Flowers

Flowers, oh so many flowers. One of the jalapeño plants that wasn't as far along as the others has gone into super speed mode, overtaken all of them, has 5 open flowers and is now growing the first chilli :) This has cheered me up and almost makes up for the massively stressful day yesterday. The wind was incredibly strong and it managed to move the whole greenhouse and knock most of the plants off of the shelves, spilling compost everywhere and damaging quite a few young plants. I'm a very calm person, but I got really annoyed by it. Every time I tidied it up a bit, the wind would come back and ruin everything again. The weather's been much...

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First flower & massive update

My first chilli flower has finally opened, and as you can see in the background, the others will be opening pretty soon :) Fun fact: my camera sucks at focusing on the right things when taking close-up pictures. When you add to that the fact that the humidity in the greenhouse kept fogging up the lens, I'm amazed I managed to get a picture at all. I think I'll make this update a picture-heavy update, instead of the wall of text that I usually post. 1 of the new strawberry plants that I bought from B&Q to increase my eventual harvest. I bought Elsanta, Pegasus and Cambridge Favourite. That means I now have a total of 5 strawberry plants,...

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It's getting hot in here

This is a happy post :) I finally have a greenhouse. It's nothing special, just a cheap thing from Argos, but it does the job brilliantly so far. I bought it just in time, the extension that powers the lights in the wardrobe had to be used for something else, so I needed to get my plants outside and the cold would have been too much for them. I also harvested my first crop. It was a single, small radish, but it feels good to finally eat something that I planted. My trays of 12 tomatoes and 12 black hungarian chillies are all up and doing great, and the tray of mixed chillies is just starting to come to life, so they're all under the lights...

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Growdrobe v1

It's been a while since my last update, so here's an awesome update to make up for it. The first version of the growdrobe is complete :) It will be upgraded eventually with more lights, possibly being split into more levels and getting some fans in there, but for now it's working nicely. It took a lot of fiddling around with cardboard boxes and planks of wood to get all of the plants up towards the top of the wardrobe so they'd be in the warmest area, but I think I've sorted it now. A couple of days after I'd spent ages putting new door hinges on and  getting them lined up perfectly, something's gone wrong so now the door on the right...

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Another update

I always try to make these posts really short, but it never works. I have a feeling this is going to be another long one. My chilli plants are starting to branch out a bit and form flowers, which makes me happy because soon I'll be able to play around with cross-pollination and things for next year's seeds, and of course, I'm one stop closer to harvesting some chillies :) A few days ago, I was feeling bad about how much chocolate I'd eaten, so I bought a tray of melon chunks and grapes to make me feel healthier. I found a few melon seeds in it and thought I'd try planting them. I didn't really expect anything to grow, shop-bought fruit usually...

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Quick peek into my box

I'm still waiting for a few things to be delivered, so I can't get back to working on the growdrobe or any of my outdoor planting plans yet :( So this is just a quick post to show what's going on in my mini box right now. I did have peas and things in there, but they've all been moved outside, so now it's full of chillies and 1 cucumber plant (the plant closest to the camera). I'm really happy with that box actually, the plants seem to like it and it's really good for germinating seeds (look at the back of the picture, there's some new chillies just coming up). Hopefully I can get my growdrobe sorted soon. I need to move these chillies...

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Another quick update

I'm really bad at updating this blog properly. I'm supposed to be keeping track of every detail of my plant's growth, but I always forget. I've just separated and repotted all of the bigger chilli plants, so now I don't have to kill off the weaker ones, yay :) I've also repotted some of the peas, cucumbers and radishes that were in fibre pots, because their roots had started to poke holes in the pots. Lastly, the yellow bucket with radishes, carrots and parsnips is showing signs of life. Lots of radishes have sprouted, hopefully the carrots and parsnips will be up soon. Boom, updat...

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