After much googling, forum posting, book reading and general conjecture from asking around, I found that the results were inconclusive. It seems there is too much of an outdoor bias in what has been written online, not catering for us urban gardeners who rely on indoor growing to grow plants wholly inappropriate to our climes.

The two plants started off in the same batch but, as you can see below, are very different in appearance now. The chili plant I moved to the spare room last autumn is much more well endowed in terms of growth, leaves and flowers. I am puzzled as to why this is – answers on a postcard please. As far as i can tell, the spare room is several degrees colder on average and has less light than the main room. Either way, one half of the pair got the pruning treatment today and they will both be kept in the spare room from now on. We will check back in a while to see the results but in the meantime, below is a pictorial history.

Late last summer, first fruit:

Last autumn, just before the winter:

5 minutes ago, pre-pruning. Spare room plant on left, main room on right:

Pruning. Just above the growth node, or so I’m told. Was obviously hoping for a secateurs for Christmas.

I went to a couple of garden centres this morning before the Six Nations to check out what deals for containers were on offer and I came away with a bush and a tree.

I’ve been asking around about the droopy lettuce seedlings on the GardenWeb and Irish Allotments forums. The general consensus seems to be that it is lack of light that is causing the dearth of enthusiasm. With sun on the balcony only until late afternoon, and their position indoors, perhaps lettuce germination has been a little premature. On the plus side, broccoli, chili and tomato all look good. (Admittedly I’ve little frame of reference here but at least they stand up on their own.)

In the meantime I thought it would be a good idea to take stock of what’s on offer container-wise in the nearby garden centres (doesn’t that sound interesting!). In short: Most containers were either too small, too ugly or too expensive but we got some around 25-30cm deep for 12-15 euro each in Woodie’s on the Naas rd.

In other more interesting news, I made two dubious purchases at Newlands Garden Centre:

Dubious purchase #1:
5 Raspberry bushes (or more accurately, a bunch of 5 canes/stumps which I am assured will mature into raspberry bushes)
Pros: Raspberries taste nice and are easy to grow.
Cons: Not many people on the the Internet recommend them for container growing. Even then, I’m not sure what to do with the other 4 (stumps on left in photo). Anyone who wants one is welcome to arrange to pick up before I find a home for them elsewhere.

Dubious purchase #2:
1 olive tree
Pros: Olives are nice and the tree is pretty (in the manliest sense of the word).
Con: Olive trees grow in countries where it is frequently 40 degrees Celsius. Our balcony hasn’t topped 10 degrees in a while. Indoors is warmer but even then the olive tree needs needs extensive light. We don’t even have enough light indoors to enable 5 cm seedlings to stand up straight (see above). The garden centre girl says I needed lemon (citrus?) compost. I ignored this and transplanted into multi-purpose compost. Someone please tell me if this is silly.

Anyway I guess this wouldn’t be fun if there were no risks so what’s the worst that can happen, right?

Taking stock of the seeds I planted 9 days ago, already there are varying degrees of progress.

I had a bit of a rookie scare with white mold (which I now know was in fact a fungus) on the lettuce seedlings but thanks to the folks over at the GardenWeb forums my concerns were allayed.

Here is a summary of the current seedling status:

Lettuce

Height: 7 cm
Variability: Significant deviation in angle, colour and height.
Characteristics: Floppy, unenthusiastic, probably jealous of the broccoli.

Broccoli

Height: 7 cm
Variability: Quite consistent.
Characteristics: Upright, sturdy, a good example to the lettuce.

Tomatoes (Harbinger & Cherry)

Height: 5 cm
Variability: Lots. Short, tall, floppy, open, closed. You name it.
Characteristics: Bit of a slow grower but with larger leaves than the others.

Chilies

Height: 0 cm
Variability: None.
Characteristics: Invisible. Maybe check back in a while.

The last chilies I grew had quite a long germination phase so I won’t write them off just yet. There are some others I bought from Lidl a few weeks ago that are a little further along, so for the moment – here’s some I made earlier (note hint of aforementioned white fungus):