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

redofromstart

Mine is a weedy mess sadly.  I took my eye of it for a few weeks for various reasons and now I am trying to play catch up.  Pockets of nice and smiles as things flower.

EssexHebridean

Aargh - the combination of heavy rain and windiness meant that the canes supporting the runner beans around our lovely metal obelisk said "enough!" yesterday - two canes snapped, meaning that the third collapsed, and the entire top section of beans came sagging down into several tomato plants. Imagine our joy when we realised that we were going to have to venture out in the rain yesterday evening to sort things out!  Anyway - it DID get mostly sorted - at least, the tomatoes got rescued from underneath, we took the chance to harvest some beans we'd not previously been able to see, and will just have to do our best with the remainder now I think.  I also noticed that in spite of what I thought, there are also a number more of the yellow bush beans to harvest - they really are the gift that just keeps on giving! 

The first of the flat yellow courgettes has been harvested but not yet eaten. 

Anyone know whether it's best to leave Bishop's Crown chillies on the plants to ripen to red, or will they do so if I pick them and leave them on a windowsill? 

EssexHebridean

Beans still coming, albeit at a slightly slower rate, and the yellow ones have pretty much finished. 

Cucumbers coming steadily - and courgettes likewise, it makes a nice change to have THOSE at a rate that means we're not swamped with them.

Tomatoes now being picked daily although still in small-ish number, and the sweet peppers have started changing colour as well which is exciting.

Cabbages were re-sown and are now peeping through - hopefully they'll be OK in their starter pots for a while until we have time to pot them on. 

GLab

@EssexHebridean, If I were you, I'd leave the Bishop's Crown chillies on the plant.

They'll be OK if you've taken them off already, but they might not be as sweet when they ripen. Also, if you have (or want to) pick them early, it's a good idea to ripen them indoors in a warm, dry place, or with a ripe apple in a paper bag to speed the process.

A warm windowsill will work fine, but just make sure there's not too much direct sunlight. 

Cherryfudge

Another hour in the garden on Saturday: it's jumper weather now but still so good to be out there (and not getting drenched). More greengages gathered... we might now cut back the high branches as there's no way we can harvest from them and they will make shade where the neighbour might prefer light.

I've also rooted out more ground elder, plus some bramble and ivy, bits of old plastic and paint - and a hearing aid battery! The gravel is a problem in this area: the weeding claw deals with it very well but I'm still trying to shovel what I can into a bag so I have a layer to put on top of cardboard and create a nice looking mulch.

The next lot of work will be to try to clear the area between the two I've already worked on. Everything has grown over the little path and I want to reinstate it. The difficult bit is right up against the house wall as it's so hard to get the roots out and they're quite thickly grown.

Other than that, I picked cherry tomatoes from the hanging basket to have with lunch and they were delicious. I also collected some seeds from the Scabiosa and am going to look up planting times and conditions.

Merlin's_Beard

Very pleased that the raspberries are still coming and I can go out and pick them and pop them into my porridge in the morning!

Cherryfudge

I would love autumn-fruiting raspberries - perhaps something to add to my garden wish list. The summer ones were in abeyance this year after a very good year in 2024, but that could be because the new canes were coming up in all the wrong places, like the lawn, and don't do very well when run over by a lawnmower.

Today I had about another forty minutes in the garden, continuing to grub through that little patch. I've come up against the edging stones of the path and think I'll have to pull these out to get the weeds that have rooted underneath, but they can then go back. Stones not roots. For now, I'll leave the geraniums that are on the right side of that boundary and focus on the gravel path.

It was nice working there listening to the rain: being bent over, I didn't feel it falling on me! Eventually it rained harder and I had to go in but I'm pleased with today's progress.

Cherryfudge

All I managed in the garden today was to fill one bird feeder and spend ten minutes picking more brick chippings out of the path... but still, those are progress. It's amazing how encouraging it is to see my two small patches of clearance starting to join together and although it's a little way off, I am getting excited about putting down a layer of cardboard to mulch the area and covering it with recovered brick chippings!

Unfortunately, there are small but real ground elder leaves pushing through the lawn again. They are too short at present for the lawn mower to get them so I might have to trawl the area chopping them off one by one.

kazwookie

I have 4 full  water butts!!

Last of cucumbers picked and toms as these were direct in the ground. I have also weeded that area, and in the gaps put strawberry runners.

Garden furniture put away in shed, cushions / pads etc in the house in vacuum bags.

Currently in dream land I've seen a property on internet, with 11 acres! dreaming of polytunnels, raised veg beds, proper orchard and alike, gardner, cleaner, some one to look after the wood land etc etc, and dream away. 

EssexHebridean

One of our planned winter projects will be an additional water butt - but it relies on us finding replacement garden furniture that will work for us.