The 2015 Allotment / Veg Patch Thread Part 3 already!

[agoodbook]

Just seen the other is full , so here goes - we are heading for summer now! Welcome to everyone old and new :)

here is a link to the previous thread

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening/2350947-The-2015-Allotment-Veg-Patch-Thread-Part-2?msgid=54546739

book yes I can only find American websites too. I hope I'm not ground zero for a UK infestation! . I made my decision yesterday - salvaged what I could (I now have a pot of bobbles) and cut the rest out. There were loads of snails hiding amongst the canes so I'm consoling myself with knowing I've ousted the little pests.

ethel they're in my greenhouse. And "1/3 of a quarter of my half plot" has blown my (admittedly tiny!) mind!

whoknows those raspberries look lovely! I need to do some research on canes now, need to find a replacement for my old diseased ones.

Evening!
I hope everyone is fit and well :)
We have had showers on and off today, but did manage to get to the plot with DH.
Picked strawberries - another 2 ice cream tubs - though I did exchange a tub with a fellow plotter for a cabbage !
Picked redcurrants - another 4lbs - though nearly there with that bush
Picked my first 3 stalks of calabrese for tea
Courgettes have started to set at long last and runner beans have flowers.
DH fixed up support for the asparagus - its very top heavy with greenery, so the wind is rocking it a bit, he wired and tied up the rather long legged loganberry ( still no flowers ) And he dug out the bottom of the naughty bin after 2/3? years - there were 2 wheelbarrow loads of lovely compost, and now room in the bin for more blimmin' naughty weeds
And tonight I had to chuckle to myself - have been watering in the greenhouse, and my pots outside in the rain

I also have teeny tiny cucumbers just set
So a good day ( even had home made strawberry ice cream for tea !)

can you lot advise on strawberries?
mine are bearing fruit end of may to mid/end june, but would like maybe another later variety to stretch the season.

Evening all, fine thank you Agoodbook

Yet again no rain here (we're going to get a hosepipe ban at this rate). I decided to nematode my plot today, so that took a while, then I decided to replace the netting on my peas with something finer as I caught a pigeon munching away on them when I arrived, which would explain why they're so stunted.

Mousmous - sorry, don't know much about strawberries.

Cupcakes - apparently my raspberries are likely to be mutants, the red colour is the dominant gene and the pale colour the recessive one. This fascinates me as I did a course on Human Genetics last year.

still no rain WhoKnows - the slugs should be shrivelling up!
I am glad of ours - it has saved me a lot of watering can lugging :)
and my peas are still recovering from being ravaged by pigeons , so sympathies - though mine have at last managed to set - though I wont be podding peas watching the wimbledon final this year :)

sorry mous - my strawberries all come at once about now :) , and I have no idea what varieties they are- mine were given me, and the other bed was already planted up by my joint tenant ( who I haven't seen since Feb!)

Hello from Berlin everyone!

I am still worrying about my allotment and garden and cat from afar! But also very much enjoying this great city. And quite surprised (in a good way) by how seasonal restaurants seem to be here compared to back home. We are in the middle of mushroom (cep?) season and everywhere seems to have mushroom dishes on the menu. There also seems to be a big organic culture here - I could be wrong about this, but it seems more mainstream than in England.

I have also been enjoying some of the local grape harvest from the last few years.

goodbook - how many bleeding pounds of currants have you had now?! I love the idea of a naughty weed bin too.

Still no rain
Picked another kilo of cherries (getting tired of them now and they are making a right mess of the lawn)

And
One of my cucamelons has set it's first fruit.

Hi shove !- just enjoy Berlin - your allotment will be fine, its only a week :)
about 12-14 lbs of redcurrants so far - about 3/4 s picked .Now the blackcurrants are nearly ready, along with redcurrant bush no. 2 - though not so many on that one, thank goodness.
WhoKnows - I would swap strawberries for cherries if you were anywhere near me! sick of them now...- but a cucamelon!
pic of my naughty weed bin and compost for shove :)

How can you guys be tired of strawberries and cherries?! It's like being tired of champagne!!!

(I do understand really, I'm just )

I love your weed bin. I tend to bag up and bin at the moment because I'm terrified of the regenerative powers of bindweed, but I am definitely going to give this a go. It makes so much sense to keep them in a separate place!

The cherries aren't the tastiest variety, they're not all that sweet. And I hate champagne!

Funny how you wait months for a plant to start producing then go from being pleased to fed up. I'm starting to feel a bit like that about loganberries now.

