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

CAFCGirl

Jojo_the_Tightfisted wrote: »

And it's still raining.

Do I get soaked and miffed at the mollusc population explosion, or do I stay inside with a cup of coffee with caramel syrup and two very, very grumpy cats who seem to think it's all my fault when they aren't trying to knock lumps out of each other?

Options 3 - send the cats out in the rain :rotfl:

Jazee

Morning all.

Last night we had the first courgette from the garden and it was delicious. Also took delivery of flower plug plants (nearly 700 of them) and the quality is fantastic, so I'll be mixing my raised beds to encourage polination.

Today, we have jobs to do inside, tomorrow I will pot the plug plants on and put my other courgette plants in their final spots/pots.

Clutterfree

Hi All,
Mind if I join you?
After having an allotment for 4 years, I recently moved and have a garden big enough for a veggie patch. :T

Hubby has just made me 3 beds with railway sleepers (4th still to do).

Only got strawberries in at the moment. Picked the first one yesterday because it was almost completely red and I've not netted them yet and the birds were not having my first strawberry of the season!
It's on my kitchen window sill just ripening off.

Still waiting to plant out my cucumbers but they're not looking very happy right now - think I sowed them too early.

Yesterday bought some runner bean plants from outside a house in the next village, 12p per plant. Will have to get a framework sorted and plant those out.

Need to get some lettuce sown outside too.
Feel I'm very behind this year because beds only just been built but next year I'll hopefully be better organised.

Have a good day x

Fruittea

Morning Everyone
Welcome Clutterfree - great to have you on board and lovely to hear you have enough room for veg growing at home. I'm sure your experience will help the thread.
Jazee I'm jealous of your courgette mine are still in pots as I had to re-sow. However I do have my first gherkins appearing in the greenhouse at the allotment. I can't believe you have 700 plants! Mind you when I look at all my packets of seeds I realise I have a bit of an addiction.
I should get all the squashes out and planted as they are wanting to go on - maybe next week.
I've been potting on my flowers and I'm quite pleased with them as I don't usually grow them myself.
So far at the gate sales have made £41 and I've done lots of swaps for different flowers.
Well done on the chives Zafiro - I did the same last year and broke them into 6 sections and put them in pots. Over winter them clumped up really well - I kept 2 and sold the other 4 at the gate for £1 each.
Not much gardening for me today but I've been pot washing and stacking away for next year.
Happy days.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

CAFCGirl wrote: »

Options 3 - send the cats out in the rain :rotfl:

I'd need prosthetic limbs if I tried that with these little gits, believe me - they can cling on like furry, spiky little limpets if they don't want to do something.

Finally had a brief period of sunshine this morning - it was another sleepless night, so had plenty of time to inspect the garden. Pulled up a couple of what looked like weeds that have appeared around the herbs and, because I've established that the courgettes are all No More, wandered off to the market for some cheapies.

Got there and realised the weeds were tenderstem purple broccoli seedlings coming up in record time at the front of the bed, obviously dropped in the process of putting the rest at the back by the wall. At least I only pulled up two before deciding to go out. :wall:


After the intial Doh :mad:, the nice man let me have two cherry toms (a black cherry and the ever faithful Gardeners' Delight), a tub of sweetcorn, some runner beans and a courgette for three quid. What a nice man. And because he's run the stall for about a million years - I can remember him doing it with his Mum when I was but a snotty nosed tot myself - I know he grows all the stuff from seed himself in his (very large) open garage/covered area for the van and trailer), so it should all be fine outside.


Then it started raining just as I walked back home. So they're all sitting outside on the staging, waiting for me to decide whether it's worth a punt putting them out tomorrow morning.

ETA: I could do with a little snooze now, but next door is having a loud party. Must be a kid's birthday. I've just heard somebody congratulate her on having such nice flowers growing on the top of the fence. And she's said thank you, rather than 'they're what my neighbour plants and works on to make the place look nice'.

CAFCGirl

Allotmenting went well yesterday,
I managed to dig over a large 1mx3m area where potatoes had been planted many moons ago - even got to dig up some fresh ones

The soil was lovely to dig in - shame the rest isnt like that!
McHubby had the strimmer out and finished chopping down weeds for me, and then he culled the overgrown old compost area which was reach quite some height.Much tidier looking and we'll get that covered to control it a bit more.
I have one strawberry which is starting to blush. The rest of the strawberry plants aren't doing much of anything so this year I'll cull them all over their season. I know some are at least 4 years old....

Today I hope to get up there again and move some cabbages over to the newly cleared beetroot bed. Not sure if I should risk putting my beans in, if they're more at risk in the garden from slugs than the plot.

Got an update on some plot gossip yesterday from the ever so helpful chap/plot neighbour after he gave me some pallet collars in exchange from some ciders. One of the other plot holders (who runs it for a charity) has apparently been offending everyone and seems to think because she's a charity plot she should be getting something from everyone for free/them doing work for her for nowt. Full blown row on site yesterday apparently! It doesn't sit well with my soul when stuff like that happens so I was rather sad to hear about it all

Jazee

Morning all. I'm going to pot on the plug flowers today, hoping that I have 700 suitable pots. If I run out, then I'll just plant some directly and hope any frosts have finished. The forecast is for really warm weather this week.

Will also put my three other courgette plants in big tubs, there is no more room in the beds and I haven't got the new ones yet.

Have a great day gardening folks.

debtfreeforlife

Hi all, mind if I join you? I'm brand new to greenfingered money-saving (and I've been relatively quiet on the rest of the forums), but I'm keen to learn more. At the moment I've got thyme, mint and basil seedlings growing, and they're currently sat on the balcony to get some wind as the thyme in particular looks a bit thin and weedy.

Fruittea

Hi Debtfreeforlife welcome to the thread - there's lots of helpful advice around when you need it.
Do you just grow in the balcony or do you have other space? You can save a fortune by growing your own but it's just as important to grow what you love to eat.
Tell us a bit about yourself.

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

Carefully teased the beans apart and put some in a big stone pot with the last canes, then three in an old rose tub by the drainpipe, running some twine from the hanging basket bracket to underneath the pot, just to see whether it'll work.

Stuck the corn seedlings in the woodland area, mainly because I don't have room anywhere else and I got them for free, anyhow (wouldn't have bought them in the first place as I didn't have room).

Chopped a few extra bramble shoots down, but I'm already running out of space, so I just potted the tomatoes and courgette on into 5 inch pots rather than try and find space now. Definitely needed to sink the toms down a couple of inches from their current height, though, as they were a bit wobbly and less than the thickness of a chopstick. Hopefully they'll get a bit stockier with this treatment.


Himself got sent out to get some sage for dinner today again. And he asked which one was Sage again. Appears that 'the one that's double the size it was last week and feels a bit like a lamb's ear' is good enough a description for him. It's two foot by two foot now, and the thyme has spread from barely three inches across to a good foot patch, now joining with the camomile, which is small football sized.

All the Broad Beans are starting to flower now, and I've already got some raspberries starting to form.


Just got to think about where to put things and get some more compost.

Oh, and I've remembered I got some more herb seeds. Coriander and Chives. I'll do them later.