GreenFly - A 'flylady style' gardening thread with weekly tasks to tame your garden

KajiKita

Dead headed the sweet peas, Tithonia and other things in the cut flower border. 

Harvested my second cucumber of the year to give to MiL 😊
Cut the bed edgings on two beds where we were hosting a barbecue today. 

Thinned the apples on one of the apple trees. 

KK

Cherryfudge

Gave all the things in pots a thorough water - a couple of hours later the heavens opened. I've also made progress on catching and culling all the wild plant pots that are breeding in odd corners of the garden. I set myself a gentle target of two a day, and today got a week ahead. Those I've caught are all washed and sorted into 'good' and broken - the broken ones can go in the recycling at the garden centre and I'll donate some of the good ones too (they let the customers add and take from the box as we please). I have far too many.

EssexHebridean

Morning all - nice hearing of everyone's progress, although sorry to hear that people are having tomato problems. Mine are (she whispers cautiously) finally ripening - we had a good handful to put with tea last night, and delicious they were! Our issue at the moment seems to be with courgettes, which simply aren't getting beyond a certain size, and are then just beginning to rot on the plants. I'll have a look at those this evening, but at the moment I'm leaning towards picking the majority and just using them as baby ones, clearing some of the dead or mildewed leaves, and then seeing how they get on from there. I'll also see if we can shift the growbag of tomatoes that is alongside them a bit to get more airflow to the courgettes too, as I think that may well be part of the problem. 

The weekend saw the lawn being strimmed, and yet more bindweed and creeping cinquefoil pulled out, plus I also took the chance to tidy up the campanula and get rid of all the dead bits from where it had finished flowering. Of course it has reacted by bursting into flower again! Everything is needing watering daily at the moment, although I will double check the state of play with the tattie bed this evening before I get the hose on that as I think it may be retaining more water below the surface than in looks like on top. 

My one little chilli plant is doing marvellously - I'll need to work out what size those get to before being harvestable - in fact I just googled and apparently they go a rich dark red when they are fully ripe, and reach about 4" long, so I'll keep an eye for that as I want them with the fruitier, milder flavour rather than the heat of the "black" stage. I'll be making sure that we save seed from those as well - although whether they will come true remains to be seen. 

Beans are covered in flower and beans are starting to set, I hope to harvest some more tomatoes tonight - once they start ripening they usually come thick and fast in my experience, and we have a few more cucumbers forming plus the "spare" plant is now starting to climb up its trellis as well and is beginning to produce flowers.

Feeding night tonight too - mustn't forget that! 

Brie

Tomato magic!!  We had 2 from our garden yesterday and 2 more are ripening on the kitchen window sill.  At this rate I'll have grown more tomatoes this year than in the last 5!!!

And the courgettes are flowering!!!

Shame we go on holiday in a couple of days.....hope our garden watering friend picks things and eats them or leaves them in the fridge!!

Floss

Strawberries are now finished, summer raspberries are finished too, but the autumn ones just starting to get into their stride.

My dwarf french beans have been mini plants this year - they usually get to at least knee high if not taller, but they all stuck at 6" 🤷‍♀️. Anyway the 3 beans I harvested were lovely!

Cucumber plants are suffering the same way - little growth, a few flowers and 2 tiny set cucumbers 🤞

Tomatoes are flowering but very few set.

Potatoes will be harvested at the weekend, hopefully they will be better than everything else!

redofromstart

It sounds like we are all having a poor cropping year for most things. I've had a whole two tiny plum tomatoes. The last courgette did survive but no crop to date. Flowers on my rubber beans so hoping they will deliver at least. 

SuzeQStan

We have had bumper crop of beetroot this year (1st year I’ve tried it) anyway have been having them all week and not to be too much information but had a shock in the toilet department the other day 😳🤣 - pickled beets don’t do that to me - OH was the same. LOL

redofromstart

Oh yes that is quite worrying the first time @SuzeQStan! I have no luck with them at all here - poor soil, not enough watering I think. 

greenbee

I have lots of french beans and mange tout, but like Floss, my dwarf beans are more dwarf than normal. They are, however, producing beans. Plenty of courgettes too - but then I heard all the horror stories about plants being slug-eaten, so planted 6 (and two climbing ones, but they're not doing much). My billions of tomato plants are mostly not ripening yet (a couple of outdoor ones given to me by a friend have produced a few), cucumbers are also doing well. 

First year for rasps, so not many. Not many strawberries for the number of plants, but enough for a few everyday. 

Aubergines are flowering - but are notoriously tempermental. Peppers are just starting flowering as well (left them a bit late). 

I now have all the bits I need to connect the rest of the beds to the irrigation system, so need to get that done this week and try for a second (late) crop of broad beans. Fennel and kale have been sown. 

KajiKita

Potted up some mint trimmings that I had in water in the kitchen windowsill last night. 🌿 

Teeny baby tomatoes are delicious. 😋 Bigger tomatoes are invisible… 🙄🤷‍♀️
Cucumbers are just starting to come on stream and the plants are becoming triffidy ❤️
Peppers looking healthy and producing a bit but are no taller than my hip - in my Very Serious Gardening friend’s greenhouse these things are head height! 😂
Patch is a mass of weeds and I have been formally assessed by the physio as having a problem with my rotator cuff which needs lots of rest, strengthening exercises and no heavy work … sigh … I guess this is where I have to learn to adapt - I see lots of scissoring in my future … 😉

KK