The even bigger and better and hopefully not lower bits of growing your own in 2022!

Kantankrus_Mare

@Suffolk_lass Can you share your process for making your own chopped tomatoes? I am going to have more tomatoes than ever (hopefully) this year and would love to make use of them when the season has finished.
We go on holiday for 10 days a week on Saturday so Im trying to get the plot ship shape and tidy before we go. Not the ideal time as the strawberries will be just arriving but my daughter is going to pick some for us and a fellow allotment neighbour has offered to water for us.

Suffolk_lass

Kantankrus_Mare said:

@Suffolk_lass Can you share your process for making your own chopped tomatoes? I am going to have more tomatoes than ever (hopefully) this year and would love to make use of them when the season has finished.
We go on holiday for 10 days a week on Saturday so Im trying to get the plot ship shape and tidy before we go. Not the ideal time as the strawberries will be just arriving but my daughter is going to pick some for us and a fellow allotment neighbour has offered to water for us.

@Kantankrus_Mare I can't take credit for this recipe! - I almost follow this recipe from Buon-a-ppetiti Grandma is hilarious and they are good recipes. I have tried one or two. The bit I don't do is the skin removal (life is too short) but I have started turning the jars upside down and covering them so they seal properly and cool slowly. I make about 30 jars. The screw-tops are better than the clip top jars for this and the jars the height of a 440g tin are the best for us (I bottle fruit in the taller ones).

bluesooz

carinjo - hope you are not too bruised after your fall.  

Pleased we've had some rain recently as all 6 water butts were empty and ground very dry - even if the thunderstorm did keep me awake 

Asparagus growing well, so most meals have been accompanied by a griddled or roast asparagus!

Have eaten my fist strawberry - just the one so far!- so have netted them against the birds.

Also netted the blueberries and a very small potted cherry tree - have lots of blueberries formed this year which is pleasing as i only had 3 last year

broad beans are ready to harvest and tops all cut off as they were covered on black fly

Toamtoes and peppers doing well in green house with first flowers appearing

have made frame for cucumber seedlings and have 3 cucumbers groing in greenhouse.

None of my french beans germinated (both in ground and greenhouse) so have had to buy new pack and sow again

Have taken down last of the purple sprouting broccoli plants - I leave some to flower as the bees love them, but they can't stay there too long as i need the space.  

Fosterdog

Has anyone else found that since the forum moved to this new style they get logged out every few days? I keep missing updates on threads I'm following because it logs me out and I don't realise for ages.

What's going well here so far, potatoes, first earlies, second earlies, and first lot of maincrop are all going nuts, they are in containers but look like they are trying to take over the whole garden. I'll put a late lot of maincrop in sometime in June to get my Christmas king edwards, most years they get a bit of frost damage but nothing too bad. Three of five apple trees doing well, all cherry and pear trees looking good. Garlic is growing well, lettuce is good, first batch of sweetcorn good, first sowing of peas doing well, and as usual my strawberries and raspberries are showstoppers.

Doing moderately well are my blueberries, first year of any fruit as only planted last year, not the bumper crop I hoped for but better than nothing, white onions are only okay, beetroot, cucumber, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers, two cucumbers and Brussels sprouts are growing but not amazingly compared to other years.

Doing badly I have my fig tree, it wasn't protected over winter and is in a pot so it's pretty far behind, plums for the third year in a row I have nothing between three trees, seed sown red onions have come to nothing, my runner beans are being devoured by something, they are in the same bed as my peas which are untouched, I have a second lot starting in pots and will wait until they are a fair bit bigger/stronger before putting them in ground. Nothing coming so far from my other four cucumbers, butternut squash, melon, and the first year ever not a single parsnip has germinated, I am going to pick up some new seeds, the pack I bought must have been badly stored. Also all 20 of my sunflowers have been eaten, maybe 2-3 will survive the damage but the rest are done for.

So far overall things are doing okay but definitely some surprising failures, lucky there's still time for me to get some new starts for most things not doing so well.

Suffolk_lass

Sounds great @Fosterdog. I wonder if you should check out the pollination cycle for your plum trees. It is likely that or incorrect pruning. RHS is good for that advice.

Re getting logged out, my android phone does it. I have yet to find the setting to stop this "I know best" management of my life. It also does not exit tabs in Samsung, repeatedly telling me I cannot have more than 99 open and the oldest has been closed (I would actually like to know more about this too; how to switch between them and how to force closure). No wonder my battery depletes so quickly 

Suffolk_lass

Suddenly everything in the greenhouse has gone nuts. And I am helping at a local Farm Show today. Nightmare!

Fosterdog

@Suffolk_lass you might be right with the pollination the trees are all now around 10 years old and produced pretty well at the start, although we never protected the fruit so the birds ate more than we got to harvest. Around 3-4 years ago one of the trees died and sent up new shoots from below the graft line so it's very possible that I now have two of the same variety left with the other not being actual plum root stock. I definitely had a Czar and a Victoria but can't remember if the third was one of those or something different. We were giving them a final chance this year and will dig out the dud and maybe add at least two more as pollinating partners over winter ready for next year.

I will look again at pruning too but don't think that's an issue, I've been pruning fruit trees for years and never had this problem before even with plums but I might have picked up some bad habits.

carinjo

According to fellow allotmenteers, my poor barlottiis got munched by the pigeons, not slugs! I got gifted some kind of bush bean variety, literally Mr P tipped an ice cream tub into my hands and then said: have some more. Mr T suggested i start them in pots. Planted more french beans, the first lot didn't germinate, think ms C planted them too deep. This time with halved water bottles as protection. 
The seedling pumpkin, butternut, courgette (2 kinds), marrow and honeydew squash all went into the ground.
The dwarf french beans all germinated and due to not getting a chance to weed the area, none got destroyed by pigeons! 
@Suffolk_lass my neighbour showed me his greenhouse and pollytunnel: tomatoes and cucumbers going crazy! 

Has anyone had a read through the recent G@rdener's W0r1d article on organic pest control? I would like to know if the garlic spray against slugs and snails has worked for anyone. 
This coming week is planting of cavolo nero, planting chard and spinach in final position, having another go at lettuce, more radish. Really don't know what i am doing wrong with lettuce. 4 types, 2 different spots on allotment and have the grand total of 1(!!!!) Rosso germinated. 

Suffolk_lass

Well, my back was rather sore after helping on the trade stand all afternoon so I deployed four small plastic stacking stools and I have spent the afternoon and evening weeding around the veg beds, while seated. Lots of lower back stretching, it feels much better now. We cleared about four paths and DH planted all the beans; runners, borlotti, blauhilde and dwarf beans teepee. The greenhouse looks a lot more organised and we are almost ready to plant out squashes and net things against pigeons and blackbirds. 

Thanks for the reminder @carinjo!

Noticed I have lost one dessert gooseberry and two others have almost no fruit on them. Time to explore what varieties to replace them with.

carinjo

Ms C and i spend an hour after work on plot. She done lots of weeding and i planted the kale seeds, spinach and chard seedlings. Also planted the dwarf type beans got gifted and put some cover over it to protect against birds hopefully this time. 
@Suffolk_lass, hope your back all better now