Growing fruits and vegetables

[ethelb]

Does anyone want to join me for a growing fruit and veg focussed thread?

I took over an allotment six weeks ago and would love to hear how other's kitchen gardens are getting on.

Im just off to the allotment to plant some oriental veg seeds to fill up my brassica bed. I also need to mow the path/hedge and check for slug damage

Thanks ethelb, I think there's still a growing tip, but I'm such a novice that I really don't know, I'll watch and wait for a week and if they don't look any better or more likely die then I'll go and buy some from the garden centre.

I've got some rocket, purple sprouting brocolli and cauliflower that seem to be growing well so far. And we've got a few aubergine plants (I think they're aubergines but planted aubergines and peppers at the same time and can't remember whic pots were which) that look great but we haven't potted them on yet, so it could all go horribly wrong then.

Hi can I join please? I've just given up my allotment but started a small veg patch in the garden which I'm trying to make a border mixed with flowers.

Dragonlette, I think your pumpkins haven't coped with going from the warm indoors into the greenhouse outdoors. There were some fairly chilly temperatures last week down where I am which look like they have finished them off if they all look like that. A couple of layers of fleece can help on chillier nights when they are making the transition from the house.

I am having a problem getting French beans to germinate this year. Would happily buy some plants but they only have runners in the garden centre so my bean wigwam looks very sad.

Glad somebody said that, ishould, asI have sowed rosemary seeds since my earlier post, and was about to do more when we had a downpour. Rain stopped play, basically. (tut)

Can't believe this freaky weather, but its certainly done my beetroot the world of good. The seedlings are much bigger today than yesterday. Yay.

Done a check on my herbs, and my thyme has more or less perished, think it scorched in the sun. Just picking out the dead bits, only a few green seedlings left..

My parsley, sage and basil look okay, my one and only coriander seedling has perished since, so might sow some more of those ...

Off to Lidl on Wednesday to look at the seeds range. I quite like the cut and come again stuff too, dreaming, I'll look out for the lettuce seed packets.

sorry, thanks also ethelb, I eat a lot of salad until late August, so will carry on sowing until then. I prefer spinach than lettuce tbh, but I think need a change. With all the spinach I've been eating, I'm going to end up with muscles like Popeye's....

Ooh another thread - for growing F&V.

I teach food growing and associated skills [composting, woodwork skills, forestry skills etc] and love it.

I have a greenhouse, a courtyard garden [with a fab mature grape], a canalside garden, and an allotment. Plus a community garden that we are trying to tame again [v overgrown and hadn't been touched in 2 years when we took over] which has a 50ft poly, an orchard and gazzillions of square footage of weedy areas [we have 1/3 of it all planted up with herbs, fruit and veg but it's a full time job to be honest].

I also collect and save seeds from heritage varieties; I have about 150 varieties of French bean, 120 varieties of tomato, and goodness knows how many of everything else.

I just went through my seeds earlier today and got about 50 varieties that I am going to sow at the community garden just to fill gaps/cover ground/hope that they grow better than the weeds [ha!].

This week, I am also sowing all my French beans for saving. The earlies all got slugged. Bastards.

I am completely organic and use sawdust to block the slugs getting to my precious planted out veg; I get huge bags from wherever I can [never paid for it yet].

My top tip with herbs, is to block sow them, and take slug precautions as you think they haven't germinated but they will have just been eaten by the sluggy bastards. And there is alot to be said for gathering an armful of parsley and basil for a large pasta dish - totally delirious with fragrance and flavour.

And if your fennel bolts, don't worry just grow it as a perennial and as you chop it back, it will keep growing. It's amazing added to your compost heap - keeps the compost sweet.

Oh Hello Funky! Can I ask you a compost question?

What is the best way to build up a compost heap - ie with what layers etc? Do you need to cover it up when you're finished and wait for it to mature? Anything else I need to know...?

We have 5 huge, huge ones that I feel are slightly too big to handle. They measure about 6'x6'x6' which I find so hard to deal with.

I have just bought some more veg plants inspired by this thread and The Edible Garden by Alys Fowler! I will be more sensible next year and grow more from seed as buying plants is expensive . I wanted some specific varieties and found most of what I needed at Seed Pantry. So I have runner beans, mangetout, patty pan squash, thai basil, ball courgette and a habanero chilli coming my way. Hopefully I will manage to keep them alive, and find space for them in my tiny garden!

I'd also like to buy another aubergine and some salad seeds as I don't think my aubergine plant is likely to do well. I will have a look in the garden centre for those.

Aubergines are tricky and I found generally needed a helping hand with pollination. I found that you get two types of flowers - ones with thin stems and some with thicker stems. The ones with the thin stems always fell off but guess that is because they wouldn't be strong enough to support an aubergine so I just pollinated the thicker stem flowers.

@WynkenBlynkenandNod do you think maybe the flowers are gendered? The thicker ones could be female like with squash flowers. The male flowers don't have the thick base and fall off squash plants eventually.

Been down on the allotment clearing the second half of the brassica bed to put in my pak choi, kohl rabi and chinese kale which are more than ready to go in.

I think I need to water more, it is heavy clay and the water table is still very high (as some people have mentioned you sometimes only need to go down a spades depth and it comes bubbling up) but

I have upturned funnels next to my squashes which I fill with water but they don't seem to be making much of a difference and my cucumbers are looking a bit sad. Any ideas?

