Starting small - vegetables for pots.

After thinking about small trees and pot plants on the previous post, let's think about what vegetables are good to start with.

RADISH AND LETTUCE

I mentioned growing veg in pots/containers. Personally I’d probably go with the salad crops, a bit more simple. Radish are pretty simple and fairly quick from sowing to plate. Their roots aren’t tapered, like parsnip and carrot, so don’t need a deep container. Lettuce, take your pick of type;

Cos/Romaine – tight and upright habit, easy to grow.

Iceberg - tight head like a ball, difficult to grow in this country, low nutritional value in comparison to the other types.

Butterhead – loose rosette formation, very flavoursome, sweet and nutritious, not crisp, easier and faster to grow than the other two, they are capable of withstanding hot and cold temperatures.

TOMOTOES

Tomato’s, there’s a few types of these;

Cordon – the everyday tomato.

Beefsteak - with some of these one slice is enough to fill a sandwich and they’re available in different colours. Great for roasting and stuffing.

Cherry – some of these are sweet and they too are available in different colours.

Plum – so called because of their shape, less liquid in the middle making them firmer and ideal for BBQs.

Side shooting - pinch

All of the above will need side shooting. A shoot which grows from where the leaf joins the stem. Just break it off using finger and thumb, or cut it off using snips or secateurs. With some varieties the fruit will split if they’ve not had enough water. Also the flowers may dry and shrivel, if the plants are fruiting ,the bottom of the tomatoes may turn black. Start feeding Tomatoes when the first truss (flowers)appears. Feeding with a high potash feed, which is what tomato feed is. Details should be on the container. Look for NPK on the packaging, more specifically  you need the number under the k to be higher than N and P, these need to be the same number. If all three are the same that means it’s a balanced fertiliser.

I hope that's helpful and I'll be adding more as the days and weeks go by. If you have any questions you can send them over via the contact page. I'll try and answer as many as I can. You can do that here.