How to Grow Food Fast! - A Challenge :)

[muddled]

parmex are little round ones

That's 'em, thank you!

[Penellype]

Now look what you have done VC:
Sowed
Carrot Nantes Frubund
Mizuna Red Knight
Lettuce Salad Bowl
Pak Choi Tricolour Mix
Spinach Reddy
and some more cabbage Hispi to replace the 2 that didn't germinate from before.

And there was I, sticking to my list and waiting for March...

[veggiechicken]

You're so easily persuaded, Penellype

I've sown:-

Early Mizuna
Lemon basil
Coriander Calypso
Mixed Lettuce leaves
Carrot - Amsterdam Forcing
Radish - Polonez (week 6 of the Radish Challenge)

[Penellype]

My mizuna and lettuce are showing signs of germinating

[veggiechicken]

^^^ That's fast, Penellype, just like the article promised

[Penellype]

Yep, mizuna is usually the first to show, and the lettuces are sown on the surface of the compost so they are more visible. I'm not expecting the carrots to show for a while, but the pak choi won't be long.

[Penellype]

Well its nearly 5 weeks since we did this - how's it going?

These are some of my veg:

Top row is Pak Choi, then Mizuna then Lettuce Salad Bowl. The bottom row is Kohlrabi that was planted later. These are in the cold frame waiting to be planted out when we stop getting frosts at night! Hopeful of harvesting some Mizuna and baby leaf lettuce within the 8 weeks.

These are the carrots:

As you can see these are still at the seed leaf stage - they completely stopped growing when I moved them into the growhouse about a fortnight ago. I would rate the chances of being able to eat a carrot from one of these plants within the next 3 weeks as absolutely zero, and I'm not really surprised.

The Spinach Reddy that I sowed on the same day was eaten at the weekend having grown 4 small true leaves. It tends to bolt after that when grown indoors.

[veggiechicken]

Just to tidy this up - I pulled the bucket of carrots today - that's 17 weeks from sowing. Not quite the 8/12 weeks they were supposed to take - although they have been ready to pull for a couple of weeks.



Very pleased with the results though. Better than any carrots I've grown before. Going to resow another bucketful tomorrow.

[kris1960]

Pak choi, lettuce and mizuna did it. Feb planted carrot yesterday but very sparse crop, basil 1/2 inch but with promising looking leaves.

[Penellype]

Aha, I was looking for this thread the other day but couldn't remember what it was called!

This is how mine did:

Carrot Nantes Frubund was first eaten 3rd June, about 1cm thick. This is just less than 15 weeks from sowing. 18 carrots grew from the 24 seeds sown (12 per pot).

Mizuna was nearly ready to eat as baby leaf when I planted it out on 7th April, and continued producing decent quantities of salad greens until 12th June when it was well and truly bolted.

Lettuce was slightly behind the mizuna, but being a cut and come again variety, I was able to eat the first small leaves around about the 8 week deadline of 17th April.

Pak Choi was a disappointment. One of the plants grew to a decent size and was eaten mid April, around the deadline date. The remainder stayed very small and were attacked by aphids before bolting while still too small to consider eating.

Spinach Reddy never produces very much to eat. It bolts very quickly, so if you can get 4 1 inch long leaves from each plant you are doing well. These were eaten at that stage on 22nd March, just 4 weeks and 2 days after sowing. You would need a huge number of plants and a great deal of time picking it to get a decent meal out of this variety.