What have you done in the greenhouse/polytunnel today?

Put shading on the roof (net curtain) the temp inside was getting a bit silly (47 deg c peak) its March for heavens sake, dont normally do that 'til May

Planted more seeds & had a shifty round to squeeze more in.
Cues beginingg to show up.

Sowed some basil (free off a Lakeland catalogue) and celeriac in modules. The tomatoes are looking nearly ready for 5" pots, and the chillies are growing nicely now

Stacked up a load of deerskins to go into the tanning barrels and pondered what to do with all the accumulated junk when I dismantle the polytunnel next week.

Potted on my tomatoes, peppers and chillies, and moved them to the greenhouse from the bedroom. But best of all, is that my glorious, home-made, cost me a quid self-watering system is up and running in the greenhouse for the season. Simply an old header tank from our loft, with an old ball cock (which I cleaned up and serviced) - this all attached by a short length of hose to the outside tap. Then out the bottom of the header tank, drip nozzles and tube and little spigot thing with tap, all salvaged from some of those drip bag watering things that I had years ago - the bags fell apart. A large piece of heavy duty plastic on the greenhouse bench, with an equally large piece of capillary matting on top - so the nozzles drip onto the matting, watering my seedlings. Any run-off is channelled to the potato planters that stand on the floor, so nothing wasted.

Aha ! I've spent years tryng to get a watering system for my greenhouse that works properly.
I currently have a 100L loft style black tank under the bench (which is the only spare space !), and a 12v pump (intended for computer watercooling) to move the water round. Some scrap agricultural sprayer valves divert the flow, and a microcontroller monitors soil moisture and controls the valves/pump. I even have radio telemetry to/from my PC ...

Last year's mistake was making it water into the gravel trays, rather than drippers into each pot. Much simpler, less plumbing, but ... Tomatoes absorb water through the deeper roots, but nutrients through the ones nearer the surface. So, the tomatoes get water well enough from the roots down in the gravel, but the nutrient uptake from the compost in the pot is poor, resulting in lots of blossom end rot.

Still nothing works as well as human care.

Chilli-head wrote: Tomatoes absorb water through the deeper roots, but nutrients through the ones nearer the surface. So, the tomatoes get water well enough from the roots down in the gravel, but the nutrient uptake from the compost in the pot is poor, resulting in lots of blossom end rot.

Still nothing works as well as human care.

Wow! I'm impressed. Though have to disagree with you on the human care - at least as far as I am concerned. I am truly dreadful at watering things appropriately. Though the main reason I set this up last year was because when we go on holiday, I have always had to ask my 80something mum to water the greenhouse. I was starting to get the impression she didn't really want to do it anymore.

The drip bench is only for seedlings. My larger peppers, tomatoes, chillies, cucumber and melons will live in things called 'easy2grow' pots, which have a large reservoir tub and float valves to dispense the water to the base of the pots. I take your point about the tomato nutrients, though I use the brown liquid that comes from my wormery to add to the water reservoir as feed. I assume this makes its way to the top of the compost as well as the water. I've only used these pots for two seasons, and have had the best ever crops with them - not that that is necessarily saying much, given how bad I am at watering.

To be fair to myself though, it only needs a gas leak under someone's floor, and I can be unexpectedly stuck on a job all day on a sweltering hot day - so something that takes care of the watering until I can attend has to be good.

I should explain that I have retired neighbours who are very helpful, and more diligent than I am. My plants look better when I come back from holiday than when I left them !

Just put my first tomato plant into its final pot in the greenhouse (one of those delightful self-watering ones as mentioned above). This particular plant is far in advance of the others and is showing flower buds already.

I've also planted 5 French beans into a recycling tub, that will also live in the greenhouse. Tried this for the first time last year, and it was moderately successful. Although the crops weren't massive, I had enough early beans to make a few meals. I'm growing twice as many this year, and intend (work permitting) to plant out the rest tomorrow.

Potted on some tomatos.

Potted on some tomatos.

I continued juggling things around; lots of stuff out of the greenhouse into the cold frame, which is proving far more useful than I had ever expected. Some things out into the garden under cloches too. All that to make space to pot on the chillies, of which I have, as ever, sown too many.

Tomatoes seem to be doing well so far, I seem to be getting a good set despite the poor weather, and I now have marble sized tomatoes - exciting. The pointed red tomato from seed I brought back from Brittany seem to be producing quite heavy trusses.

Oooooh, nearly there! My first cucumber will be ready for picking in a couple of days, methinks. I have tiny chillies forming, and tiny french beans in the recycling tub. Lots and lots of green tomatoes on Latah, the early variety. The melon plants are really starting to take off.

