The ups, the downs and the insides out of growing your own in 2024!

Suffolk_lass

Ooh, Gaelic festivals! you are putting me to shame @alicef. I am still processing seeds I have harvested from my garden and have many paper bags of nearly dry seeds hanging about.

I STILL have not sorted out Strawberry bed, the garlic I need to plant, the onion sets or the bulbs. It will all have to wait two weeks and one day I think, until after my next exam that I am ill-prepared for.

KajiKita

Suffolk_lass said:

Ooh, Gaelic festivals! you are putting me to shame @alicef. I am still processing seeds I have harvested from my garden and have many paper bags of nearly dry seeds hanging about.

I STILL have not sorted out Strawberry bed, the garlic I need to plant, the onion sets or the bulbs. It will all have to wait two weeks and one day I think, until after my next exam that I am ill-prepared for.

I’m about the same … 😉😊
Good luck with the exam 😊

KK

droopsnoot

I think this weekend I'll get rid of the final tomato plants, after picking the green tomatoes from them. They haven't shown any sign of turning red in the last few weeks, and I doubt that'll change now. I'll shove them in the dish with the new ones and see if that helps, but it didn't last year and I seem to recall frying them at some point, just to get rid. Hope for better next year. I suspect I'm over-watering - when I've chucked the previous ones out, the soil is very wet. I'd have bought a soil moisture gauge from Lidl last time I was in but there was no sign of a price on them - I don't want another gadget to have to put batteries in, but I'd have had it as an impulse if it was cheap enough.

Likewise for the chilli plants, I've a few with some on but none of them seem "ready". I did bring them inside for a while, but there was a slug hiding in the soil in one of them and it escaped, so they're out in the greenhouse again.

Suffolk_lass

I'm ripening my green tomatoes in a plastic meat tray on the window in close proximity to the blue light of the bug zapper. I have no idea if the latter is relevant but they are ripening surprisingly quickly

alicef

Suffolk_lass said:

Ooh, Gaelic festivals! you are putting me to shame @alicef. I am still processing seeds I have harvested from my garden and have many paper bags of nearly dry seeds hanging about.

@Suffolk_lass Winter solstice next - it's just party after party.   I collect and sow now; otherwise my seed ends up in an envelope and stays there, though in a recent chat with a cut flower farmer, she told me she has had great results from 10 year old seed - so perhaps all is not lost for my stash.  Cut flower beds - going to nail it next year .... (hmmm).  

All the very best with the exam!

@droopsnoot Quite a pile of my green tomatoes went on the compost heap.  I haven't had slugs indoors yet but the shield bugs love the sunflowers, so I always have to relocate a number of those back outdoors if I cut a bunch.   

alicef

Last grass cut of the orchard for 2024 done by the OH. I ran the mower around the areas where we had sown the yellow rattle earlier this year. Tagged up orchard tree limbs that will be lopped off, (canopy raising plus removal of anything broken); ditto on shelter-belt trees the OH will pollard – this will give us a bit of wood we can season, plus I want to extend the ‘dead hedge’, (for the hops), so any brash left over from logging will be used for that. More leaves raked and added to the leaf mould pile, however the OH neatly situated the bay under one of the oak trees. With luck, it may turn out to be a self filling site. Lugged out a number of ancient hay bales and mulched the area to the side of the polytunnel. Cut back any asparagus fronds that had gone yellow. The roses are still in flower so I harvested some petals to make another batch of rosewater – hopefully enough to carry me through to next year. More of the broad beans have germinated so these have been sown. Rhubarb crowns arrived. I planted them that day and managed to locate some well rotted manure to add to the holes, (result!). The garlic is up already. I’m still taking apples down to the honesty box.

I’ve started the big overhaul of my ornamental beds – this will take a while as I’ll lift all the perennials and bulbs, (the former split and potted up; the latter planted elsewhere); a bit of weeding to remove the pernicious ones, then a layer of cardboard, (we have quite a collection of cardboard, so it will be good to reduce the pile); then a layer of compost, (not ours – I’ll have to place a bulk order). Harvested more sunflower heads to add to the bird table.

FreeBear

alicef said: I want to extend the ‘dead hedge’, (for the hops), so any brash left over from logging will be used for that.

Having gown hops in the past, you'd be much better off with some tall posts with wires strung between them. Commercial growers use a trellis some 6m high !

alicef

@FreeBear it's an experiment - if I get some flowers for decoration or stuffing a pillow I'll be very pleased.  However, if the OH decides to diversify from his cider/wine making into beer, then we could put up poles & stringlines; I think that I've read somewhere that it's quite easy to take cuttings from hops.  Which varieties did you grow? 

FreeBear

alicef said: Which varieties did you grow? 

It was a random cutting from somewhere that I can't even remember.. All I can tell you was that it was green

alicef

@FreeBear green's good!  

I did read that if the hop goes yellow and all the leaves drop off in the main growing season then that's not so good.