veg growing Newbies- Feb 2010! lets learn together!

katholicos

Hi all, i;ve a lot of catching up to do in the forum i see :-)

I've been away for the weekend and got home this evening to find that I had a couple of pound in weight of mangetout to pick and also 5 courgettes, 2 x turnips, 1 patty pan squash and a handful of strawbs.

The mangetout and courgettes are now in my dehydrator as i have no room in the freezer. We did a bit of foraging yesterday and managed to bring home 4lbs of blackberries that we managed to pick. Some were eaten but the remaining 3lb 10oz's have gone in a tub in the freezer alongside the 2lb and 10oz's (i like to be precise! LOL Or am i just plain anal?) of strawberries that i have been gathering in from the garden. I'll be making strawb jam and blackberry jam in the autumn, if not before.

This evening i had a 'furtle' in a couple of potato sacks and found potatoes in them both so i am hoping to harvest them properly tomorrow and they will then be dehydrated also. I was worried i would get back and find that blight had struck as i had a few Blight Watch txts while i was away...thankfully everything is ok at this point.

My french beans are coming along, they are just beginning to go past the mangetout phase and are beginning to lengthen. I think my strawbs are pretty much at their end of fruition this year, though i may get another handful off them over the next week or so. My aubergines are doing !!!!!! all, my cukes have no cucumbers on them, one of my pepers is turnout out to be a chilli plant.

I bought 2 identical looking plants from b and q when they was about 8 inches tall....one of them has green peppers growing on it and the other has little chilli type fruit growing from it - though both came with labels which red 'Sweet Red Pepper'. No matter.

My toms are all still green, the slugs have been at a few of my baby cauliflowers,lots of my patty pan squash are rotting. It seems like if you don;t catch them just as they start turning ripe for the eating they deteriate very quickly. Anyone else had that experience. I've had to chuck 2 away this evening, they were brown inside :-(

Anyway, hope you are all doing okay and that you are all enjoying your garens, allotments, balcony growing etc.

katholicos

Please forgive typo's. My head's not working properly at the moment.

lolly5648

Excuse my ignorance but what is a dehydrator?

lovelife_3

lolly5648 wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance but what is a dehydrator?

Yeah i've been wondering about that too:) sounds interesting

katholicos

lolly5648 wrote: »

Excuse my ignorance but what is a dehydrator?

Hi Lolly, dehydrating food offers another means of long term food storage. Mine is an excalibur. Click this link for more info.

wssla00

Hey everyone! Well today on my perusal I have found so many beans on the pods that should be ready this week. Also a little surprise. When I moved my strawberries after they had finished fruiting I cut back the leaves. Well thus seems to have spurred them on and they all now have more flowers on! Seems I might get another harvest out of them!

I have loads of seeds to sow today so it should keep me busy! Have a good day everyone!

soullessfire

I got some 12" x 12" x 12" pots from the pound shop ages ago. been planting beetroot in those either 9 or 12 to a pot. In the morrisons flower buckets I've only sown 3.

loucroft

Great post!

I'm growing pepper and chilli in my conservatory, chilli is ok but the peppers started dropping off, booo - never had much luck growing those. I have some scotch bonnets but they're growing nicely but VERY slowly!

However, my allotment is looking good. Problem, I'm going away for 2 weeks soon, do I ask around to see if anyone can switch on my sprinklers if its dry?

kimmee

loucroft wrote: »

Great post!

I'm growing pepper and chilli in my conservatory, chilli is ok but the peppers started dropping off, booo - never had much luck growing those. I have some scotch bonnets but they're growing nicely but VERY slowly!

However, my allotment is looking good. Problem, I'm going away for 2 weeks soon, do I ask around to see if anyone can switch on my sprinklers if its dry?

I was told (on here) that the reason my peppers dropped off last year was because they weren't pollinated, I was also growing them in my conservatory. This year I've put them out in the garden and although they were slower to grow they have produced lots of fruit with anything dropping off - the now just have to ripen.

As for your allotment, if it's dry I would certainly ask someone to water from time to time. I'm growing most things in pots but I was away for 2 1/2 weeks and although my DS2 was instructed to water everything, he didn't do it as much as I'd asked and a lot of stuff died or needed a lot of TLC and even the stuff that was growing in the ground looks quite sorry for itself.

Hope that helps

Mrs_Veg_Plot

Hi Everyone hope the gardening is going well. I'm harvesting courgettes, spinach, salad leaves, spring onions and various beans on a daily basis. First two cucumbers are nearly ready to be harvested and I've got four marble sized melons on the plant although they might not do much due to lack of sunshine. At long last the various tomatoes I'm growing are starting to go a pinky red. Not long before the whole salad will be straight out of the garden.

I have planted some winter lettuce seeds which came up in three days. They are already about 2.5inches but look very spindly. I,ve never grown letttuce before (just salad leaves) is this what is supposed to happen?

The aubergine plants are really healthy with lots of flowers but no fruits. Should I be pollinating them myself?

Thanks