The Final Tomatoes

Our harvest is now coming to an end and with perfect timing as we prepare to move out of our city centre apartment to a place with a small *outdoor* garden across the Mersey.

These Tiger tomatoes are very ripe with a pale stripe and taste delicious.

We are also finishing off the aubergines and peppers. Hopefully the rosemary plant will continue to flourish in our new place.

Tiny Tomatoes Almost Ready to Eat

Almost... but not quite. The Head Gardener likes her tomatoes to be very red and ripe before picking.

While we were away for a few days all our plants enjoyed camping out in the real sun and rain on a kind neighbour's balcony. It seemed to do them good, all the peppers have reddened a lot too but now they're all back indoors.

Little Green Tomatoes

Soon to be bigger red tomatoes hopefully but they're not seeing much sun these days.

Our stripey tomato has flowered too, looking forward to seeing those fruits.

First Tomato Flowers

One (and only one) of the tomato plants is flowering now. The other four are looking quite healthy but no sign of any buds.

We also have one stripey variety which has grown much taller and looks like it's about to flower soon.

They're hairy beasts these tomatoes aren't they? Have a look at the close up detail below...

Our First Homegrown Spinach Salad

We have eaten our first significant batch of Spinach and the plants look like they'll provide us with a lot more.

With a few leaves of our Basil and some Tomatoes (shop-bought), seasoning and Olive Oil - delicious, fresh and crisp.

And tomorrow we'll be having more of those tasty Pea Shoots.

Desktop Garden 2nd Month Review

Now more than two months since we started our Desktop Garden and you can see it's completely full and very green.

As mentioned in previous posts we put some of the plants on the windowsill so it does spread out a bit but it just about still fits onto the desk.

The Pak Choi are now looking quite plump, the five Tomato plants and four Peppers continue to grow.

We can now grow and eat Cress and Pea Shoots regularly and pick sprigs of Rosemary, Basil and Mint as required.

We've had a few flowers too and looking forward to the Fuchsia coming into bloom later.

The little Thyme seedlings are very slow growing and the Lamb's Lettuce is taking its time to reach the stage where we feel we can start taking some leaves off to eat.

On the whole it's been quite a rewarding month, we just wish we had more room as we have so many unopened packets of seeds.

Crop Rotation System

We squeeze as many plant pots onto the windowsill as possible. They all have to have their fair share of the sunlight so we spend some time each day rotating plants between different parts of the desktop and window.

As mentioned earlier, the desk is in front of a large West-facing window with plenty of light but only some direct sunlight in late afternoon and evening. Some plants are happy out of direct sunlight but most really seem to benefit from a few hours of sunbathing whenever possible.

We've had to stick to pots that fit between the window and the secondary glazing. At the top of this picture you can see the Spinach, next is 1 Pea plant then a few Tomato plants which are now looking really strong.

Desktop Garden One Month Review

After nearly a month and over 20 blog posts since we started the Desktop Garden it may be worth a quick review of how it's going.

You can see that the desk is quite full, the Tomatoes and Pak Choi are looking quite strong on the windowsill though we sometimes bring them in if it's a very cold night.

We have added a wire shelf to raise up the plants at the back of the desk to get them out of the shade a bit more.

The Mint and Rosemary are thriving and regrow whenever we snip off a few leaves for the kitchen but the Thyme was not at all happy, not sure why, some plants just don't like being indoors. We're going to try growing some Thyme from seed. Only 1 of the Pea seeds has sprouted, that is going well but we fear that may be the only one from the pack to germinate.

The Peppers, Spinach and Japanese Basil are looking good too. The Rocket Salad seedlings are are looking quite weak but most have new leaves appearing from the centre. We're thinking that it may better to sow some seeds straight into the big pots or troughs and leave them rather than starting in modules and potting up. As we're not going to plant outside it may be better to avoid any unnecessary disturbance. 

One unforeseen problem we have discovered is that we can't go away! We have to check, water, talk to and move plants every day. We'll have to appoint some trustworthy green-fingered friend to look after things when we go on holiday.

It is also difficult keeping the room clean and tidy - compost and water gets everywhere. Need to be organised and disciplined - we are of course :)

Its been fun so far and we've already learnt a lot. We're happy with how it looks and have already been blessed with some lovely flowers and edible herbs. It's sad when things fail but but it's great to wake up in the morning to check for new arrivals pushing their little heads through the soil.

Our First Seed Swap

Speaking of Aubergine, here's a photo of the packet. 'Ideal for the patio', it says. That's not much different from a desk is it? We had more seeds than we could possibly use so we swapped some with our friend, Joanne along with some mixed leaf salad seeds. 

She has a proper outdoor garden and had kindly sent us seeds for Purple Haze Carrots, Tomato Tigerella (the stripey ones), Japanese Spring Onion and Padron Peppers (noted for their 'Russian Roulette' effect as about one in 50 is very hot but you can't tell until you eat it. That should be fun!)

Looks like we'll have all the ingredients for a Jamie Oliver style salad soon. Lovely Jubbly.

Joanne warned on the envelope that seeds can easily escape and as you can see one of the little spring onion chaps did manage to free itself from the pack.

Looking forward to more swapping of seeds and maybe even plants in the future. This is fun.

Tiny Toms in Bright Pots

The Tomato plants are still very small but at least the big colourful plant pots add a bit of interest to the garden.

We have just planted a small tray of Mustard Cress - nothing like a bit of instant harvesting (well, a few days anyway) to encourage a gardener. Will post pictures when its grown.

Tomatoes Progress and We Add Tulips

We returned from another trip to the Garden Centre with 3 different types of Tulip. Not really an impulse buy (honest) we had decided we needed a few flowers to spread the joy around the apartment and you can't beat bright Tulips in early Spring.

Now the Tomato seeds are just about ready to be potted up. There's only 5 so I'll have to be extra careful. We may experiment with some upside-down plant holders for these, there's a few on the market now and, presumably, saves messing about with tying then to supporting dowels etc. Though I suppose they won't then technically be on the desktop but hanging above it!

First Tray of Rocket Seedlings

So here is a tray of 14 little Rocket plants that I've just 'pricked out'. Hope they all prosper, I've put the pots onto a tray of fine gravel to avoid waterlogging and increase humidity.

It was great to see that the Tomato seeds have just sprouted early this morning - too small to show in a picture yet.

I re-used the seed trays from the Rocket to plant a few Spinach seeds, they're quite big and easy to manage so I could easily pop one in the centre of each module.

Rocket, Tomato and Spinach - we will have Salad :)

The Rocket Takes Off!

After only a couple of days the rocket seeds are already growing tall. Will need to pot up very soon.

As well as a few Tomato seeds we also planted some Japanese Basil (Shiso or Perilla) which we have grown successfully on a window sill in the past - looking forward to harvesting that in the Summer, it's delicious in Tempura :)

So the desktop is starting to fill up already. We realised we forgot to get labels to put in the pots, we need to get some soon before we lose track.