Guinea Gardeners: Growing for Piggies

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Just thought i'd share with you what i've got growing in my garden, all in pots too as i have no lawn or flowerbeds!
I am also the same as you lot no gardening experience at all, just winging it really!

Lettuce
swiss chard
broccoli
french beans
garden peas
herb garden with practically every herb
carrots
pumpkin :{ (just to see if they would grow!) dont even know if the guineas or rabbit can have or would eat them!
landcress
strawberries
tomatoes lots of varieties
sweetcorn

Oh and i planted the barley grass a couple of days ago and its starting to grow already,.

the piggies eat the lettuce and herbs now but i cant wait til everything else grows.
I'll save a bit on my weekly veggies bill.
I actually do enjoy growing it for my little piggles tho! x)
 
I think they will eat pumpkin and the skin too :) They eat butternutsquash and it's pretty similar.
 
Wow, these pots are looking so good - the grass and Joanne's stuff. Nice to see there are a few of us just winging it, between us we should do ok!

I wondered why one pot of my basil still hasn't sprouted after all the others have.
I discovered today, it's in with one of the french beans plants. rolleyes

Dill isn't looking too good, hope I can rescue it! Coriander is doing well though, will need to transfer it to a deep pot of some sort soon.

Two trays of grass were doing great, until I let Dexter and his girls at it. Now it looks rather stubbly. :))
 
I'm so excited - I finally got round to 'sowing the seeds of love' at the weekend and now have:

Courgettes
Toms
French beans
Parsley
Basil
Carrots
Pick and come again lettuce
Rocket (for me!)

My courgettes are already starting to appear (in my airing cupboard!) - I'm so childishly excited by it all!

Sophie
x
 
Wow, they grow fast!

I've got a raised bed type of setup in the garden now with lettuces, carrots, peppers and cucumbers, and a mini greenhouse as my French Beans are big enough to live outside.

The dill was a goner unfortunately, and I think the coriander is going the same way, I suspect I need to sow the coriander in a deep container at the start next time instead of starting them off in a tray.
 
I've been reading through nearly all of the pages to this thread and think you've all done really well with your crops, despite a few who have lost a few, that doesn't matter, as you can still try again.

This is all new to me. I am progressing quite well with my tomato plants. These were not intended for my piggie, but for us at home, although Maisy does have 2 cherry tomatoes a week. ;)


Not sure altogether the types of herbs etc that piggies can have daily. I've read so many threads, but am a bit confused.

Also, the green houses that a few have mentioned are really worth their money. I bought a walk in one this week for £20 from our local B&M store. Definately worth investing.

I am not sure on which type of GRASS seed to buy, would anyone be able to advise please? I'm amazed at those who have succeeded with the grass, it really looks lovely.
 
I made this in the weekend,
P1000680.jpg

I thought it might be an idea for the avid gardeners that have very limited space, like me! I got the idea from the 'instructables' website. Their herb garden was made from a shoe holder but I didn't have one of these handy so I just made it up and sewed an old tarpaulin together. The Megazorb bags would be perfect for this as well, you would just have to line the pockets with something dark to protect the roots.
http://www.instructables.com/id/VERTICAL-VEGETABLES-quotGrow-upquot-in-a-smal/

Sancho asks...so...where are all the veg then?
P1000690.jpg
 
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Frits, that is a fab idea, I love it. You've done a brill job of the sewing too. Love to see how they come on. :)

Sarah, glad to hear your spinach and parsley are growing too. Well done.

I had a bit of a disaster on saturday, when we came home from town, I opened the back door to let our dog out for a wee and my walk in green house (from B&M) ;) had blown over and all my tomato plants that I'd sown in Feb had fallen and became uprooted. :( Managed to salvage about 11 (YES 11, went a bit mad due to lack of gardening knowledge LOL), and had to throw about 4. Nevermind.

Am so amazed with everyone's efforts on this thread, very encouraging and inspiring for me indeed.
 
A cat/fox/squirrel dug up the entire contents of my carrot and radish container last week, I had to replant everything all over. It was because I had made no protection for my soil from these 'diggers'. This time around I put a grid cover that I made out of twigs over the soil and so far it's been left undisturbed. I'd read about cats digging veg gardens/containers up as well but I (stupidly) didn't think it would happen to me. You live and learn, and I have learned gardening is one of those things where you should literally hang off the advice of others! :))
 
Yes i lost alot of stuff to pests when i tried growing stuff last year, my salad leaves all kept getting eaten by those pesky caterpillars grrrr

My outdoor herbs also got eaten by soemthing ?/ and even my indoor herbs got attacked by greenfly mallethead

I haven't botherd this year due to last years efforts being such a let down :(
But i have decided to grow some flowers to make the garden patio look nice and pretty (All in tubs) but not for the piggies unfortunatly :(
 
My sister and i used to grow wheat for our rabbit and guinea pig when we were little
We used to grow it in a big pot it was really easy and they loved it
:)
 
Monkeynutz said:
Frits, that is a fab idea, I love it. You've done a brill job of the sewing too. Love to see how they come on. :)

Sarah, glad to hear your spinach and parsley are growing too. Well done.