Managed a quick trip to the allotment yesterday evening to water and a bit of weeding (not nearly enough of course. I can see the start of the first sweetcorn flowers peeping out. Runner beans have set and there are tiny little beans appearing. Not too sure about the pumpkins. They have flowered and there are fruits but I'm not sure if any will actually come to anything.

Picked a few more peas - I think they've been bothered by the pigeons although we have had a nice little crop from the ones we grew (only about 12 plants which isn't very many for a good crop). I'm going to try putting some more in for an autumn crop.

We're away for the weekend so won't get a chance to do anything over there unless I'm feeling keen on Sunday and it's not raining.

I've not posted on this thread for ages, it seems. I'm loving reading about all the harvests you're getting, but to be honest, I am (green with envy) as I've not actually produced anything much despite lots of hard work.

The redcurrants sound amazing agoodbook - is that from just the one bush so far? How big and how old is the bush?

And the cherries, WhoKnows ? ??? They are my favourite thing in the world. I don't think I could ever be bored of them In fact I'll happily pop round and pick up all the dropped ones from your lawn, for a punnet.

Zebra - you're welcome! I must admit "I'm tired of cherries now" is definitely on the list of things I never though I would hear myself say, we've never had more than about a pound of them in previous years. The main problem on the lawn is the stones, I'm in the habit of walking up the garden barefoot (sheds and strawberry plot are beyond the cherry tree) and it's is extremely perilous at the moment, but a lot of work to keep them picked out of the grass.

I went up to the plot after the school run but it was so hot and sticky I left and came home again after 5 mins.

So my tally:

Garlic -most of it pulled now. Smaller than previous years, but it has been quite dry and I did get bad rust at home. I'll do it again, def.

Potatoes - I'm starting to dig them up, and I'm quite disappointed. There's not many at all! I won't grow them again at the plot, but I may do more container spuds at home. I've not harvested my containers yet.

Asparagus pea -picked my first lot yesterday eve, will eat today. My plants are dying though. After months of being in the ground happily, I'm now losing a plant each week. No idea why and other things nearby seem fine. Baffled!

Sorrel - had a few leaves, probably won't grow again, but I got the seeds free with a mag so why not.

Chard, perpetual spinach - fine, reliable, though a few plants bolted in the heat which is first for me.

Cavolo nero - doing well despite the seedlings and then the plants being treated appallingly! Will def grow again.

Rasps -I've had a few (literally) berries from 1 of 4 summer plants. One never grow and 2 are tiny. And I had a couple of golden berries yesterday for 1st time from an autumn plant. Thought I'd get more off them this year as some of the canes are in their 2nd year. I want to put more soft fruit where my spuds are, next year.

Blackcurrants I'll get a handful , tayberries I've had about 2 handfuls (and are lovely!) but nothing from red or white currants.

Toms - getting nice fruits from my hanging basket ones now, and there is lots of fruit on all the other plants. 1 allotment tomato looks to be ripening. 1 tomato plant got sick and had to be pulled. I will cry if I get blighted. My tomatoes remain my one great hope.

Courgettes - embarrassing. I was laughed at for having too many plants, and I have had one teeny weeny one. Almost all my flowers are male, and I don't even have many of them! My plot neighbour is at glut level already.

Beans - still crap. Am def growing painted lady runners next year (which is what I planted for my mum), as she is harvesting now. I only have a couple of flowers per wigwam!
I sowed some dwarf beans 3 ish days ago, so I hope they'll produce.

BenSquash - actually looking quite healthy! easily my lushest, most vigorous plant. Has buds but no flowers.

Leeks - no change since planted, weeks ago.

Peppers - I have fruit on the plants, have done for ages. That seems to be better than some people so that's a win I guess.

Chillies at home - oddly plentiful again.i need to make more chilli jam

All in all not that great. I'm not too despondent but may get so if blight hits or no courgettes grow.

Zebra my garlic got rusted as well. We got a reasonable crop but not huge sized bulbs. I read somewhere that you could feed with a tomato feed to try and slow up the rust. So I did this, but have no idea if it worked.

My plentiful loganberry took several years to get going. I think you have to be patient with soft fruits like raspberries and loganberries. They get better with age.

Your runner beans may just need to get going. Have you tried giving them a feed? And look out for blackfly on the underneaths - mine have been attacked by them this year.

And my leeks have been very slow to get going - some of them are still quite small despite coming up weeks ago. First time I've grown them though so no idea if I should be more impatient or not!

