Salads all year round?

At any given moment, I've usually got several stray thoughts floating around the back of my head. Half-formed sentences waft around, searching for something to hang on to, waiting to coalesce into fully fledged, proper ideas... A bit like this post...

What does it all mean?

Here are some of the itinerant ponders that were bubbling up over the Summer:

• You can grow seedlings in lengths of guttering.
• Seedlings grown in gutters can be easily planted out, in chunks, reducing root disturbance.
• At River Cottage, they grow tasty micro salads in gutters, all year round.
• Hubby really enjoyed cooking with the lovely fresh parsley that survived all winter in the greenhouse.
• We could really do with some shelving for seedlings, but there's no space in the greenhouse.

The mists are clearing...

& slowly... an image formed... & I said to hubby: "Do you think we could attach a couple of rows of guttering to the back wall of the greenhouse, & grow salads & parsley & coriander in them?"

He was so keen on the idea, he did it that very weekend - wot a star!

3 rows should do it

So we've got:

• Some timber planks screwed to the window frame; then
• Guttering brackets mounted onto the planks; then
• A standard length of guttering per plank;
• Capped at the ends with standard guttering ends.

How neat & tidy is that? Lovely.

1st sowing

The next step is to bung some compost in & sow some seeds. Rather than going mental & filling all 3 rows, we plump for just doing the bottom row for starters, with the 2 leaves we're most likely to use: Parsley & Coriander.

They're ALIVE! The coriander get going

After a couple of weeks - success! The seeds are starting to germinate - woo hoo!

Fancy a dip?

It's been a wet summer; you may've noticed. However, what we've never realised before, is that we have a very leaky greenhouse:

Hmm... are we creating a water feature?

It seems the rain just runs all the way down the garage wall, with scant regard for the greenhouse frame. But no matter, less watering for us :) It does mean tho' that if we don't want the seedlings to drown, it's time to get busy with the drill.

There's a hole in my gutter, dear Liza, dear Liza...

We'll keep an eye on them to see whether we need to add any more.

2nd sowing

When hubby put the 1st set of seeds in, he deliberately left some gaps. As well as trying to grow more things over Winter, we're also playing with sequential sowing. This is partly to try & give us a more regular delivery of leaves, but also cos when I've tried to grow corinader in the past, it's bolted quicker than Usain.

A second sprouting

So now all we have to do is wait & see how the little seedlings cope with reduced heat & light over the next few months. If these quite tender fellas should struggle, we can also try out some winter salads.

Up here in North East at midwinter, it starts getting dark about 3:30pm, I kid you not. On the upside, it's now less than a month til the days start getting longer... which means Spring is on the way - you heard it here 1st, folks!