I had a bit of a disaster on saturday, when we came home from town, I opened the back door to let our dog out for a wee and my walk in green house (from B&M) ;) had blown over and all my tomato plants that I'd sown in Feb had fallen and became uprooted. :( Managed to salvage about 11 (YES 11, went a bit mad due to lack of gardening knowledge LOL), and had to throw about 4. Nevermind.

Am so amazed with everyone's efforts on this thread, very encouraging and inspiring for me indeed.
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When you start out gardening you always think it's a good idea to have a few back ups in case things go wrong. That's precisely how I ended up with 17 Echinacea plants. I know, 17...I don't even know where to plant them all. I hope the rest of the toms do well. In my opinion there are never too many tomatoes, if you can't eat them all they're so easy to preserve, in jars or as cooked sauce in the freezer. :)
 
My lovely barley grass is long and lush and green... and do you know what? My little ******** won't eat it! :x

They ate the first handful, refused the second... and when I tried putting the tray in Flumpet just pulled it up by the roots. :( (And looked like she thought she was very clever). I've given the second tray to my friend to see if his pigs are any more appreciative.

Ho hum, off to buy some normal grass seed now.
 
Naughty guineas! Well normal grass will be a hit for sure, it's probably a bit like how kids like white, not brown bread!
 
Oh only just found this thread!

I love gardening, both flower and edible variety!:)) I am lucky enough to have a greenhouse so at the moment I have lots of different bedding plants growing for my containers/hanging baskets and also several pepper plants, tomato plants, a cucumber, grass for the piggies, a large pot of cut and come again lettuce and a large pot of carrots. On my utility window cill I have got about 4 pots of flat leave parsley, 4 pots of basil and 3 pots of corriander - all of which will hopefully move out into the greenhouse once my containers are potted up!

We are in the course of putting up a new piggy shed and will be incorporating a couple of raised beds - again for veggies/salad crops - will post some pics once it's all in place, hopefully in a couple of weeks time.:)
 
OK, here are my attempts!

Courgettes - these ones were started off in the airing cupboard!
IMG_0690.jpg


Tomatoes
IMG_0691.jpg


Courgettes (left), Beans (right) - these courgettes were grown on windowsill
IMG_0692.jpg


Um.. more beans?
IMG_0694.jpg


Rocket:
IMG_0695.jpg


Mixed lettuce:
IMG_0696.jpg


Basil (can you see what it is yet?!)
IMG_0693.jpg


And then I cheated and bought a mixed tray of herbs from the garden centre
IMG_0697.jpg


So far, so good!

Sophie
x
 
My cucumber plants have died! And the birds like my purple sprouting brocolli.

Everything else doing well though.
 
flips said:
My lovely barley grass is long and lush and green... and do you know what? My little ******** won't eat it! :x

They ate the first handful, refused the second... and when I tried putting the tray in Flumpet just pulled it up by the roots. :(
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Oh no! What a shame! Mine have had a couple of small helpings and seem to love it. I picked a bit and gave it to them in the run and they both ate all the barley grass before tucking back into the grass on the ground. At least it's not expensive so you haven't wasted too much money :)
 
missy said:
Oh no! What a shame! Mine have had a couple of small helpings and seem to love it. I picked a bit and gave it to them in the run and they both ate all the barley grass before tucking back into the grass on the ground. At least it's not expensive so you haven't wasted too much money :)
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:)) I know. You'd think a guinea pig wouldn't turn their nose up at grass.

On the plus side I gave the second tray to a friend and it looks like his pigs love it. :)
 
My parsley looks like it's going to die because of my cat using the pot as a toilet! So I just washed the parsley and gave it to the pigs before it all died :(
 
last year me and my mum grew curly kale, the gps loved it! this year they are in the coldframe thingy until theyre bigger and when you cut some off it grows back really fast!
 
Is kale easy to grow (for those of us who are novices!)?

My lettuces outside are doing well, sown on 1 May and looking good so far, will get pics to post. The dog dug up my cucumbers despite the net covering them, which I'm a bit annoyed about, but everything else was untouched. First signs of a carrot but nothing from the peppers yet.

Unfortunately my French Beans are not looking good. They were sown on 20 April, so a month ago now, and moved outside into a small "greenhouse" a couple of weeks back. They had been doing fine until the twins decided to "pick" them. More than a little annoyed at them about that, especially after they also ripped the greenhouse cover. :x
 
Kale is really easy to grow, it's like a weed! It's got different names, I think it's called chard in the US and silverbeet in NZ but it's essentially the same plant. I love it too, especially the pretty rainbow variety that has red, orange, yellow and white stalks :). I think it's like spinach though, high in oxalic acid, so it's not an everyday veggie.

My grass is looking good, but there's so much of it outside so I might just give it to them and plant parsley instead. We all love parsley!
 
My lettuces are growing really fast now! And there are other things growing, cress and stuff, I forget what I planted! I know there was more lettuce, cress, and two other things!
 
I've now planted up the spinach seedlings into washing up bowls, for easy indoor growing. I intend to take a few leaves from the outside each time and harvest the spinach all the way through the summer. There were one or two tiny seedlings left over, I planted a few more seeds than I needed to just in case, so I gave them to the piggies - you should have seen their faces; what's this.....suspicious.....small tastes....want more now! I wish I'd thought to get it on camera!
 
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