The ups and downs and ins and outs of growing your own, 2018

Dizzy_Ditzy

Nothing much to report this week - plums have been crumbled and stewed, there are some apple pies in the oven as I type, sweetcorn ready for picking and beetroot needing cooking and pickling.

The last three beds of potatoes at Plot A have been pulled up - one lot was pretty rubbish but edible and the others were pretty good so that's us sorted for potatoes for a good few months

Dizzy_Ditzy

PS the Wilko seed sale appears to have started :j

Kantankrus_Mare

Dizzy_Ditzy wrote: »

PS the Wilko seed sale appears to have started :j

Have been to my local Wilko this afternoon and though they didnt have a box full of seeds that I have seen before massively reduced, all the seeds in the gardening aisle were half marked price

Instead of buying willy nilly like I often do, I checked all my seeds at home and the allotment, throwing out quite a few that were out of date and making note of what else i needed.

Got loads of seeds, red and white onion sets, some daff bulbs, gladioli bulbs, and crocuses for just over £15 :T My mam had treat me to a tenner as she had a premium bond win so all in all cost me a fiver or so. I'm happy with that! :T

Bogged down with tomatoes. Made lots of pizza sauce a few weeks ago so wanted to try something different. Have made roasted tomato soup and rather pleased with the result! Used large tomatoes but I guess I can use cherries in the same way?

Had a sweetcorn off the plot for lunch with a bit of homemade chilli jam smeared all over it. Beautiful.

Only thing that I dont like about turning all the produce into something is the amount of washing up it creates. I dont have a dishwasher so seem to be forever washing up. :cool:

My next job is blackberry cordial. Have put 2 pound in the freezer ready for wine making when the elderberries are ready as well.

Suffolk_lass

Dizzy_Ditzy wrote: »

PS the Wilko seed sale appears to have started :j

Ooh thanks for that nudge!

Jazee

Morning all. I need to check my seed stocks too then.


Spent quite a chunk of the weekend cleaning out the greenhouse and harvesting tomatoes. If I get time today I may redo DH's hanging baskets ready for autumn.

unrecordings

Just pulled up the last of my Red Duke Of York potatoes. They were in a not very raised bed just about 8" above boulder clay but they worked. Getting them out of the ground was murder though. Back to proper raised beds for next year I think. Also picked a big tub of tomatoes, and found a pecked damson - which I suppose saves me picking one to check if they're ripe yet...

unrecordings

...and the damsons aren't ripe yet. However I just picked a big tub of rosehips - the first proper picking from this plant. Folklore says you should pick them after the first frost, but that just softens the fruit - we've got a freezer for that (and some were starting to go black - so it was now or next year)

zafiro1984

I've not been on the plot much for a few days due to having to stand in for folk on holiday and having to do totally unrelated gardening jobs.

Today - just about managed to water the greenhouse before all my Autumn seedlings died. Not much to report except that I've been picking everything I possibly can and freezing everything so as not to waste it. Discovered two more melons ripening under the leaves so put a tile under each one. Tomatoes have been a bit of a disappointment, not many on each plant. I used 'Crimson Crush' as we have blight here, either I need to plant double the amount I grow or try Ferline next year.

Today's bucket full of items were, Mangetout, french and runner beans, courgettes, gherkins, cucs, aubergines, tomatoes, sweetcorn, peppers, basil, baby turnips. I've frozen what we are not going to use over the next couple of days.

Thanks for the heads up on seeds, I think I need to go through what I already have before i buy anything else.

The first of the Autumn/2019 catalogues arrived today. DT Brown. I read it of course but it felt rather strange a bit like advertising for Christmas in the summer. Talking of Christmas we collected the turkey poults last Friday. Bronze and Norfolk Blacks, I let them out for the first time a couple of days ago as it wasn't raining, it's great to see them having freedom and trying to fly but at the moment they are smaller than the vegetation so its quite funny and time wasting to watch their antics.

stoozie1

threw some dodgy potatoes on the compost and now have 7 x 3 inch plants growing. As it's so late in the year, shall I just recompost these, or is there any point persevering with them? RHS site seems to suggest to only plant potatoes in April.

edited to add: Thompson and morgan think it's a method to have potatoes in 12 weeks time, so I'll persevere sorry, as you were!

zafiro1984

stoozie1 wrote: »

threw some dodgy potatoes on the compost and now have 7 x 3 inch plants growing. As it's so late in the year, shall I just recompost these, or is there any point persevering with them? RHS site seems to suggest to only plant potatoes in April.

edited to add: Thompson and morgan think it's a method to have potatoes in 12 weeks time, so I'll persevere sorry, as you were!

i did exactly the same a couple of months ago, A couple of days ago the plants now growing, looked very healthy so I pulled a couple up and there were several small potatoes attached - enough for a couple of meals for the two of us, I just looked on them as a bonus.

I've pulled up quite a lot of the summer plants now as I need space for the winter ones. The beds I don't use will have muck/compost on them and covered. I've still got all my main potatoes to harvest over he next couple of months, leeks are doing well, carrots Ok but I wont have enough to take me through the winter and we're still enjoying the sweetcorn.

I know I'm lucky in having a polytunnel so I'll spend the next few weeks sowing and planting out for the winter and hoping that bird flu doesn't strike this year because if it does and we have to keep our birds in I was going to use the tunnel as there is oodles of space for them to run around far more than in their houses but they would clear the tunnel of vegetation in 24hrs which would mean trips to the supermarket for veggies