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

Suffolk_lass

londonlydia wrote: »

Thanks everyone for your warm welcome to this board!

I've now ordered the bits I need for fixing up my shed on the plot. Not cheap but better than buying a new shed!

I'm not sure I mentioned, but there is a very established cherry tree on the plot next to the shed. The site secretary said I'm lucky as there restrictions in putting in fruit trees now. However, she says I'll need to trim it, as it's so large (twice the height of my shed!). She said I should prune it in the early part of next year, but the advice online says I'm better off doing it early to mid summer. But that's harvesting season for cherries as I understand. What do peeps think here? Even though I'm personally not fond of cherries, I have friends who are, and I don't want to kill the tree! Also, do people put netting on it?

I just checked the RHS advice (in italics)

Sweet cherries are usually grown as small trees (‘open centred bush’ or ‘pyramid’), or else they are fan-trained against a wall or fence.

Sweet cherries fruit on one-year-old and older wood, so pruning needs to encourage a balance of older fruiting wood and younger replacement branches.

Cherries (and other stone fruit) should not be pruned during winter, to minimise the risk of infection by silver leaf or bacterial canker. Light formative pruning can be carried out in spring as the leaves start to develop, but the time to prune established trees is in early to mid-summer.

We pruned our apricot immediately after it fruited and it was fine (at that point). DH pruned our Victoria two weeks ago (post blossom) and I've been fretting about it since. We (some years after the pruning) lost our Apricot to bacterial canker (a fungal infection that affects stone-fruit trees). Very sad but we chopped it down and burned it in our log-burner to ensure no spread to the plum or gage trees nearby. We don't net the fruit but we are quite relaxed about sharing with a few birds.

If you want advice on pruning there is good advice on the RHS site for UK climate.

The advice from our local tree expert (who is on the RHS Committee no less) is by year:
1 remove any dead, dying or crossing branches
2 the next year, remove 1/3rd of the length of the outward facing branches and any inward facing growth on these branches
3 remove any branches left growing across the middle part of the tree and anything that sent up vertical vigorous new branches after last year

After that you can trim to shape, in following years, following the timing and shape guidance.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Feeling quite pleased with myself today.

Dinner consisted of chicken in a mango/chilli marinade, served upon a bed of freshly gathered salad leaves, spring onion snippings, thyme flowers, baby rainbow chard and fairy sized radishes.

Otherwise known as the remnants from thinning out.

smeeinnit

Feeling pleased with myself also today!

Not done much in the garden other than watering but as the weather looks like its improving from tomorrow I had a bit of a spend up at B&Kew....they are selling off overstock for peanuts and I bought a rhubarb, cucumber, sweet pepper and an orange cherry tomato for 50p each, all reduced from £4 each :j:j

I also bought a few trays of bedding plants for between 50p - £1 a tray.

Total bill should have been £40, actual bill £7.50 :T

Lots of garden time this week and next woohoo!

londonlydia

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

The advice from our local tree expert (who is on the RHS Committee no less) is by year:
1 remove any dead, dying or crossing branches
2 the next year, remove 1/3rd of the length of the outward facing branches and any inward facing growth on these branches
3 remove any branches left growing across the middle part of the tree and anything that sent up vertical vigorous new branches after last year

After that you can trim to shape, in following years, following the timing and shape guidance.

Great advice... Thank you so much!

zafiro1984

Spent a couple of hours on the plot

Planted out the mangetout, potted on the fennel, aubergines, broccoli, little gem, did some weeding, watered where needed.

The last batch of tomatoes hadn't germinated and I was unsure whether or not to start again or to buy some in. However, I decided to use some seedling that were in the utility room that had gone a bit leggy. I planted them deep so hopefully they will grow roots from the buried stem. If it works it will save me bit of money as well as time.

Dug up the garlic from the tunnel as the tops had died down. There should be enough to last the year as we don't use vast quantities. I'll freeze some of it. Also found a couple of new potatoes I'd missed yesterday.

Now back in the house - house work calls whilst I make dinner. Just going to update my veggie savings.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Weeding today - amazing how Goosegrass can appear almost overnight. isn't it?

Sowed more carrots, spring onions, lettuce, radish and beans, then, as I was watering them all in, I realised there was a Blackbird watching from the wall - he jumped onto the shed, chirping at me all the time, then came down and bounced all over the garden, retrieving various beasties, completely unafraid of me moving around.

He can come back.

Fruittea

Morning Everyone
A nice bright day here in Gloucestershire but I think we have rain to come tomorrow.
Zafiro sorry to hear about your tomatoes. Dropping them deep usually works well.
I had an email from Van Meuwen this morning - they are offering Sweet aperitiif tomatoes for 10 for 10p if you get stuck. You would have to pay postage on top of that- I think it's £3.95.
http://www.vanmeuwen.com/VMNE0914XZa?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=VMNE0914XZ%20tomato%20sweet%20aperitif%20for%20a%20penny%2011%2005%2017%20(1)&utm_content=&pid=24556561&email


My plot was looking good yesterday. All the brassicas are in and covered now. And I've started potting the tomatoes and cucumbers into their permanent pots - so everything will be out of the house by the weekend. And I've really run out of space until some of the potatoes come out. Some of the orientals are bolting a bit - so I'll have lots of stir fries and they are good just braised slightly. When I take one out of the square foot bed I just pop another seed in - so in principle I should keep the patch going throughout the year. Well that's the theory anyway.
I haven't put any squashes out yet - has anyone else? I'm still a bit nervous about the changeable weather.


That Black bird sounds lovely JoJo the birds seem to know who their friends are.
Only a celery and tomatoes bought from the supermarket this week. I bought a tomato selection box from Ocado which should have cost £2.49 - thought I'd do a tomato tasting with it and of course keep some seed from the best ones. I was a little disappoint with the selection they gave me and shot them off an email about it. They kindly refunded the money! So only 50p spent on veg this week and the 4 types I liked gave good seed so I'll see if they come true next year.

Suffolk_lass

Hooray! At last! My second sowing of melons and cucumbers (indoors, on top of my bug-zapper - so with bottom heat) have started to peep through (well two out of nine have). So far only one cucumber has germinated outside (in the unheated greenhouse). I expect it is more cucumbers as I particularly wanted the melons to get going (ogen and water), We have a system of arches across the beds ready to grow them as climbers so it would be typical for them to not grow this year!

Elsewhere everything is bone dry. Only french radishes doing anything in the salad-sink (industrial-sized butler sink) - so we might be eating lots of peppery leaves instead of lettuce soon.

The farmer is watering his potato crop behind us. I might ask him to lift the nozzle a bit so we get a bit of a water too :money:

CAFCGirl

Finally!

In a good enough place to re-pot my tomatoes, and cucumbers. Plus sown my sweetcorn seeds and given everything a good watering. Spent most of the day so far in the garden - mowing the lawn, weeding in the beds, yanking out the dead bits of lavendar and some aggressive trimming of the bay tree - garden smelt glorious!

Discovered I need some larger pots for potting things on though....

MissPop

Do you guys grow your cukes in a greenhouse/under cover? I have some Crystal Lemon cucumber seeds from last summer and am wondering whether to bother with them - I got one single fruit from one outdoor plant last year, not sure of the best conditions for it! The leaves ended up looking a bit... Powdery... Not sure if that's right or not :S