Growing tomatoes, potatoes, rosemary - Gardening with Brendan
Here I transplant and give an update on many of the vegetables and other edibles I've grown from seed including tomatoes, rosemary, broccoli, Swiss chard and lettuce and check in on an experiment with shop bought potatoes a month on to see if they've taken root.
Transcript
00:00Hello again, so this week what I'm going to be doing is potting up some vegetables and
00:19one herb as well, rosemary.
00:21So here we have some potatoes, I'm just going to do a wee experiment with these.
00:26These are just Morris Piper potatoes, bought in the shop, see, you can see there they're
00:33going to seed, like there's some eyes coming out of them.
00:36So I'm just going to throw them in a big grow bag and see if anything comes up out of them.
00:42And here, these have been grown from seed, these are Swiss chard, about 10 weeks old
00:51now, and these are multi-coloured Swiss chard, so you can already see the reds and the different
00:57colours of them, some are light, some are dark.
01:01So not great success, they were grown outdoors in the greenhouse, but I'm hoping they'll
01:09come on now in this big grow bag, and this is just a cloth grow bag, bought for £2 odd,
01:18filled with compost and topsoil.
01:20I'm just going to pull these out now, I think I left these in for too long, like early,
01:29but plant them, see how they get on, and give them a good watering, and they're healthy
01:39enough looking, nothing's been eating them or anything like that, but the germination
01:44rate on them wasn't spectacular enough.
01:51Right, separate those out, ah there's one that's been eating a wee bit, generally speaking
02:03they've been left alone.
02:08This is probably the pick of the litter here, plop him in the middle, I've no idea how big
02:15these get, so I should have really looked at it, but let's see, I've never eaten chard
02:22as far as I know either, so it'll be interesting, maybe do a taste test later in the year.
02:37So growing vegetables is a good way of saving a few pounds, I have some broccoli and some
02:50brussel sprouts growing there as well, coming along very well, they're in much deeper soil
02:57in the ground and in a raised bed, and these I'm just going to leave out of the elements
03:03now once they're planted.
03:06There's a lot you can grow in our climate in Ireland, I think the rain helps a lot with
03:13vegetables and with some fruits as well.
03:18So as I said, in here there's a mixture of, this is the last two I think, there's a mixture
03:29of topsoil and just multi-purpose compost, with some feed on it, and I will maybe give
03:41these some seaweed feed in a few weeks once they're established.
03:46These ones are looking worse for wear, very very dark colour, I'll put them in a night
03:51and see if they come round.
03:54So that's it there, all the chowder done, and this has some handy handles for just plopping
04:02around the place, and I'm going to put that in situ before water because it's going to
04:08be very heavy.
04:09Talking of heavy, this is an Argo bag that I've just thrown some leftover topsoil and
04:15compost into, and into this one I'm going to just set these potatoes with the eyes pointing
04:24up the ways.
04:25Apparently you don't cover the whole thing to start with, and then as the plant comes
04:33up you're supposed to then keep covering it with compost and it keeps going up and up
04:39and up, so we'll see how that works.
04:43So I've got five here that were left over from the bag of spuds just, and I don't know
04:48if anything will come of these because they're not seed potatoes, they're just not regular
04:51potatoes, but I thought it worth a shot anyway.
04:55So that's them in now, I don't know if you can see where they are, I'll put that down,
05:00so just like that, and just give them a water tree whenever I move them over.
05:10And then finally for today I'm just going to get some of the wee rosemary tray and plant
05:20that up.
05:21I'll be back in a second.
05:23So just here you can see the rosemary growing from Sydney, starting to bush up a wee bit
05:31here, there are various little flowers, they're a perennial plant, but they're from the Mediterranean
05:39region I think, so they don't really like cold weather and probably wouldn't survive
05:45our winters.
05:46So you can bring them inside, but they really smell strong, even at this young stage.
