h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Having bought our new house back in September I've finally - for the first time in about 4 years - had the chance to do some proper gardening, something that I found to my shock that I enjoyed when I bought my first house and was required to do it unless I wanted a jungle as my back garden.

Been growing seeds as I like to do it from scratch and if all goes well we'll have a stunning garden and a full freezer by the autumn.

I've never done vegetables before as I was more into making it look nice than anything else. But this year I thought I'd try my hand as we have a good area of the back garden that seems ideal for a vegetable plot. SO I have about 50 onion plants growing, hundreds of carrots, about 15 cabbage plants that are going nicely and at the weekend I planted two rows of runner beans that supposedly should yield 60 lbs of beans if all goes well. I also have 6 Alisa Craig tomato plants -4 of which are just starting to flower so I've put 3 in a little mini-greenhouse thing outside now.

On top of this I have partially cut a border out of the back lawn and I have about 150 flower plants to go in, including lupins, scabious paper moons, gerberas, petunias, pansys, red hot pokers, godetias, ornamental tobacco plants, poached egg plants, calendulas and others which I forget at the moment (aubretia, oregano, coriander...)
I bought so many to mitigate losses that usually occur but they *all* seem to be going great guns. We'll have a packed border both front and back by the summer.
Hard work but marvellous too

Sounds like you're having fun Orcus
It should both look and taste good.

We're a long way from getting tomato plants out in the garden (still too cold and wet and they're far too small).

Ah well, I got all overexcited and planted them early.

I am located fairly southerly though, and they're not exactly out in the open, we bought a plastic bag style mini-greenhouse for them. We have a south facing garden and kitchen window too which helps.

Interestingly these ones that are outside were the original 'reserve' ones that I kept going inside whilst I was trying to harden off the 'main' three in a little (other) mini-greenhouse thing we've got. It was obviously too cold for them as they got stunted whilst the one we stood on the windowsill are now about 3 feet tall.

Do tomatoes always get yellowing to the leaves? I'm a little inexperienced at this and I have a book that portends doom if the leaves start yellowing. I think all of ours have this to some extent or other but it doesn't seem to be stunting their growth and the tops look very healthy...

The tomato leaves shouldn't be yellowing I don't think. If you carefully look at the leaves are there any tiny wee beasties that might be attacking the leaves or do you get leaves with other discoloured spots on them? If everything looks ok then it might be that they need feeding with a general purpose feed (or a speacial tomato feed, designed to help with flower and fruit set).

Well I have been using a general tomato feed with potassium in there.
That's what I hoped it was initially, but it doesn't seem to have stopped it.

There's no other discolouration. The earliest leaves that I've now discarded just went yellow then essentially white. I don't see how it could be flies as they've been inside (and the ones inside are also minorly affected too).
I'll check that carefully though.

It isn't really serious (at least not so far), it's only affecting the oldest leaves significantly and I've pulled off the most seriously affected ones.


I've just done a deal with one of my coworkers who I know has a big garden. I'm swapping some excess cabbage plants for a couple of new varieties of tomatoes. I shall be getting some cherry's and an italian variety I forget the name of.

Hmmm, there is indeed another colour in the leaves, there are purple patches too.

No insects that I can see...