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.

Ripe Red Bell Peppers

You can see why they're called 'Bell' Peppers - all in a line ready to be chimed (or pealed :)

We're very pleased with our crop, not bad considering they've been grown indoors during a cool, grey Summer. We actually feel sorry for our plants. We do look after them well but we're sure they'd be happier if they were free-range - need to get a place with space for a proper outdoor veg patch.

More Peppers

We now have more peppers than we can count. 

Various sizes and all very green, these are a couple of the largest.

We patiently await a gradual change to red.

The First Pepper Flower

Several buds have appeared on our Pepper plants over the last few days and this is the first one to bloom. 

Is that a tiny baby pepper we can see forming inside?

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.

Pepper Plants Prosper

We haven't featured the Pepper plants for quite a while and have pretty much just left them to get on with it, only making sure they got their turn on the sunny windowsill.

They're now looking quite big and healthy, maybe the little Doraemon character has been using various gadgets to help them along?

We snacked on a few Spinach leaves today - very nice!

Padron Pepper

The Padron Pepper we're growing from seed is gradually taking shape. We will have to keep him in the sun as much as possible. There's still some old Basil growing in the mug and some new Basil in the Hovis tin.

Just eaten some delicious Purple Sprouting Broccoli which we got from the Farmers Market this morning. Reminded us that we did buy some seeds right back at the beginning, if we can find the space we really must sow some. 

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.

Pair of Peppers in a Pink Pot

We have transferred the Pepper plants to larger containers - 2 to a 40cm pink trough (x 2 = 4 in total). Will they have sufficient room to flourish? 

We'll see. 

We didn't grow these from seed, we bought small plug plants from the garden centre a while ago.

They are on the windowsill whilst its warm and sunny but we'll have to move them onto the desk at night.