The even newer good, bad and ugly of growing your own in 2021!

carinjo

Travelling on train for work this week i downloaded a garden podcast and caught up with my gardener's world emails. I almost choked on my coffee reading about nectar all year round. Under june what shall i read: borage, of course! Had a nice giggle. Luckily the carriage was pretty empty, so no funny looks. 

the_cross_rabbit

Netting altered as pigeons have figured out if they  sit on it they can weigh it down with their fat bodies and  peck at the tops of psb. Hopefully this will foil their dastardly plans. First lot of new raspberry plants in and a quarter of the strawberry bed emptied.
CRx

Suffolk_lass

Not outside for me but my seed order has not arrived. I popped online this morning and they are not taking new orders for the timebeing because of staff isolating. It says 14-21 days to get orders out. Mine was 6th Jan so I will just wait. The ground is too wet to put anything in so I will just have to plan and sit in the warm!!

the_cross_rabbit

Trip to Wilkoooos yesterday and came out £50 lighter but managed to get plenty of veg seeds, plus this year hoping to add wildflowers to the meadow, cut flowers for home and flowers to encourage wildlife to the plot. First lot of seed potatoes arrived, picking the rest up next week. Hoping to sow onions and chillis soon. Propagaters out and ready. 

The plot is very muddy at the moment, need some dry days between now and the weekend.
CRx

the_cross_rabbit

Onions and leeks sown and in heated propagators.
CRx

carinjo

@the_cross_rabbit congrats on your sowing! My local Wilkooooos was out of shallots last week  At the moment it is 10days of rain predicted. The grass have taken over the plot, again. Early days though!

Suffolk_lass

carinjo said:

@the_cross_rabbit congrats on your sowing! My local Wilkooooos was out of shallots last week  At the moment it is 10days of rain predicted. The grass have taken over the plot, again. Early days though!

Maybe see if you've got some cardboard you could cover it with, weighted down with a few bricks or rocks to stop the unwanted things growing? We use old carpet on ours. Same here btw - far too wet

carinjo

@Suffolk_lass i never got around to do that end of last season (the carpet is hiding the compost from being nicked) Luckily a couple of beds not too bad and the manure helped too. Since i decided to change the layout of the front plot, just going to do a bed at a time and leave grass paths, since that seems to help a bit against weeds.
I read that it is best to suppress grass/weeds during the growing season, so once i can work the soil a bit, i'll do some covering up for spring and just open it up once ready to plant. *fingers crossed*

Can you believe it, a gloriously sunny day here today! 

Suffolk_lass

Our carpet pieces stop the early nettles (two owners ago this was a chicken farm so nettles and bind-weed are prolific) the weed roots came to the surface too and the nice white roots are easy to remove (until they snap - bindweed roots really do dig for Australia!) - oh and mouse nests. I always feel a bit guilty seeing them scurry away when we lift the carpets off. 

Oldstylethriftylady

Hello all, can I join? I don’t have an allotment and only a small garden but hoping to utilize both my sisters garden and my parents to grow some stuff this year. I have no idea what I’m doing but planted some garlic recently so hope that’s going to grow and have been looking at my 1940s housekeeping books for what to grow ect.

I’m hoping to grow tomatoes and um that’s about it at the moment, need to have a look at what we eat and make a list 🙂