Disclaimer: I’m a professional anaesthetist, not a professional gardener. I do a bit of gardening and cycling in my spare time. I have grown veggies for many years and have learnt what works for me (sometimes!). These are my ramblings! I would be honoured to be corrected / advised by those with more knowledge than me!
Hello again! Welcome to this week’s update
Firstly, in the Greenhouse:
Thursday 14th April 2023
As the iconic Inspector John Rebus would say “There’s been a murrdurr”!
I have been practising the dark, or enlightened (depending on your way of looking at it), art of Artificial Selection which is similar to Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection but there’s nothing natural about. It’s all about me murdering the smaller, weaker-looking plants so as to leave only one, the strongest, plant per cell. This allows them to grow on strongly.
These are the Brussels sprout, summer cabbages, winter cabbages, chard and perpetual spinach. The top photo is pre-thinning. The bottom photo shows the trays after the murder.
The Murder – chapter two
These are the beetroot plants which have been similarly thinned out in the bottom photo.
Remember those squashes which I have been growing in the garage? Well, they were rapidly out-growing their heated and well-lit home in the greenhouse (photo on the left). They were in dire need of being separated and then potted-up into bigger pots to allow them to grow on.
So, a painstaking task was undertaken and the vast majority of the squashes were split up and repotted into larger pots. They were then re-located into a mini-greenhouse within the main greenhouse.
This was not only a painstaking but painful 🤕 task! The tedious processes of thinning and repotting had me bent over a workbench for ages. When I came to the end of it my neck was stuck. Completely frozen and immovable. Bent forward like the hunchback of Notradame, I could not extend it to look up, or look to the left or to the right. After a while, I had to revert to anaesthetist mode and took a large dose of paracetamol and ibuprofen, followed a wee while later by one of the best painkillers around, alcohol, in the form of a couple of glasses of wine! An hour or so later and the neck had relaxed back to it’s usual grumpy self (I am never going to fix that!).
My neck was not the only thing that was sore. The poor wee plants do not like having their roots pulled and split apart and then being repotted into new, presumably cold, soil. A short while after planting, they were looking dreadful. The leaves had all wilted and they looked like they were about to give up the ghost.
Fear not! I have seen this before! They will recover, he says with bravado! So no paracetamol or wine for these poor plants.
Friday 15th April 2023
Ooh 😲! They are strong. The squashes which looked like they were about to be gathered by the grim reaper yesterday have, as predicted, fully recovered. They are looking great now. Whew 😅!
The brassicas (cabbages, Brussels sprouts etc,) are also looking good after witnessing the murder and narrowly surviving themselves.
You know, I can almost imagine that they’ve grown a fair bit, even in a day!
The Beetroot have also survived their ordeal and are looking great. Have they also grown? You blink and you miss it!
One of my favourite flowers is the Rhodesian national flower, the Flame Lily, or to give it’s botanical name Gloriosa Superba ‘Rothschildiana’. Perhaps as a Zimbabwean (Rhodesian) I am biased, but it is beautiful!
I ordered and planted a single bulb of this plant four years ago. It flowered beautifully the first year. To my great surprise, it has re-emerged year after year since then despite my best efforts at neglecting it.
I have obtained another couple of bulbs of this fabulous lily. Planted today (left). 🤞
In the Garage
Some of the squashes were still too small to pot up, because they have yet to develop their true leaves. Others have not even bothered to germinate – will they ever????
I probably have enough of most of them, with those that I have planted out already, but the Pumpkin Wicked has not germinated well for some reason, and will leave me a bit short for my needs. So I pop an extra couple of seeds into the cells, and all of these bad boys go back into the heated and disco-lit propagator in the garage. Let’s hope for some progress here!
In the Veggie Garden (Allotment)
No further activity in the actual veggie garden / allotment this week. If I am to be honest, I’ve run out of time 😬!
However, there is nothing to report on the potatoes which were planted last week. No signs of any growth yet, not that I’d expect any!
The onions are looking good 😊. No bird damage 😁.
It’s a busy, but exciting, time for veggie growers. Lots happening!
See you next time!
Dr Doug (Douglas) McKendrick 
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