Zebra - I know how you feel, I can get VERY down too when a crop doesn't look like it's doing well. But, as Cedar said, it is really, really early days esp for runners and courgettes. And the back end of the year is often much, much longer than you think - a hard frost is now really unlikely in most places in September. Last year, I was still harvesting runner beans at the very end of October. (Do you remember, it was really, really warm - in the late 20s just before Halloween?) That means that you have 3 months to go - potentially even more! Which means it's time to start sowing some more salad crops for September!!

Also, you can't always compare your plot with a neighbours. Your neighbour may have grown an earlier variety of courgette, which comes sooner than yours. If yours take longer to get going, then it might just be that they keep going for longer - because they do get exhausted and mildewey after a while! My courgettes were late last year, really late, because I wasn't able to get them into my plot until the council signed it over to me - and while my father had had a crop off them 6 weeks earlier than me, his also gave up the ghost before mine did. I think I would be tempted to look out a couple of large, cheap plants from Aldi or a garden centre and get them in, because there's every chance you could get a crop.

I wouldn't worry too much about blight this year as it's been really dry, and damp is pretty much a prerequisite. There is a website called Blightwatch that will email you if there is a Smith period in your area - it's basically when the temperature is greater than about 10 degrees and there is more than 11 hours of rain for two days running. That's very wet indeed. While this isn't a completely reliable indicator, it's much less likely that you'll get blight if it's a dry summer, which seems to be the case so far this year.

And fruit plants can take a while to set in and be really fruitful. My raspberries are also crap this year, after being awesome last year, but I hope this is because I moved them and they will recover and be good again next year. With perennials, it can be a long game. I am going to try a mulch with spent hops, which they are supposed to love.

I had to get rid of 4 runners this week, got to the top of the polytunnel and not set one bean!

Too hot - they don't set if the weather is too hot. That's why some people mist them, to get them to set.

I've just been picking my Amelanchiers and suggested we went scrumping for cherries and one of the cherry trees on the green about 30 ft from the front door has loads of ripe cherries; I saw two more trees but have to do those under the cover of darkness...which I will be doing in about an 90 minutes. So will be making cherry and amelanchier jam this weekend. Whoop!

Evening!
spotted and shove - I shall now own up to my failures, after the successes.

1. Peas -doing poorly this year, firstly due to pigeons, then too dry - I will get a crop, but not many. I have sown some more for autumn
2. Swede - they didn't germinate, so resowed, but 1st row finally popped up and started to look okay- very sad looking now as the leaves are being munched to death - hopefully second row will hang on...
3. Gooseberries - was sort of keeping an eye on them , knew they wouldn't be brilliant this year, ( they didn't get pruned well last year) went to look tonight to assess them, all covered in powdery mildew :( . They will be coming out and moved this year I think.

At the moment, 1 courgette set , very small - though I will be honest, they are starting to look good after the sunshine of the last few days. French beans and runner beans all have flowers on, but no sign so far on the borlotti beans . And black fly on globe artichokes at the new joint bit of plot - they have been left to get with it, ( other bloke was going to come and harvest them ) and were looking good , but now crawling...yuk spotted - its the one redcurrant bush, which was a star last year as well. Its about 4' by 4' and I guess I will get about 14/15 lb of fruit off it. I think I posted a picture of it earlier in the year covered in flowers. It was in the ground when we took the plot over - a very sad little specimen choked with grass. So it is at least 6 years old . We dug it up, pruned it and replanted it, but its only had fruit for the last 4 years . !st year the birds got them all, 2nd year about 5lbs, then last year about 15lbs, and about the same this year. I have fed it with a barrow of rotted manure every year since we moved it ( as have all the other fruit bushes ) Leeks are slow to grow. I put mine in and basically forget about them until autumn/winter, apart from keeping them weed free. They look settled and happy rather than big, if you get what I mean. Lethal - you get the chance to pick your amelanchier? I just enjoy the blackbirds throwing themselves at the tree - they always get there first, and I'm not one for getting up ladders to be honest :) well, that was long.....

* WHY DID NO ONE WARN ME THAT ASPARAGUS PEAS ARE DREADFUL ??????? *

Answer: you all did. Everyone did. But I ignored you. Even the universe tried to warn me by slowly murdering the plants, ad hoc. I ignored all the signs. Then yesterday, my only bounteous harvest was shared with the family. Cripes. Not only a horrid flavour - which is nothing like either pea nor asparagus - but it also managed to suck all the moisture out of my mouth. Clever. Any plants that are remaining when I get back to plot will be composted. Poor DS - who has been really into gardening until this point - cried and asked me why I've not grown anything nice. I think he's lost his trust in me and my growing. Oops.

