Going away for 6 weeks in summer. How can I preserve any veg plants?

Primrose

Yes Rosie. If your onions are starting to get seed heads, they won't grow any bigger so get them up now. They'll just develop thicker stalks if you leave them in the ground. Let them dry and use them up quickly as parts of the bulb (excluding any thick internal core) can still be used for flavouring. Despite regular watering, many of my onions started to bolt and go to see so I pulled them all up a week ago, chopped off half the stems and they're now drying under cover until the rest of the greenery drys off. . They were'nt very big either and I gather many onion growers have had the same problem this year so you're not alone. Just a bad year for onions I guess!

rosie383

Yyippee!!!!! We had rain last night/ early today for the first time in weeks.
I will be up to the lottie tomorrow first thing to pull up my onions.
Another question. My tomato plants in the garden are looking very healthy. Is it possible for me to dig them up and give them to friends rather than them just dying? Or would it just kill them off if I try lifting them?

rosie383

We are off tomorrow and I have organised as much as I can. My friend has been up to the allotment to see what needs done, where our hose is, etc.
My neighbours at home will water our veg over the fence any time they are out doing theirs.
I lifted some onions that were going to seed, and cooked them. Small but nice. And I lifted some of my early potatoes and have been feeding them to the family all week. Some were quite small, but the thought of coming home to find that I had lost the whole crop to blight or something, meant I wanted to at least get the taste of some of our veg.
Frustratingly we have loads of tomatoes at the green stage, just waiting to ripen as soon as we go away, but I know my friend will pick what she can and give away what she can't use.
I have picked loads of broad beans, so they are going to go in the freezer tonight, along with a couple of decent sized courgettes from the garden.
I'm expecting to come home to a number of monster courgettes/marrows!!!!!!!!
Thank you guys for all your advice. I will be lurking online after the first few weeks, but for now, have a nice summer and bumper crops.

rosie383

Just thought I would give you an update now that we are home and have a wee minute or 2! The holiday was nice, BTW, but soooo hot. Around 40C each day and 25-30C at night!!!!!!!
Some of the allotment survived. Unfortunately my friend who had the keys, ended up going away herself, and didn't go there for the 1st 5 weeks, but I don't think it made a huge difference due to the torrential rain the week before we came home......( we are in Luton).
The potatoes all survived. I lifted about 5kg before we went and gave them away, and just lifted the rest in the past couple of days as our neighbours lost all of theirs to either eelworm or wireworm or something. We lost about 6 potatoes, but harvested around 35kg in total. Not sure it was worth it financially, as we paid around £7.50 in total for our seed potatoes, and could buy 25kg in the farm shop for £4.50 anyway without all the many many hours of back-breaking work! But it is nice to get my hands in the soil, and know we are eating our own produce...... Just realised actually, that ours are organic, so maybe it was worth it after all. Have never bought organic spuds, but I'm sure they are quite a bit dearer.
The tomatoes survived in the lottie and garden too, but took quite a bit of time to disentangle them and get them up on canes, as they had all fallen over and were very heavy with fruit. Must make some green tomato chutney with all the ones I took off to thin them out.
All of the beans and courgettes were eaten by deer on the allotment, but my friends got 3 massive marrows from our garden, and we came home to another 2 the size of small babies!
Beetroot survived but the onions are not much bigger than golf balls.
I grew Baby Bear pumpkins this year, and we have flowers, but not a hint of a fruit on any of the 3 very healthy looking plants. Is there any chance of getting any this late? Or should I just take the plants out?
Thank you all for your advice before I went away....... I am so relieved to have something left after all the hard work.

valk_scot

I go away every summer for at least the whole of July.It's not ideal but it's do-able with a bit of forwards planning. Mostly I try to either plant early or plant late so that I get produce before going away, or just after. I don't do much watering anyway unless it's for transplants...this encourages the plants to put down very deep root systems and fend for themselves. My sister comes in and picks the soft fruit then either freezes it or turns it into jam....I get half.

Weeds? There's not much you can do apart from make sure you do a full and thourgh weeding the week before you go. And the same, as soon as you get back.