Intro Post & Some Questions
Aug. 22nd, 2011 12:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eien_herrison posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
gardeningHi everyone, I've been nosing around this community for a few days and I thought it'd be good to introduce myself. I live in South-East England, hardiness zone 8 bordering on 9, AHS heat zone 2, and about 600mm of rain annually. I'm not that good a gardener as most of my problems come from forgetting to water plants, but I'm willing to give growing some of my own fruit and veg a go.
Currently my garden (in a house with my parents and fiancé) is in a state of, well, not disrepair but it's being completely redone with some nice decking and a ton of plants that I've never seen before. I've been allocated a section (3m by 3.5m) of the garden for a vegetable patch, and some space on the decking for some patio plants. I'm planning on growing tomatoes, lettuce, beetroot, peppers, carrots and potatoes in the veg patch; raddishes and hopefully some mixed salad leaves in containers in the kitchen; and blueberries, strawberries and raspberries on the decking.
I will say this about me: I'm interested in growing foods that not only taste nice, but look good and/or unusual: for example, Carnival peppers (cream-white, deep green or purple when unripe; red, violet, orange or golden-yellow when ripe); rainbow radishes (white, red, red-white, gold, or purple); or this odd little thing called sweetcorn red strawberry (It's popping corn! That looks like a strawberry!).
At the moment, though, I'm concentrating on stuff that's reasonably easy to grow -- if these things are successful then I'll look in to growing some other things.
Although I do have a couple of questions:
1) Has anyone here had any experience with growing raspberries in a container and training them on a trellis? As the garden is being landscaped I don't wa\nt (currently) the risk of the raspberries taking over the garden if we're not careful.
2) Has anyone has experience growing peppers in this kind of climate? I'm aware that they risk being hit or miss, especially as I likely won't have the space to put even a pop-up greenhouse around them. I'd rather know now if they're something that is just likely to die before planting them out.
Currently my garden (in a house with my parents and fiancé) is in a state of, well, not disrepair but it's being completely redone with some nice decking and a ton of plants that I've never seen before. I've been allocated a section (3m by 3.5m) of the garden for a vegetable patch, and some space on the decking for some patio plants. I'm planning on growing tomatoes, lettuce, beetroot, peppers, carrots and potatoes in the veg patch; raddishes and hopefully some mixed salad leaves in containers in the kitchen; and blueberries, strawberries and raspberries on the decking.
I will say this about me: I'm interested in growing foods that not only taste nice, but look good and/or unusual: for example, Carnival peppers (cream-white, deep green or purple when unripe; red, violet, orange or golden-yellow when ripe); rainbow radishes (white, red, red-white, gold, or purple); or this odd little thing called sweetcorn red strawberry (It's popping corn! That looks like a strawberry!).
At the moment, though, I'm concentrating on stuff that's reasonably easy to grow -- if these things are successful then I'll look in to growing some other things.
Although I do have a couple of questions:
1) Has anyone here had any experience with growing raspberries in a container and training them on a trellis? As the garden is being landscaped I don't wa\nt (currently) the risk of the raspberries taking over the garden if we're not careful.
2) Has anyone has experience growing peppers in this kind of climate? I'm aware that they risk being hit or miss, especially as I likely won't have the space to put even a pop-up greenhouse around them. I'd rather know now if they're something that is just likely to die before planting them out.