The all new good, bad and ugly of growing your own in 2020

Ellie78

Figured out what's been decimating my latest batch of radishes....   a blackbird has been eating them!!

Suffolk_lass

I can recommend cutting the heart out of lettuce and leaving the outside leaves. I have three crowns on the one and only cos lettuce that germinated (lots of other types but I know there was only one cos). I'm going to look carefully at squashes this morning after 12 hours of rain. I hope the 10-15cm courgettes are not marrows and the cucumbers are still mini...

carinjo

On friday harvested more runnerbeans.and handful broadbeans. Had 2 neighbours recommend i pick the runnerbeans a bit earlier, before they get too long. Got given bit of yellow long beans and yellow raspberries to taste from neighbours, was delish! Done a good weeding on 2 raised beds. Learned my lesson on planting too close, not thinning properly and not filling up the bed with enough soil. Harvested most of beetroot (2small rows), alternative leaf beet (2small rows) to give the rest room to breathe and hoed out the weeds and 2 small rows of turnips that did not get anywhere. That was the 2nd try from the same packet of seeds, doing another try with a different packet, in an autumn harvest bed getting ready this week.
Spend a lot of time clearing weeds from under 2 rows of tomatoes. Mr R reminded me to pinch out once i had 4 thrushes, so done that and Mr A said they could do with some air, so thinned out some branches. Looks a lot better now, hope it all helped!
Harvested huge leaves of chard, scary how quick they grow, since harvested some earlier in the week. Only got 5 plants! 
Mr A showed me his cannelinni beans bushes and 2 types of barlotti. Love how compact the cannelinni grows and only calf height, definately adding it to my list of having a go next year. 
Waiting for nicola second cropping potatoes, but Mr R and Mr A both suggested i hold onto the small charlottes i harvested and try chit them next year. Neither have bought seed potatoes in years!
Busy week ahead, so allotment will have to look after itself till thursday at least, might pop over just for a quick aphids spray monday.

DigForVictory

Anyone who has been missing Unrecordings may not want to read the news from Cranky40 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5930606/the-prepping-thread-a-newer-beginning/p496

However, our fellow forumite has alas left us.

Suffolk_lass

@carinjo I am also suffering from insufficient spacing between plants. Especially tomatoes in the greenhouse.

RobM99

This year I tried Shimmer tomatoes. Highly recommended! Quite sweet. And here are some.

RobM99

Oh and my proudest growy-thing - Groovy The Grapefruit. Started as a breakfast g'fruit pip, he's now 2' tall and wide. Leo the Lemon is same height but thinner, like a conifer-shape. Oscar the Orange lives with a friend as does Leonora the lemon. I have five other orange plants, about an inch tall now. What fun!

Kantankrus_Mare

DigForVictory said:

Anyone who has been missing Unrecordings may not want to read the news from Cranky40 https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5930606/the-prepping-thread-a-newer-beginning/p496

However, our fellow forumite has alas left us.

That is such sad news. Never grumbled and just tried to get on with life. Who really ever knows whats going on behind the keyboard. 

Suffolk_lass

@Kantankrus_Mare unrecordings had been living with stage four cancer with a brain tumour for at least two years, defying medical opinion. I was one of the people who PM'd him after a couple of weeks absence on here. Mrs un replied to all of us that PM'd over the weekend (never having been on the forums herself) to let us know what happened. It was clear that he was active in a number of threads, the messages of condolence and sympathy started. I sent Mrs un a link to the Old-Style prepping thread (the same as @-taff and @DigForVictory have posted on here) and I received a reply from her that said she had been reading through the messages, which brought great comfort, knowing he was loved and respected so much by his forum family. She added that he was on here so much as it was a bit of a life-line...like being down the pub he would have said, and over the last few days she has been reading through so many of his comments that he made and it has been like having him back. She does intend closing his account down but that won't be easy. 

Gone but still in our thoughts.

Suffolk_lass

Just picking and sharing with neighbours and friends at the moment. Ideally I would like to clear some of the raspberries that have finished fruiting before the autumn ones really get going. I've got far too many for the available space and I get bitten to bits every few days when I pick but I love the punnet we get every time.

I also need to get strawberry runners into little pots of compost with a staple until they root - I can see them raring to get going.