05:52Hello again, so I've just been patting up these rosemary plants that I grew from seed
06:02from cold stratification effort a few months back like, and they should have been patted
06:06up a while ago, but they've actually come out, as you can see I've patted up quite a
06:10few, but I forgot to turn the mic, or put the mic on myself, so I've just been talking
06:15on the thin air I think, so I've most of them patted up already, just a final few here
06:21before I realised, so here's one here, you can see they're well developed roots, bulbs
06:29on them there, they really do smell incredible, pity you can't smell through cameras, but
06:39they really are such an intense flavour, and that's the good thing about things like
06:46rosemary and lavender, because they are so strong smelling, the slugs and the snowies
06:57leave them alone, and they may leave other plants around them now too, now these are
07:03from the Mediterranean, so they won't really, they are perennial plants, so they come every
07:07year, and that means they are slow growers as well, those are the extra ones, so I'll
07:11put them beside another, they are quite slow growing, but they also, being from a warm
07:19climate, they can tolerate dry conditions very well, but not so much the cold in the
07:26winter here, so if you are planning to keep them for year on year, you need to bring them
07:31inside, so that's why I'm keeping them in pots now, I don't know if I'll keep them all
07:38over the winter, but we'll see how they come on, they are slow growing as I say, because
07:42they are perennials, they are in no rush to do anything, but I'm glad I get them potted
07:51up now, so that's everything I think for today.
07:55So I'm all thawed now, and I'm just going to show you the progress in potatoes and the
08:00other things that I've been growing.
08:02Here we have the lettuce first, and it's all in individual cells now, it's a mixed bag
08:09of lettuce, these ones at the side are the older lettuces, the older seeds, about 10
08:17years old, and these are the newer seeds, you can see there, the golden ones, the weather
08:28has been atrocious, it's just been the most terrible summer, but it doesn't seem to have
08:33bothered the lettuce at all, this is the Swiss chard, different colour, I'm just going to
08:42show you, you can see there's a reddish, some lighter coloured ones there, green, another
08:53red, another green, I don't know what they are supposed to do with chard, but I must
08:58look up, try and cook it, because it's getting to this stage now where you could actually
09:02pick it, and here we have the potatoes that I've planted, you can see they have lovely
09:09foliage, nice sweet flowers as well, but every one of them has come up, these were
09:15just shop bought potatoes, if you remember, and what I do is when they come up like that
09:23I put more compost into it just to get a harvest of them in the autumn or late summer, and
09:33these are marsh peppers, and then here we have just some of the rosemary that we transplanted,
09:40the smell is incredible on them, let me show you the others too, let's see is that all
09:51of that, the other rosemary up here, the lavender, the top of the wheelie bin just at the moment,
10:02I'm going to give some of these to other people, I don't know if they will survive
10:11the winter or not, but if you bring them indoors they are fine indoors, so the smell is incredible
10:18even though they are still quite young, quite small plants, the smell is unbelievable, so
10:23this is the dandelion trying to take root in there, I let the broccoli go to seed, I
10:33actually missed picking it, but you can see the yellow flowers on it, they are actually
10:38starting to fade now so I'll pull them out, I just wanted to see if I could grow them
10:43and they grew quite well, these are the beans, they are being eaten and so are the sprouts
10:50here as well, by earwigs, you can see the baby sprouts now coming on them, so I don't
10:58know if they will survive, I've been spraying them with PR expressions, I noticed that there
11:03was earwigs eating them, but they are wee little sprouts I'm hoping will be ok, and
11:12I might actually spread these out once I get rid of the broccoli here, there's more sprouts
11:18over here that are doing far better, these will be ready either in the autumn or the
11:33winter, and you can see all the little sprouts now coming along there, I'll just show you
11:50the tomatoes back round this way, it's very windy, it's been terrible for August, they
12:00are still flowering, here we have, this one has been outdoors the whole time, you can
12:09see there, some of the tomatoes starting to ripen, some more green ones there, loads of
12:21flowers on them, and we have a few more to go, so I'll chart that as a success, I have
12:33a few more outdoors as well, you can see here these ones have been grown by the door just,
12:41and there's quite a few tomatoes on this, couple of baby ones up the top here, and these
12:55are now over 6 foot, quite a lot of tomatoes on it, and in terms of changing colour, it
13:13probably took, I actually had one that turned red and I had it and it was absolutely over,
13:20but it took about, I would say about 3 weeks for, when it stopped growing, for it to change
13:28from green to red, so I'll just step back and you can see just how tall they are, I
13:39never pruned the tomatoes or anything, I didn't do anything to them, really I just staked
13:44them and put about a thread around them, to kind of keep them upright, and they turned
13:54out fine, so there's a lot of talk online about you should do this, that and the other,
14:00but they've worked grand, as if it needed very little care, I haven't fed them very
14:09much because I put feed into the compost when I was transplanting them, it was a very young
14:16plant, and they haven't needed anything really, only watering, so that's the update.