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.
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