Intro Post & Some Questions

[eien_herrison]

Hi 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.

Comments

Re: Peppers

[eien_herrison]

I was certainly looking in to starting peppers indoors already -- luckily we don't tend to have too many sudden chills where I am so the plants should be okay outside when it gets warmer. I've not seen any varities that have been marked as cold-resistant, I suspect most people grow them in greenhouses if they've got the space.

Blueberries: check :)

Raspberries: I'm debating about going for a regular variety vs going for a black raspberry plant. I'll have a look at the tulameen variety -- aside from the spreading that raspberries do, as I'll probably only be able to plant three canes I'm left wondering what I'd do with all the extra canes I'd have.

Re: Peppers

[kake]

First of all: hello, and welcome to the community!

I am also interested in raspberries. I'm in Croydon — maybe we could go shares in an order? Though that black raspberry link says you only get one plant. (I don't really understand how raspberries work.)

Re: Peppers

[eien_herrison]

Thanks for the welcome :)

From that website you can only order black raspberries in pots of either one plant (as in the link I gave) or three plants -- pretty much any other site I found that sells Glen Coe does the 1 pot/3 pot offer -- you're effectively buying one raspberry cane per pot (which does make them hideously expensive, but like a lot of things I'm thinking of growing I don't find them locally). From what I can find you can take cuttings and grow more plants, although it'd take a few years to get a fruit-producing plant.

With regular red raspberries (and on occasion yellow raspberries) you buy them as canes which you then plant -- most commonly you get six or twelve canes, but I have just seen that Thompson-Morgan does three-came orders (as it seems to be with anything, buying more canes means it works out cheaper per cane).

I'm open to discussing an order share, although I will admit I am a bit partial to the idea of growing black raspberries :)

Re: Peppers

[kake]

I'm keen on the black ones too! How about we find one more person and get the three for £28.70? (Does that include delivery? Ah, I found the delivery info, looks like £3.95 per order.)

Re: Peppers

[eien_herrison]

That could be arranged :) I was thinking of getting more than one plant for myself anyway (I was debating between two or three because of the effective three-for-two offer), so we don't have to find another person who'd want one.

If you don't mind waiting a few months (edit: well, the plants can only be delivered between October and March so we'd have to wait a couple of months anyway) while the garden's sorted out, then we should be able to split the order that way.

Raspberries

[kake]

Sounds good to me! I'm happy to do this on whatever timescale suits you.