tomatoes, which means that I need to remember to turn the heated beds on in the potting shed. If it works then I should be harvesting by the end of May, which is a fair tad ahead of last years which we started harvesting at the end of September. For those of you who are into names and numbers I'm hoping to grow 20 Rose de Berne, 10 Galina and 10 Gold Medal, all of which are vine types ( you can see pictures of them on Real Seed ). After a couple of conversations with an ex-commercial grower I've decided to try and grow them the way they do. Basically it involves growing them up a string and then when they reach the top you *should* have cropped the lower ones, so you undo the string, lower the plant and move it along the bed to where the next one is planted. Then you just tie the string up again and do the same for all the plants which gives them all another foot and a half to grow. It's a technique called layering and is also used by professional/commercial sweet pea growers.

Besides sparking off 77 chilli peppers, 40 tomato plants and a very optimistic basil plant I'm also going to be sparking off a few hundred onion seeds this week. I've never grown onions from seed before so this'll be interesting. The good news is that a member of the allotment forums called vegmandan is pretty good at growing onions and, like the rest of the nutters members, he's happy to share his knowledge if you ask him .... and quite often even when it's not asked for If you follow the link then the observant amongst you will notice that his New Year started in October as well .... so it's not just me that's strange.

The list goes on

Other things that need doing in the next couple of weeks are closing up the small greenhouse so it can be used as a cold frame for storing all the pot tubers that are currently occupying the heated beds. Later on I'll also be using it to harden off the onions before they get slapped in their final bed in the main greenhouse and then, sometime around the end of March / April the tomatoes will go in .... if they've survived that long. I also need to get the main greenhouse cleared up and ready for the dahlia season as well, so that's 500+ tubers to dig up and the stakes to pull out, and it really needs to be all done and dusted before the middle of the month as we'll be sparking off next years plants in February, damn the potting sheds gonna be a smidge crowded! On top of all that, I really need to clear out our own lil greenhouse and give everything a good scrub so it's ready for the new season as well.

Hopefully by the end of the month all of the greenhouses will be ready for the new season and my seedlings should be taking their first glimpses of daylight, although some of the daylight will be coming from bulbs because the suns a smidge crap at making an appearance for more than a few hours a week at this time of year. You can be sure that I'll take lots of pictures for you to be bored by and, if I pull my finger out, I might also get round to finishing coding my seed site which I'm hoping to use to track my progress through the growing year in a way that the blogs probably couldn't cope with. There's still a long way to go with it though, so don't hold your breaths

¥