The great, good and not so good bits about growing your own dinner 2017

Dizzy_Ditzy

Welcome to all the newbies - the more the merrier!

Anyone looking for a spade and/or fork, Wilko have them for £2.50, and come with a five year guarantee

In other news, yesterday found me at a seed and potato fair lots of potatoes bought but there's one type I still need to get that I could get cheaper pretty much anywhere else for the amount that I want

unrecordings

Today I ate the last of my tomatoes - harvested mid November and kept in the pantry where they gradually ripened to a mid orange (good enough for me in January)

zafiro1984

Caught up with a few jobs, mainly to do with the chickens, so now I have time to start sowing. I'm going to use the utility room. I'm using an old plastic patio table so I can put my heat mat on it - I think I have some compost left from last year otherwise it's a trip to the garden centre

Chillies and aubergines first.

downshifted

I'd like to join in too please

We have taken up an allotment and started paying rent in early November - we have had them before but not for the last 7 years as we moved. It's a nice triangular plot with a bramley apple at the peak

The last occupant seems to have neglected it rather, and unfortunately since we took it over she has been back several times and removed plants (or even, in one case, broken a tree by trying to remove it and failing, then leaving us to dig it out) We hope the secretary has now had a word with her and she won't be back, but it does illustrate the difficulties of allotments if people do not behave reasonably. We thought it was ok for her to take stuff at first - after all she had planted it - but coming back in January and breaking the tree was ridiculous.

Anyway my dear husband has done a good job on clearing and digging and we have managed to buy some half price fruit bushes in the Wyevale sale which we will be putting in soon - now I'm off to have a peruse of the seed merchant sites. We want an asparagus bed, a couple of artichoke plants and the usual peas and beans as well squashes and lots of fruit. I'll follow all your adventures with interest

zafiro1984

You are very welcome Downshifted. You sound as if you are well under way with your allotment. It's usually quite quiet on here until people start sowing their seeds and then the thread moves at quite a pace.

A couple of us keep tabs on how much we save by growing our own - we use our usual supermarket to compare prices. It's been an eye opener for me to realise just how much you can save - that was definitely the 'adventure' for me last year.

Dizzy_Ditzy

This might be useful to you all post spotted on Allotment Life on Facebook :cool:

I've seen a post on Facebook where several people in different parts of the country have bought spades, shovels, forks and rakes for 20-25p each - this is in wilkinsons

Shovels have yellow handles and the others have brown wooden handles. The rakes in the pics are the leaf rake, triangle type, not the regular type. I've done a quick search on hot deals but nothing there.

I will be checking it out tomorrow. The spades, forks and rakes were £2.50 on Monday when I popped in to buy a spade

Dizzy_Ditzy

Anyone considering allotment homebrew this year? I got 60 bottles of wine out of last years fruit! Rhubarb, gooseberry, blackberries and grapes,mall grown by lil old me :j

zafiro1984

Yes to homebrew, only tried cider but it was a failure so I'm up for another go this year. As they say 'I've all the gear but no idea' - help

unrecordings

I'm on medication at the moment that precludes alcohol, so homebrew is out for me, but I did like to make flavoured spirits. My favourite was Beech Leaf Noyau - like cough medicine but with a lovely nutty taste. I made some Mint Vodka last year, that was erm interesting...

In other news I have my seed potatoes on order - Red Duke Of York, Shetland Black & Albert Bartlett Apache

Dizzy_Ditzy

zafiro1984 wrote: »

Yes to homebrew, only tried cider but it was a failure so I'm up for another go this year. As they say 'I've all the gear but no idea' - help

My cider was a complete disaster last year - it got contaminated with a cleaning wipe :eek::eek: think I'll stick to wine, I have a vague idea what I'm doing with that :rotfl: