What are you sowing ?

[Odsox]

Set some tomato seeds to chit this morning for my winter tomato crop.
If my timing is right they should start to ripen in early December and carry on through to April.
Then the summer ones take over and that's another year gone.

[ina]

Corn salad (lambs lettuce), and winter radish.

[diggernotdreamer]

sowed coriander, bullblood beetroot, spinach, oriental saladini, snowpeas, radish and gourmet salad mix in boxes in the little tunnel about 5 days ago and they are all up, going to be used for adding to my salad bags the radish is ready for cutting and hopefully will have pea shoots and beetroot leaves to add in about 2 weeks

[Odsox]

I forgot, I also sowed some spring cabbage earlier in the week.

[MKG]

Nothing, as I'm rethinking the entire garden to take account of the fact that human joints can be a pain in the arse (not a good anatomical description, but I'm sure some of you know what I mean). I've got a fair old collection of "stand-up-straight" tools, so I'm looking at "stand-up-straight" crops now.

Bushy things are good. Tall things are good. Things which embroil me in a weed battle are not good, although some low things (think swede and new potatoes) out-perform any weeds all by themselves. In fact, I think I've found a whole range of new stuff (the Real Seed Co. - they're pretty good) which will preserve my bending abilities long enough to grow the perfect parsnips in accordance with Odsox's pending instruction course.

The greenhouses will continue as per normal - tomatoes (but I'm chucking the huge beefsteak varieties in favour of smaller ones which will ripen over a longer season), aubergines, strawberries, and the reintroduction of chilis - and I might sneak in a new crop or two there, I'm just not sure what. Yet.

Onions are the big problem. I can't not grow those. I may have to spend my last ration of bendability producing a very raised bed (like three feet high) for them to go in - and if I did that, I suppose it wouldn't be too great a burden to extend that to accommodate those parsnips.

Actually, I should really produce those three-foot raised beds for everything ... NOOOOOOO! - far too much work

[Odsox]

Well of course you could always build a hydroponics system, gardening at waist height ??

OK, sensible (ish) suggestions, carrots, onions, strawberries, dwarf French beans, dwarf runner beans (Hestia) for instance can all be grown in containers. Befriend somebody who works in a canteen/cafe/restaurant and ask them to let you have empty mayonnaise buckets, or buy ! some plastic troughs. This year I trialled growing stump rooted carrots in 5" deep plastic troughs to combat root fly and it worked very well with Chantenay Red Cores and Early Nantes root fly free, 4 foot above ground level.
With troughs and containers you can sit them on tables, benches, window sills (inside or out) at whatever height you can contrive.

Watering can be a problem, especially during tropical Nottinghamshire summer weather, so get yourself set up with drip feed irrigation of some sort.
It can be fun this unconventional gardening, honestly.

All the suggested vegetables above I have successfully grown in standard 5" troughs.

[MKG]

Thanks, Tony - some very practical suggestions there. I actually thought of upending a bunch of 3-foot lengths of drainpipe and growing parsnips in them. Then I got optimistic and thought "What if they grow fatter than the pipe? I'll never get them out". Just shows how wishful thinking can hold you back

[Odsox]

I've only suggested things to grow that I've actually grown myself, but parsnips in vertical pipes is a well tried method with the Show brigade. I think they grow them in concrete drainage pipes, which would make it a lot more stable as a prize winning parsnip has a huge rosette of leaves.
If you're talking about 4" drain pipe you could be right, I've grown parsnips with a shoulder diameter of at least 4".
And you thought you were joking

Parsnips.jpg (98.8 KiB) Viewed 4641 times

[ina]

Befriend somebody who works in a canteen/cafe/restaurant and ask them to let you have empty mayonnaise buckets

I've been growing runner beans in mushroom containers... The black plastic boxes that wholesalers sell them in, hold about 5 pounds of mushrooms. (They are good for flowers and herbs, too; I've had lettuce and strawberries in them this year as well.)