Allotment?Veg Patch Thread 13! Are we weathering the weather?

[bookbook]

well, we have got to August , had heatwaves and thunderstorms. Goodness knows what happens next!
All welcome to join in sharing the highs and lows , tips and experiences of growing your own :)
Previous thread HERE

[elephantoverthehill]

Oooh, shiny new thread. Thank you Book.

[bellinisurge]

Thank you, @bookbook . About to return from holiday to find whether any of my cunning watering plans for my veggies worked.

[clarabellski]

Thanks for the new thread book

I'm loving having a full waterbutt again!

Not loving the return of The Slugs (not envy)

[prettybird]

...must remember to start scattering slug pellets again

Place Mat King.

[mynaughtylittlesister]

Just realised you have a new thread going after I posted on your last one so have copied my post on to this one! (me and technology!! )

I am after a bit of advice! I am growing tomatoes (21 plants to be precise) and up until last week growing well. I have some lovely looking green tomatoes but have noticed these last few days that as soon as the tomatoes are changing colour they are beginning to rot from at the bottom. They are an Italian brand if that makes a difference. I am so disappointed as I have nurtured these blessed plants from seed!

What am I doing wrong? Anything I can do to stop them? I did think about picking all the green tomatoes and hope they colour up on my window sill! sad

I have posted on this thread before but have recently named changed!

[bookbook]

Hi mynaughtylittlesister - that sounds like blossom end rot. Its due to a few things, but mostly inconsistent watering when the blossom is pollinated ( lack of calcium in uptake of water ) Its a very common problem . I have had some due to the hot weather ,as I was needing to water 3 times a day in the heatwave. there is nothing you can do with the infected fruit, but for cooking purposes, I cut off and use . Its a bummer , isn't it . Make sure you are feeding them and if you are allowing new trusses to form , you should get more fruit at the end of the season .

[elephantoverthehill]

Corn on the cob for dinner tonight. Yipee!

[UnaOfStormhold]

Clara it's shocking how quickly the slugs and weeds have come back! Still, having lost quite a few new plants to the heat, despite my best efforts to keep them going, I am mostly very relieved!

[prettybird]

Redcurrant gin now maturing

One litre of , 600g of redcurrants and 300g of caster sugar. Such a pretty colour

[bookbook]

Evening!
I wish my waterbutt was full clara - though we did have a very heavy shower/rain last night, which was a joy !
Yes , the weeds ( and presumably slugs) will be multiplying in leaps and bounds .
That looks lovely pretty - it will be a shame to open it not
DH and I went late to the plot this afternoon - he cut the grass, before tigers could hide in it. I watered a bit and harvested. I am glad elephant mentioned corn on the cob. I went to check , and the first ones are all nearly there , some ready for picking . So I picked one ( left the others as our veg show is on Saturday , so would like to show one ) The very end was ungerminated, but a really good set on the rest , none missing. It was amazingly yummy The cosmos are finally flowering properly , and the rain brought back some sweetpeas from the dead . Plus the courgettes of course, and a little scatter of autumn rasps - they are just starting to ripen - I'm hoping the rain will fatten them up a bit :)

[tizwozliz]

Shiny new thread, same repetitive harvest!

[PostNotInHaste]

Thanks for the new thread Bookbook. There were two big slugs staring at me from my raised beds yesterday.

Back in the game nearly after op and managed allotment visit Monday. The weeds and grass are starting g to grow again and there was a marrow. Kale is recovering from bird damage but current netting only temporary so need to sort that at some point. Someone coming over today to help support greenhouse done as have taken one of the struts out to form a door and in the winds a few weeks ago it wasn’t too happy so will see what we can do with some more 2x1 to get ready for autumn.

I’ve got 3 orange pumpkins now, need to read as have forgotten when to harvest them. In my head they stay on the vine to ‘cure’ for a bit but I might have made that up. 2 of my new currant bushes have hated the dry weather and look sad and nect year I’m not planting Rocket potatoes as they are not good on flavour.

[UnaOfStormhold]

My rule of thumb with pumpkins is that they're ready to pick when they're the same colour all over including the bit that touched the ground. Then after that they benefit from curing for a few months to get the fullest flavour. That said I have some nice little munchkin squash ripening but I don't know how big they need to get and they don't touch the ground becuase I'm growing them upwards, so I'm a bit puzzled about when to harvest them!

[bookbook]

Evening!
Post - good to hear you are almost back to good health after your op , but take it steady . I don't like many of the popular varieties of potatoes, not much point growing estima. cara etc , when they are not particularly flavoursome .
Pumpkins I presume are much the same as my squashes - the stalk goes really hard and looks like solid cork , thats when I harvest mine . I then I wash them in very dilute bleach, rinse, dry and store in a cool dry place. They keep for months then .
We had a lovely solid shower last night, so I didn't need to water today thank goodness. So I am now starting to dig up the last row of potatoes. They are just a bit bigger that the previous ones, so they have kept growing after the rain at least . I also noticed a bit of slug damage on some savoy cabbages . Cut the bigger courgettes - hoping to have one the right size for our veg show on Saturday ( its an art - they need to be about 6" long, and I have no idea so have left 3 on , all different sizes ! ) I also took off any ripe plums , so with some from the other day I have made a plum upside down cake - It should have been a clafoutis, but I couldn't be messing with it !
Really need to get down to some serious prepping a bed for the winter cabbages and cauliflowers , the soil is finally soft enough to fork over

[GrouchyKiwi]

Thanks for the new thread, books.

