Sweetpea's Vegetable Garden (Gardening)

Member Name: sweetpea01

Product:	Gardening
Date:	04/05/09 (104 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: A great way of growing vegetables

Disadvantages: Can be a bit fragile

In the past two months I have moved house down to Somerset as my partner is based down there. Fortunately now I have my own garden I have had my wicked way at long last to grow vegetables! Now the garden is a decent size but not big enough to have a garden and vegetable patch. So instead we opted for the greenhouse way of growing.

As most people know when moving house alot of money seems to vanish quickly, even though we have saved and got a cracking deal on a house and we had most of the stuff money seems to go very quickly, so we have not had the funds to spend on the usual glass greenhouse.

On our weekly bargain trip to Wilkinsons we noticed that there was a huge garden section with everything you could possibly desire at a fraction of the cost! We ended up buying two four tier greenhouses for £11.99 each! They were the last two and apparently are quickly selling out! Later that day I did a price check and at homebase they are £29.99 for a four tier rack, bargain!

My wonderful partner put it up for me and placed it in our south facing garden. Now they are quite light and delicate so tent pegs are advisable to secure it to the ground but if you don't have those, simply get a rather large bucket and fill it with water and put it on the bottom tier. Yes you may lose valuable growing space but if it keeps the greenhouse up right then its valuble and you can put smaller pots round the sides.

The greenhouse comes complete with a polyethylene grid cover which goes over the whole frame and zips up the front. This seems rather tough and can be rolled up when unzipped and tied at the top so it's easy to get to your veggies.

Product Detail:-

* Made from 1.6cm tubular steel with green painted finish.
* 135g per square metre polyethylene ripstop weather resistant green cover.
* Double zip up door with galvanised and corrosion free zips.
* Zip width 2cm, with 0.4cm teeth.
* Ties to keep door open when rolled up.
* 4 gridded plastic shelves spaced 30cm apart from each other.
* Middle support to each shelf aiding stability.
* Shelf size: Length 82cm x width 50cm.
* Plastic clip and screw mechanism to attach shelf to main frame.
* Internal ties in each corner top and bottom to secure frame to cover.
* 15cm skirt to base allowing secure ground coverage, including metal eyelets for pegs.
* 6 ground fixing pegs for added stability.
* Size: Height 164cm x width 89cm x depth 50cm.
* Full set of assembly instructions included.

In my opinion the greenhouse is a great buy and yes as always with self assembly there is a little bit of guess work involved and don't be too heavy handed! What do you expect for so little money!!

At the moment in my greenhouses I've got a whole variety of tomatoes, chillis and pepper plants growing really well. I also have several kinds of aubergene, courgette, peas and strawberries.

I'm a novice veggie grower but so far they are coming along really well. All the plants look very healthy and once they are too big for the pots I have a back up of larger pots to move them across. Fortunately my cousin has her own allotment and I have reguarly received for the past 2 months plug plants which have enabled me to start growing already and not having to wait for seeds to grow. I will however do that next year or late this year so I can then return the favour to her!!

Along my gardening journey I have picked up a few little useful ways of saving money and recycling materials. I've noticed plant pots can be quite expensive especially if your growing alot! Now as i've got horses I've got about several hundred (a slight exaggeration but thats what it seems!!) of water buckets, now I can only use one at a time with each horse so I decided last weekend to clear them all out and bring them home. My partner drilled holes in them (be careful as they can split being plastic) and I now have about 4 of them filled with ice gem lettuce, red onions, beetroot and radishes! The plants were a gift and the buckets were free! If you are wanting to use buckets to save money use globe varieties of vegetables not long root.

In B&Q builders buckets which are effectively the same as horse's buckets are 99p which is a darn sight cheaper than normal plant pots and they are pretty much exactly the same and the vegetables/ plants will grow exactly the same!

At the moment I'm finding alot of garden centres are selling plug plants at the moment and they tend to be quite expensive. Apparently because of the credit crunch people are turning to growing their own vegetables and fruit for a way of saving money. So in turn the garden centres are boosting their prices to make a maximum profit!

However I'm a long standing member of Ebay and I am a regular seller, so I decided to have a look at plug plants on their. You can get great bargains on Ebay for plug plants of all vegetables you could possibly ever want! A great tip is that most vegetable plug plant sellers on Ebay will normally always sell other types of veg so make sure you visit their shop, as generally buying multiple items will get you a discount in postage. The only downside is that they are transported normally via Royal Mail. The ones I have recieved so far (chillis, peppers, aubergenes) have been really well packaged and have been received very quickly. Just make sure you plant them out as soon as you get them!

So far my vegetable growing journey has been great and I'm really looking forward to having plenty of homegrown veggies this summer/ autumn. Even if you have lack of space or live in a flat, many vegetables can be easily grown on the windowsill or on a balcony. For those that do not have time for an allotment a little do it your self greenhouse goes a long way!!

Summary: A must buy for the novice veggie grower!