Aww,thanks for being so kind about my 'growing sadness'. It's just very galling that I have put so much effort in and had so little to show for it! I've had much more (at this point) in previous years when I didn't have the allotment and just grew the odd thing here and there. Hey ho.

One success is chillies. I have lots of chillies already, so that's good.

The courgette thing is still baffling though. I even bought an early variety, to spread my harvest! And another variety is the same that a different neighbour is growing, with quite a lot of success. I've still got plants in big pots at home which are better than those at the plot. I had planned to put them in after the spuds, but I may plant them out somewhere at home, as belt and braces.

Thanks too for info on blight and Smith periods. So interesting! I wondered about signing up to alerts, but there's nothing I can so about it anyway (apart from grow under cover, which I'm not!) so I'll just hope to not see it!

Wow, agoodbook - I never knew that fruit bushes could be that productive. Maybe 2020 will be my year ?

I've never eaten an amelanchier I don't think. And I could only scrump a few cherries as the trees are too bloody tall!

Asparagus peas are gross and don't really grow particuarly well. That James Wong can suck it.

I just got back from a hot morning redoing the woodchip on our paths. We get free deliveries every so often and it is first come first served so I am glad I got down at 10am!

I also put up some cucumber trellis last night for a load of cucumbers I got given by someone who had 10! I now have 11 cucumber plants in and the load I stuck in yesterday have, I swear, grown 10cm overnight. This is after two loads of my own cucumber seedlings got munched and the load that I bought online haven't really done very much so I am very very please. We eat loads of them and I pickle them (fermentation and vinegar pickling).

On the other hand, I had to spray my tomatoes again as there was the beginning of a black fly infestation which I am sad about. I got rid of one infestation a couple of weeks ago so I guess this is a reinfestation? I had to rip out half my runner beans this morning too as they were covered. The rest look fine but now there are only 5 left. These were my 4th(!) attempt and as my peas have died too this year is not the year of the legume. Oh well.

Will be going back down to weed and bonfire some old wood this evening as weeding my patch is like painting the Forth Bridge. The patch I weeded last weekend is covered again(!)

Pics to follow!

Agoodbook, my courgettes are similar, we have had one already and a couple more have set. Apparently you should pick the first ones when they are small (10-15cm) to encourage further ones to set.

Asparagus peas have one redeeming feature. They flower during winter. End of story.

Swedes - all mine get munched leaves but they soon grow new ones and as long as the stem bulks up then you should still have swedes. Mine are starting to be about 2-3 inches thick now. Yummy.

So this week - I've got rid of [gave away] loads of Painted Mountain Corn and excess courgettes; mowed all the weeds that my business partner weeded and used them to mulch the beds, put all the spare bergamot, agastache and random flowers that germinated into pots outside my back door, moved the furniture around outside my back door so that I can sniff the above flowers when they come out, emptied the bottom layers of the wormery for adding to the top of the tomato and pepper and cuke compost, harvested amelanchiers and scrumped cherries [making jam later], planted out all the remaining things that I have space for, and started pruning and chopping back the rampant cherry and the grapes. I've mended the shredder so that we can make more mulch. I've been commissioned to design and sort out a load of new education activities for a charity, so am back there once a week with my old muckers - even got my old computer back [and they have had two office moves since then - weird]. And we have people coming next week to put up poles for shelters, sort the paving out and put an access slope in to the new shed. Busy busy busy. Oh and I have to dress up as a pirate next week. Still a bit about that!

Picked mange tout, first two yellow courgettes, took out a runner and put in an achocha in the poly, harvested beetroot, radish, dug up the first potatoes,

We have bought an oven today - ours broke about a year or two ago and I've been using a remoska since then - which is fab but sometimes you do want an actual ovenful of stuff or to grill some veg violently. It is coming and being fitted tomorrow.

Today though I am revamping the kitchen, going through all my stores of stuff and binning things I won't use and putting all the stuff I am using in order, ready for the oven tomorrow [the old oven has been used for storage for the last 1/2 years. I've even baked a loaf of bread, so that we can christen the new oven with cheese on toast tomorrow.

I love it when I have the motivation to actually do the whole kitchen. It doesn't happen often. And tonight - we will have fresh foraged jam.

Pics

Evening!
Thanks Lethal - hope my swedes survive ! what is weird ( in my mind) is that the beetroot and parsnips next to them have not been touched!
ethel - my courgette could be measured on a micrometer at the moment - about 2-3 cms long! but I live in hope. Just wished the weeds were as reluctant :)
after a nice warm day, we did get a little bit of rain - not enough to water, but enough to have to go and cover all my drying shallots and garlic, which are laid out in my garden