I think aubergine flowers each have male and female parts so a bit different to Squash. However I am far from an expert and could well be wrong. My friend had reasonable success growing aubergines on the allotment and assume but did nothing so I probably over complicated things. Not sure about your squash, sorry. I rarely watered the allotment other than when initially planting out.

wrt to compost.
my parents have 3 bins (2cubic metres each) fill one year, ripen one year, use one year. yhey don't turn it abd the layering just happens with all the tasks in the garden. you just have to be careful with lawn, one time the compost heap started burning as the had too much from mowing the lawn and compacted it too much.

Sorry, was busy doing some tidying last night.

Compost...you can have hot compost which needs building up in layers, wetting each layer and turning regularly. Or cold compost which you just turn when you need the space, from one bay usually into another.

If you have 5 then you would start in bay 1 and when full turn it into 2 and start another in bay 1. Then again when full, turn 2 into 3 and 1 into 2. Eventually you will get lovely compost at the end. The more browns you put in the bigger volume at the end.

Hmm. What are 'browns' ...?

Cardboard, shredded papers, newspaper. Loo roll insides. That's sort of thing.

I'm a bit lazy about putting browns onto my composts. Instead of recycling the papers I should shred them and put them on the heaps.
Although I have 5 heaps, I have 1 on its own, and then 2 pairs of 2, so sadly unable to just toss from one to the other!

So if I just have a small garden which is completely paved, is it worth getting one of those plastic compost bins? At the moment I'm buying big bags of compost to fill my containers, and putting weeds/failures into the garden waste wheelie bin. I quite fancy having a go at doing my own compost but I'm not sure I would have enough stuff to fill it (although I do have a playing field near me that I could take grass cuttings from when the council mow the grass) and how good would that compost then be for planting in containers?

My courgette plants look like they might survive, the pumpkins are well and truly gone. The courgette leaves looked like the leaves on the pumpkins on Friday, but now the pumpkin stem and leaves are completely shrivelled while the courgette stems are still standing strong and some more leaves are starting to grow. Maybe all is not lost with them.

When do I need to start feeding my plants? I have some liquid tomato food, even though I'm not growing tomatoes, but it says I can use it on peppers, courgettes and aubergines. What it doesn't tell me is when I'm supposed to use it, how big the plants should be at the first feed and how often they need to be fed.

I LOVE this thread!
I am in my 1st year of trying to grow veg and fruit - previously I've only grown tomatoes then had huge success last year with chard. I'm growing them in the garden, but I am reading tales of allotments and acres in Normandy with utter jealousy. I've become a bit obsessed by my planties, am reading/learning lots and slugs have become My Enemy. Enthusiasm levels are high Chez Zebra.

I am growing a few types of tomato - Gardeners' Delight, Marzano and some unidentified one that my dad has had for years and saves the seed.
Also - tomatillo - bit of an experiment, they've been growing very slowly until this recent warm weather and they've fair rocketed.

Still on the Mexican theme - cucamelons. No idea what they should look like at the moment, but I have a few strong plants which are also loving the sun.

And lots of chillis - am having a bit of a chilli experiment to see what grows for me. The serrano (free from Wahaca) failed - all germinated but the seedlings were very stunted. Hot Carribbean blend seems to have grown ok, ditto Hungarian Wax (?) but the Cayenne has had the most consistent and lush growth. Flowers are just starting to appear now so we shall see what happens next.

Peppers seem to have been a bit of a washout. The plants that I had planted out in a sunny spot got destroyed by slugs. I have a few more in pots that I am loathe to put out, but I doubt they'll actually do anything. Ditto aubergines - I have 4 plants left but I don't think they're far enough on so I can't see them producing.

COurgettes going ok. Patty pan squash are going great guns too - does anyone know, are they like courgettes in that they respond to picking of fruits by making more?

Beans - runner, frenchx2 are doing ok. The first swathe of greens got eaten by slugs so am trying again with chard, perpetual spinach and calalloo. PLaying about a bit with broccoli also.

But I seem to have failed with the thing that 'no one can fail with' - radish and beetroot.

Hi zebra, I'm jealous of the Normandy acres, too

Other than that that, I'll make do with my veg container gardening on the (not too) large patio of ours

Spring onions are next on the list for growing. Do they take long? Not that I'm impatient or anything.....

Apparently we have a heatwave starting from tomorrow .. my day off, as it happens, yay, so I'm giving my tomatoes and peppers some sun - love yet again......

How's everybody else doing? xx

Dragon- a wormery is probably your best option, it'll take garden waste avid kitchen waste, and dc love them.

Re positioned my peasgood nonsuch today. I know it's not the right time and the tree might not survive, but it was definitely not sieving where it was. Fingers crossed it survives the stress and enjoys the extra sun.

Does anyone know how many squash or courgette plants I can grow in a grow bag? I don't have much space and a squash is doing nicely in one so not sure if another one could go in the same bag

I would only plant one.
they grow like mad, they should be 3 feet apart.

silver - last year i divided my growbags in half from longest side to longest side, and then upended them to make sort of pots. i put one in each of these and topped it up with a bit of extra soil. a squash and courgette in a small grow bag might be pushing it, but can you put a bottomless pot in and add more soil - so plant can grow down into bag?

Thanks it is actually a vegetable planter bag from homebase, bit like a grow bag but maybe even less deep! I have got space for one more bag so will plant the courgette in that instead.

silver - i would cut the end off and then use it like a plant pot - upturned leaning against something - that way the soil will be deeper and dry out less quickly