After last year's tomato wipe-out from unknown cause, I kept back three plants from the garden (well, they were surplus). Once I could see I had space for them, I planted them in pots in the greenhouse. When I did that about 3 weeks ago, they were a bit stunted and a good bit behind the garden ones. Now, because it is so cold outside still, the greenhouse plants are three times the size of their outdoor counterparts.

I'm hand pollinating chillies each morning now. The Chinense types seem not to set well unaided - perhaps we don't have the right type of insect ? Bit like the vanilla orchid. Still, a quick tickle around with an artist's brush improves set quite a lot. I just hope the weather stays good long enough for them to ripen before autumn ...

More clearing up, this time in the front garden.
Damn slugs etc have eaten all my carrot sprouts & they were doing so well. The lettuce won`t come up either even though the temp has dropped considerably.
The onions didn`t grow, but I can pickle them instead, that is if the family want to blow there heads off so they won`t be wasted.

I've had the same problem Pol - I had a bucket of carrot seedlings coming up nicely, I went to look at them one morning and the whole lot had been sheared off. I did catch sight of two slugs the size of pork chipolatas in the garden after dark the other evening, so they could have been the culprits.

I poked my nose in the greenhouse last night and spotted ... ripe Scotch Bonnets At last

My Dorset Nagas are still green though.

I cleared out down in the greenhouse today. Tomatoes, cucumbers and the peppers which have no sizable fruit left are on the compost heap. The spent compost I've enriched with some seaweed meal, and made into DIY growbags, by stick taping it into empty New Horizons bags. I've turned the bags inside out first, so that the black insides are now outside, to better absorb what bit of heat the autumn sun has to offer. I've sown a few winter lettuce in modules to plant out in them at a later date.

Chillies are still going strong. I've picked off my Ring of Fire, Ancho and Mulato, which I've made into ristras to hang over the radiator/stove. I've still got Hungarian Wax, Datil, Red Scotch Bonnet and Dorset Naga ( ) ripe on the plants ready to pick - make make a batch of chilli jam or hot sauce some time.

I've been clearing out some pots and planters in the greenhouse today. I grow french beans in recycling boxes on the floor of the greenhouse, which are now full of weeds. So I got my hand fork to dig out the weeds, and turned over... eeuurgh ....oooh.... what's that..........................

Once I was brave enough to go back into the greenhouse, I prodded it gingerly with my little fork, and found it to be a raw pork sausage.

I won't ask how it got there...

And here it is...... the glass in the greenhouse door broke in the gales, so I think foxes must have brought it in and buried it.

Gross!!

That reminds me - its is time for the annual glass cleaning etc etc - the new season has sneaked up fast ! My pepper and tomato seeds will be going in at the weekend

My pepper seeds are having a soak in tea this evening ready for going in tomorrow. I am repurposing my biggest incubator as a heated propagator.

This year we shall be growing: Brazilian Starfish, Jalapeno, Purple Jalapeno, Joe's Long, Bahamian Goat pepper, Tobasco, Turbo Pube, Peruvian Purple, Yellow 7 pot, Monkey Face, Aji lemon, Peach Habanero, Butch T and Marouga Scorpion alongside our usual Dorset Naga, Scotch Bonnet etc.

Have just ordered parts for doubling size of our existing polytunnel and watching another larger one on Ebay. After the debacle of last year's weather am not taking chances this time.

That's a fine sounding list Billy.

Do you find the tea soaking to help a lot ? I usually just stick the seeds straight into some steam sterilised homemade compost, whilst it is still a tad warm and moist.

Do you grow just for your own consumption, or to sell ? And what methods of preserving do you prefer ? Last year I dried some, smoked the Jalapenos, but had to make hot sauce from the Scotch Bonnets and Chocolate Dorset Nagas - they don't seem to ever dry properly for me. Mind you, the sauce does give sausages a bit of a lift

Regarding the polytunnels - do you mean that you tried growing chillies/peppers outdoors before ? I tried once, but my results were poor.

I shall be returning to some old favourites this year: Thai Dragon, Red Scotch Bonnet, Rocoto, Hungarian wax, Ancho, Mulato, Serrano and more of the Jalapenos - I have some more cabinet making to do in Oak, so lots of oak shavings/chips to do smoking again. I've also got a good few different sweet peppers to try - due to C-H Jnr not being a fully fledged Chillihead yet, we use more of those than chillies. But I'm working on him

Steam sterilizing CH - are you lucky enough to have an industrial sterilizer or is it a homemade system?