- Joined
- Jul 23, 2013
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When I was a child I was forced to garden. OK, so forced is maybe too strong a word, but I was certainly required to do it at inconvenient times, like during the day and at weekends. Anyway, as a teenager I vowed never to set foot in a garden again, apart from maybe to cover it in tarmac or gravel. Over the years though... Well, you learn that you need more than a computer just to relax (seriously!) and gardening is perfect for letting your mind wash clean. Yoga for the soul and you get some good produce to boot, can Yoga do that for you? I doubt it!
So what am I rambling on about? I was trying to come up with some pithy introduction to having a hot-box, but I appear to have failed miserably. Ho-hum.
So, if you read my last post "How it all began (sighs)", and I really recommend you should, then you will know that my own gardening career started with a couple of cold boxes on the balcony (I live on the fourth floor). That was great for the first few seasons, but I soon wanted something more, I craved heat! That was when I bought my first soil-heating kit. In one bold step I had graduated from a cold frame to a hot box - let the joyous times commence!
Avocados, that was the reason actually, avocados and lemons (although even I couldn't figure out how to squeeze a lemon tree into a cold box). My wife loves avocados, you can buy them all year around now, but most of the time they are unripe and, in England at least, it is not easy to force them to ripen. So I planted two avocado bushes in large tubs I had been using for potatoes and carrots.
Actually it was fun taking out the stones, cleaning them up and then rooting them in glasses of water on the window-sill. Actually it was almost like waiting for a child to be born (without any of the pain, obviously) as I watched first the tap-root and then the leaves begin to develop. Scratch that, it wasn't that simple! Six Avocado stones later and I got one to sprout and then another four before the next one came along, but hey, this is my story so roll with me, people!
So, into a pretty terracotta pot and into my new hot-box with in-soil heating and a halogen lamp for additional light. Everything a modern thrill-seeking Avocado plant could possibly requre. Then, I thought I would check on the web to see if I was doing OK. That was a mistake. Seven years before it fruits! OMG, people, seven years? You have got to be kidding. I don't have that much time to wait for guacamole!
In the end I gave both plants to my mother. She happily reported fruit the next year which made me extremely unhappy, you understand, but it was inedible so I was happy once more! As for the guacamole, well let's just say that Mexican is off the menu.
So what am I rambling on about? I was trying to come up with some pithy introduction to having a hot-box, but I appear to have failed miserably. Ho-hum.
So, if you read my last post "How it all began (sighs)", and I really recommend you should, then you will know that my own gardening career started with a couple of cold boxes on the balcony (I live on the fourth floor). That was great for the first few seasons, but I soon wanted something more, I craved heat! That was when I bought my first soil-heating kit. In one bold step I had graduated from a cold frame to a hot box - let the joyous times commence!
Avocados, that was the reason actually, avocados and lemons (although even I couldn't figure out how to squeeze a lemon tree into a cold box). My wife loves avocados, you can buy them all year around now, but most of the time they are unripe and, in England at least, it is not easy to force them to ripen. So I planted two avocado bushes in large tubs I had been using for potatoes and carrots.
Actually it was fun taking out the stones, cleaning them up and then rooting them in glasses of water on the window-sill. Actually it was almost like waiting for a child to be born (without any of the pain, obviously) as I watched first the tap-root and then the leaves begin to develop. Scratch that, it wasn't that simple! Six Avocado stones later and I got one to sprout and then another four before the next one came along, but hey, this is my story so roll with me, people!
So, into a pretty terracotta pot and into my new hot-box with in-soil heating and a halogen lamp for additional light. Everything a modern thrill-seeking Avocado plant could possibly requre. Then, I thought I would check on the web to see if I was doing OK. That was a mistake. Seven years before it fruits! OMG, people, seven years? You have got to be kidding. I don't have that much time to wait for guacamole!
In the end I gave both plants to my mother. She happily reported fruit the next year which made me extremely unhappy, you understand, but it was inedible so I was happy once more! As for the guacamole, well let's just say that Mexican is off the menu.
