The ups and downs and ins and outs of growing your own, 2018

Jazee · 11 August 2018 at 8:03AM

Hello there. Still harvesting here too. Courgettes, first of tomatoes, chilli peppers, cucumbers.......

Re seeds, I still have loads of packets still in date from when I got a monthly gardening magazine. I can't remember the last time I bought any, probably about 3 years ago.

I am now off work for almost 3 weeks so I'm planning to get the garden/allotment tidier and enter it in a competition again as I didn't bother last year.

unrecordings · 11 August 2018 at 8:55PM

Time to pull up my Red Duke Of York potatoes, unfortunately I forgot they were an experiment in one of the not-so-raised beds that were mere inches from unforgiving boulder clay. Kneeling is not at all easy for me, but managed to get down and after three cramp attacks in two different limbs, settled down to chipping away the dirt to uncover my lovely potatoes before the sun rose over the trees. A Spitfire & Hurricane flew overhead around 11ish (not uncommon round here), I found a couple of bits of clay pipe, and quite a tidy stack of potatoes with very few marbles. For tea - pork chop, mashed potato, runner beans & carrot tops

Jazee · 11 August 2018 at 9:32PM

Had to dig up and throw away my cabbages and cauliflowers as something got at them despite small netting. Now have an empty bed to fill.

tootallulah · 12 August 2018 at 4:21PM

unrecordings wrote: »

Time to pull up my Red Duke Of York potatoes, unfortunately I forgot they were an experiment in one of the not-so-raised beds that were mere inches from unforgiving boulder clay. Kneeling is not at all easy for me, but managed to get down and after three cramp attacks in two different limbs, settled down to chipping away the dirt to uncover my lovely potatoes before the sun rose over the trees. A Spitfire & Hurricane flew overhead around 11ish (not uncommon round here), I found a couple of bits of clay pipe, and quite a tidy stack of potatoes with very few marbles. For tea - pork chop, mashed potato, runner beans & carrot tops

You must be near me I heard the Lanc and Spitfire well before I saw them I think it is the big 100 years of the RAF service at Lincoln Cathedral today. This year has been great for soft fruit and tomatoes but nothing else for me. Hey ho there's always next year!

VintageHistorian · 12 August 2018 at 6:38PM

I've had to bin the cucumber plant as it was half dead. Think I need to invest in some cucumber feed next year, the two cucumbers it grew were huge but the others all turned yellow and shriveled up shortly very early on. The leaves also got badly scorched in the recent heat, clearly need to find a shadier spot for the next one.

On the other hand my tomatoes are still going well, my strawberry plant is growing a few more strawberries, the biggest pepper is slowly starting to turn red, and I've planted some more radish seeds. Only 5 per pot this time, now I know what size they are I can see it's better to space them out a bit more. Still got lots of seeds left in the packet so I'll definitely be growing more of them next year, but will stagger the planting.

Dizzy_Ditzy · 19 August 2018 at 2:07PM

This year I've been selling rhubarb and gooseberries at work - the proceeds will be buying next years seeds in the sale

Like many others I've still got loads that will be in date next year so will carry on using those too but the seed pot will get us the stuff we need to buy in :money:

We've had free rein to pick plums off an allotment neighbours trees so I've been doing plum things all weekend - if plum crumbed count as "things" :rotfl:

We lost all of our sprout plants to club root :mad:

New plot coming along nicely - my fruit cage has been relocated from old plot A to the new plot A. I pulled the first lot of spuds from old plot A last weekend and next weekend I've got 3 more beds of spuds to sort out. Gradually moving tools and nets and such like to the new plot so in theory, by the end of August it'll all be sorted. We've decided to leave the grapes on the vine as we won't be doing anything with them. I'd quite like eating grapes on the new plot but it's a case of "not enough space to cope with all my ideas" so vertical growing is an almost dead cert for the new plot

Courgettes are coming to an end finally, apples are just starting to come in, cucumbers all over, tomatoes doing just ok, not great

I've got cabbages and French beans planted out on the new plot already and the beans are just becoming pickable now :j :j

zafiro1984 · 24 August 2018 at 11:55PM

Dizzy Ditsy, you have certainly been busy.
I just noticed that my courgettes have started to get mildew so I expect that will be the end of them. Fortunately loads frozen so I can use them in my version of ratatouille. Sorry to hear about the sprouts I actually love them especially with chestnuts and bacon. Same here with the tomatoes OK but not great, I grew a variety called 'crimson crush' as we have a bad blight problem, they are definitely blight resistant but I'll have to grow twice as many next year. Cucumbers still doing well, I've frozen the surplus until I think of something to do with them- maybe soup.

Sweet corn is starting to plump up, gherkins slowing down, swiss chard has fallen over, but the fennel is doing well. Leeks are looking promising but won't be ready until the back end of the year, same with the squash.

I actually had to buy a bag of potatoes :mad: as I only grew earlies and main ones this year somehow I forgot about second earlies.
Fruit cage overgrown but a reasonable crop of raspberries coming along. Must go and pick some blackberries off the hedges on this place, it looks to be a good crop this year.

Been quite busy lately so unable to spend as much time as I want on the plot, however things have started to slow down so maybe next week I can sort out a few things. Not gardening but sort of related - We collected the baby turkeys this afternoon but I spent the last few days strimming pathways in the turkey pen, the grass has really grown this last couple of weeks since it rained and would have been higher than the turkeys. Since they don't put themselves to bed like chickens finding them at bedtime to put them away would have been somewhat challenging in three acres.

stoozie1 · 25 August 2018 at 8:11AM

zafiro1984 wrote: »

I just noticed that my courgettes have started to get mildew so I expect that will be the end of them.

Sorry for the dumb question, but does that mean that powdery mildew stops the courgette from fruiting?

Jazee · 25 August 2018 at 8:25AM

stoozie1 wrote: »

Sorry for the dumb question, but does that mean that powdery mildew stops the courgette from fruiting?

It means they've dried out so unlikely to produce much more. I cut the leaves off mine and a few are now beginning to fruit again. Just don't put the leaves in the compost bin.

I'll be gardening today/all weekend hopefully. Really enjoying tasty tomatoes at the moment. Need to decide what to sow in my plot where I lost the cabbages and cauliflowers.

unrecordings · 25 August 2018 at 2:47PM

Thanks for that - got a bit of powery mildew here, so I'll cut all the affected leaves off and see what happens

Blackberries still going strong - they're all wild brambles, but fascinating to see the different strains, some with open rounded fruit, some tightly packed with almost a flat outer face (the latter are the tastiest)

The ups and downs and ins and outs of growing your own, 2018

Comments

Categories

Get our FREE Weekly email full of deals & guides - and it’s spam-free