We've had rain almost non-stop for the past week. I wish it wasn't one or the other with regards to the weather. Mix it up!

Almost have some ripe tomatoes. I am excited to try them finally! And we're getting lots of blueberries still.

[prettybird]

Tomatoes finally ripening. The Rosella have been going pink for a few days and are hopefully triggering the others

Second one, going orange, is unlabelled - friend who gave me my tomato plants (except for my two hanging ones which I bought: Peardrop yellow only they're very round and Tumbling Tom) thinks it's Shirley. Last one, going yellow, is Gardener's Delight.

[Cathpot]

I’m looking at your tomatoes pretty and thinking they look very neat and accessible. This end my eyes are always bigger than my greenhouse and yet again I’ve created an impenetrable tomato forest into which I periodically throw a child with a collection bowl. I’ve got my neighbour coming over sometime next week and his greenhouse is immaculate and shame forced me in there today to try and sort it out. Didn’t get very far but did come out with a mahooosive cucumber hidden in the undergrowth and released a trapped chilli plant.

[elephantoverthehill]

Cathpot did you also find any missing children in the jungle? No worries they wouldn't have starved at least. Bite marks in the cucumbers may have been a clue.

[prettybird]

Next year it won't be like that - not once I've grown my own tomatoes from seed (and shared/swapped with my friend along the road) and added in more cucumber plants (as long as I can put them somewhere where my skin won't touch the leaves ) and some pepper plants (personally hate hate peppers but dh loves them) and some chili plants.

Also want to work out how to put in some more hanging tomato plants. Want to get a range of coloured cherry tomatoes, which I think will look pretty.

I'm going to be asking for Chelsea benches nicer shelves for Christmas.

Ar the moment, as well as the 5 cordon tomato plants, there are the two hanging tomatoes (one a standard bush and the other - the Peardrop yellow - that can be grown either as a cordon or as a hanging/bush one), one cucumber plant that I'm scared of , one of three courgette plants (they were taking over the greenhouse , so two of them were moved out onto the patio) and a pot of wild strawberry plants. Plus on some shelves some biennials that I started and some cutting flowers that I never got round to finishing planting out . And an African violet that I thought would enjoy the sun and has just started flowering.

This was today's haul: still picking redcurrants (and loads left) but dh is now having to rake up the pears that fall from a great height from our enormous and ancient pear tree and managed to find a few that were worth keeping. He's planning on trying to make perry this year. The plums are just about ready to start harvesting - have picked a few but most aren't quite ripe.

[bookbook]

Morning - talking of jungles , my tomatoes ( daren't show the other side of cucumbers/peppers/aubergines! )
Rather busy today , so dashed down to the plot to pick anything vaguely good looking for our veg show tomorrow. I think the sweetcorn look good, and the courgettes , but not convinced of anything else , but have wrapped everything up carefully and put in the fridge for first thing tomorrow morning . It will be interesting to see everyone else's - we do have a champion onion and shallot grower ...

[prettybird]

I may well have a similar jungle next year. This year it's just the "extras" from my friend's plants (except for the two hanging baskets).

Just had the first 2 rosella tomatoes (one each for dh and me): they were lovely Pictured with yesterday's peas to give some scale. Dh tried to tell me that they weren't ripe yet - but I had to explain that rosellas aren't a bright red tomato.

[UnaOfStormhold]

I think next year I'm going to get a few more of the big troughs I'm growing tomatoes and cucumbers in so I can run them along all sides of the greenhouse with shorter plants like peppers along the south side so they don't shade everything out. My melons and peppers are in individual pots and I don't think they've got enough soil, but I don't really want bigger pots on staging. This will mean taking my staging out for the summer but once everything is out of little pots it isn't so much use and the auto irrigation doesn't work well with the additional height of the bench.

[Cathpot]

You have made me feel slightly better but I am still too ashamed to post a picture.

[prettybird]

The pictures of the greenhouse show off the panels my FIL painted. He died 7 years ago. It's only water colour - so dh and I are thinking of varnishing it to preserve it.
There are a couple of panels painted at the back as well but not as elaborate.
He wasn't the best artist in the world but it means a lot to dh.

[echt]

I'm in a Melbourne late winter, in just over a year of drought. It doesn't look it, but I can see trees I planted have just not grown. Up in the Mallee, it's horrendous.

The veggie patch has broad beans, mooli, rocket, warrigal greens, spring onions, chives, garlic and strawberries. Oh, and a fine crop of weed grass and verbena bonariensis. I carefully dig up the latter, pot on and give to friends. The snails have buggered my snow peas so have re-sown and put out snail pellets. Enough rain falls to keep the patch ticking over.