Hello!

Hello there

My name is Jamie. I'm a 30 something y/o software developer based in South Yorkshire. Together with my partner we grow our own fruit, veg and cut flowers on our allotment plot (which won our city-wide competition last year ). We've been gardening for around about 5 or 6 years now with no prior experience so we still have loads to learn but hopefully we have some advice to share as well.

I mainly focus on the veg side of things where my other half focuses on the cut flowers. My favourite things to grow are tomatoes and chillies though I really struggle to rein in the number of varieties and plants that I grow. Hopefully this year I can be a little more careful in my choices - I'm choosing Gardener's Ecstacy and Millefleur as my main tomato varieties this year but no doubt a few other varieties will creep in

Not that I'm here to plug my own work but when I have time I am working on a (free) app to try and help growers manage their seed catalog and plan their year. Maybe I can share that another time if people are interested.

Anyway, I look forward to diving in to what the forum has to offer

 

Welcome @jay__0

 

Hi Jamie, that app sound a great idea as I am one of these idiots who carefully writes all my gardening info in a diary then in January throws the diary out.

 

How does this improve on or replace the information on the seed packet?

 

@NigelJ I would imagine that you can key in what seeds you have and perhaps your location and the app would tell you which seeds to sow each month? I would find that useful.

 

Hope you enjoy sharing your gardening exploits on the forum @jay__0 . Not particularly into Aps but if your new one would miraculously enlarge my growing space , I may change my mind
If you like a "proper" tomato, you may like to try Sungold - tasty and early to ripen. There are plenty more of course but over many years, I've found this variety to be reliable.
Most of the reputable seed suppliers already offer a great deal of information in their catalogues so unsure how you could improve on that.
Personal experience from growers on a forum such as this is always a good start I think. Best of luck with your garden

 

Sowing time is on the packet, I know my location and can easily allow a few weeks either way for the climate or just the weather that season.

 

I don't sow a lot of seeds as I have a small garden and I haven't been doing it for many years. Mainly tomatoes, a few annuals and possibly whatever seeds I've got free with magazines. I try to put the packets in order of sowing time, but they get muddled up, or I write it on a piece of paper and then lose it.
An app which would remind me of what I have that I could sow each month would be useful to me.

 

For me sowing will begin first week of Feb with Chilies on a heated pad, plus hardy annuals and some hardy perennials in greenhouse, followed by tomatoes late Feb/early March along with perennials that need some heat to get going and in the greenhouse some vegetables. In April - May it's cucumbers, squashes, half hardy annuals, runner beans and French beans. Already got Acer seed in the fridge to chill.

 

@NigelJ, you know what you are doing. Some of us don't.

 

Hello and welcome @jay__0

 

Thanks for the warm welcome everyone!

@NigelJ it's basically as @katecat58 says (although I dont do anything with location). You do just catalog the information that is on the seed packet but there's reminder functionality to let you what you need to sow in that month as well as an overall view for the year. There's some functionality for tracking growing progress, so you can look back to see when you started seeds the year before, when you planted out and when you harvested.

Since I'm always on my computer or have my phone available, I find it easier / more convenient to look through seeds this way than having to get our boxes out to do the yearly sort

Thanks! I've grown Sungold in the past, and they're one of my absolute favourites to just snack on straight from the plant! I don't think I grew them last year though because of experimenting with other varieties.

 

Welcome to GC jay__0