Show Us Your Veg Patch - You Know You Want To!! (Merged Thread)

Primrose

Steel - strawberries are very hardy plants so if you buy the potted up ones from garden centres they will last through the winter and into next year, although they'll need repotting with some nutrients/fertiliser added to the compost. I'm sure that if you buy the bare rooted ones you will get a small crop next year. The benefit of buying from a specialist like Ken Muir is that you can get different varieties and try to lengthen your fruiting season. I've had good yields from my Cambridge Favourites for 3 years now, so I'll be lucky if I get much of a crop next year as 3/4 years is their usual maximum fruiting life.

Steel_2

Thanks Primrose.

I've decided. I'm buying the mega huge ones from Ken Muir! I was recently given some reservoir pots, so when we have our (hoped for) boiling hot summer next year they won't dry out as much as normal ones.

hathor

You know how when tomatoes are coming to the end of the season, the advice is to strip away foliage from near the fruit, so the light & air can get in, so they stand a chance of ripening?

Some of you may recall I'm still praying for my indoor-grown peppers to turn red from green on the window ledges. Would it do any good/harm if I removed some leaves from them? Many of the leaves are quite big, and I am sure they are shading the peppers from being exposed to sunlight.

I'm tempted to remove the shade to help them get a little sunburn :rotfl: but I don't want to kill the plants. What do you think?

~Chameleon~

If the peppers are a good size then just pick them whilst green and leave them on a sunny window ledge. They will turn red same as tomatoes, or you can use them whilst green anyway.

Primrose

I've bought all my pepper plants indoors now and like hathor, several of them have enormous leaves which are partly shading the fruits. They're on a window ledge which only get the sun for about 3 hours a day at this time of year. However, they have continued to ripen and I suspect that once the ripening process starts it continues at its own pace regardless. I've removed the biggest leaves off a couple of the plants and to be honest, there's been absolutely no difference in the ripening speeds between those plants and the others. I really wouldn't recommend snipping the fruits off the leaves and letting them ripen separately. I've knocked a couple of peppers off plants accidentally while watering them and put them to one side to ripen and they've started to wrinkle and deteriorate quite quickly.

hathor

Mine are still green enough to satisfy the most patriotic Paddy, and a very rich shade it is, too, but sadly (for me) I don't like green peppers; I find them too sour, and the red ones are soooooo much sweeter.

I guess I'll just have to be patient.

Still, as with all my other puny efforts, I've learned a lot and will do many things differently next year. (Like the peppers will be started earlier, and they'll end up in bigger, heavier pots that don't threaten to fall over when you so much look at them!)

Now that I think of it: should I still be feeding them, or just watering?

jtb2412

Hi everyone, been a while since i've been on here !

Thought you might all like to see a picture of our new veg plot

http://links.pictures.aol.com/pic/7cb0NKBTmFm9-FN-9c42tc87qWlS6gMHlbKYv4xQp5Fd3Ig=_l.jpg

We've managed to find someone to share an allotment plot with (we've got 6 rods !!!!) :j :T

It's a work in progress but got it at the right time of year so will have lots to do come next Spring and I can't wait !!!

I have done a thread showing what we've done so far so feel free to have a nose !

We're having a day off tomorrow though to see to our own garden (been neglected a bit over the last week or two !)

Just out of interest, my tomatoes (which I had cut right back to let the toms ripen up) have some immense new growth and have set trusses again ! :eek: Is it the weather??? !! Also my chillis are flowering again - oerr missus !

Primrose

hathor - If your peppers still have small green peppers on them, it's worth still adding a gentle light feed to encourage them to grow a little bigger, although with lower light and heat levels, they may not grow as quickly. If they're all in the slightly red ripening process, I'd just keep watering them, although a light feed won't hurt them. I've also grown my peppers in slightly bigger pots this year. I sowed them in February (peppers & chillies need a long growing season) and the peppers have grown particularly tall and top heavy with all their fruits. Next year, if they seem to be growing too tall before flowering, I'll cut the growing tips out. This year I accidentally snapped the top of two of my plants about one third of the way down the stem when moving them and was tempted to bin them, thinking I wouldn't get a crop from them but all that happened was that they developed several lower side shoots which went on to flower and produce fruits at the same time as the taller plants and made them a little more stable. I've been growing peppers for some years but this is the first time I'd realised this technique works, so they're quite resilient plants outdoors actually as long as they get sufficient sun. During the summer I had them against our house wall and on cold windy days just put a fleece over them.

hathor

Thanks for the advice: I really do appreciate all the help on here, having no-one to ask.

I've been thinking of getting some fleece for things on the balcony, now the nights are getting colder. Even on fine days the cars all have condensation on them first thing, don't they? Do you just put fleece on at dusk, like tucking the containers in for the night, or leave it on all the time unless we have a sunny day?
Having only a balcony, which is prone to being windy anyway, but at least it has a "roof" (it's horrible out there tonight, and I think I just heard hailstone) I think the peppers will have to be indoors next year, too, but I'll certainly take your tip about getting them to "bush" a bit, as this will make them more stable.
As things are, I can't even move them off the windowledge at night (the windows are double glazed, but it's still colder up against the glass than within the room) as they fall over so easily, and they are more or less inter-supporting. If you move one, you need arms like Shiva to hold all the others up while you find somewhere to put it! Needless to say, I haven't, so they have to take their chances where they are. I think I'll carry on feeding for a bit longer, too.

Lotus-eater

jtb2412 wrote: »

Hi everyone, been a while since i've been on here !

Thought you might all like to see a picture of our new veg plot

http://links.pictures.aol.com/pic/7cb0NKBTmFm9-FN-9c42tc87qWlS6gMHlbKYv4xQp5Fd3Ig=_l.jpg

We've managed to find someone to share an allotment plot with (we've got 6 rods !!!!) :j :T
Just out of interest, my tomatoes (which I had cut right back to let the toms ripen up) have some immense new growth and have set trusses again ! :eek: Is it the weather???

Like the allotment, looks a bit weedy, lots to do.

No its not the weather, its you I'm afraid, you shouldn't have let them put on any new growth, you should have been pulling it out, Still no real harm done and you know what to do next year,