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

goodbook Yes, I think you're right about people underestimating the work. Also, the fact that gardening shows tend to show interventions only when there is something very substantive to be done (planting, a major stage of tending, harvesting) and not all the bits inbetween where you are fending off slugs, pigeons, aphids and everything inbetween!

Personally- and maybe this is just me - I've found veg gardening much more difficult than flower gardening. Even fussy flowers like my meconopsis tend to do more looking after themselves than veg does! The range of pests and the number of things that can go wrong is just so much greater with crops. Over my first year, I feel like I've made more mistakes than I've got things right - but I'm learning all the time and really enjoying that process. Also, the fact that I have a flower garden at home helps me not to lose confidence - I think if I'd never done anything outside before, I would have been put off and ended up thinking I was no good at all at it. So I can see why discouragement can easily set in for those who are completely new to gardening. I reckon it will be at least 5 years before I really have a handle on anything much at my plot - it is such a skilled thing to do it well, and anything like that just takes time and exposure to a range of problems - hopefully in future, I'll be able to recognise things at an earlier stage.

Shove! There's a thead about kitchen composters! You need to get over there IMMEDIATELY!

DH doesn't get how much work goes into a garden. Frequently I'll go down to water the greenhouse and he'll say "but didn't you do that the other day?" .

And he wonders why I don't trust him with the dogs...

Hahahahahahaha to your DH, cupcakes.

rushes over to composting thread to sing a hymn to bokashi

shove - I have been gardening for more years than I care to think of, but only doing my allotment for 5 years, and I totally agree to veg being harder to grow. In a garden, you can disguise failures- in an allotment or veg plot, the mistakes are all too obvious ! And every year is so different that I think I will always be learning, and making mistakes. The fight against bugs and diseases is just relentless but - though I love my garden, the fruit and veg I produce is so much more satisfying somehow..
Cupcakes - my DH is resigned -I say, 'I will just pop for an hour to the plot', and he says -' see you when I see you' :)
On another note, raspberries at home are amazing this year, so really hoping I don't have to dig them up.
And I am getting to the stage in my greenhouse where I shall be needing a machete to get in the door

I've just done my Tesco order and I love the fact that I don't have to add any veg to my order!

I'm very envious of all your soft fruit. We only planted our bushes this year so it's a very meagre crop. Hopefully next year will be better

I have a confession. I cannot kill slugs, or snails. In fact I quite like snails. But, they are eating far too many of my lettuces and hiding in the leaves ready to leap out at the earliest opportunity. I have bought 2 x slug x traps. I have also bought organic slug pellets but can't quite bring myself to use them. I have filled my traps with booze so I am hoping they will be having a big old piss up at the mo. But horror of horrors, what do I do with my dead / dying slugs!!! Feel ill thinking about it. Ooooh nooooo!!! Stern words of advice needed please and grips aplenty.

Linski I have no hesitation about killing slugs. The fury I feel when they decimate a carefully tended plant has long ago hardened my heart.

But if I am feeling generous I will sometimes move snails into the compost bin. That's what I would do with the dead/dying slugs as well. Then they can compost down naturally.

Veg gardening is definitely a different kind of gardening because you invest all your time and effort into one relatively short season. So if things don't work out then you notice it much more. Whereas normally you don't replant an entire flower garden in one go so the odd failure is not so much of a disappointment. This year, in my back garden, the clematis has suddenly given up the ghost and died, the snails took big bites out of some of my daffodils spoiling the blooms and none of my mints in pots which I've had for several years survived the winter. So they're all failures but it doesn't seem as important because I'm not going to eat them (except for some of the mint). Whereas the fact that none of my french bean seeds germinated seems much more important.

Linkski, I can't either.
The only thing I can bear to do is a beer trap, but DH has to empty them for me.
Otherwise I collect them in a bucket, walk along the lane and empty them on the far side of a stream and hope they don't slither home.

My DS chops them for me . But if he's not there, and I'm at home, I catapult them over the trees at the end of my garden, into a sort of wild parkland area. If you put them on the end of a trowel, and do a big, sweeping overarm, I find you can lob them quite far.

I can't kill them either we have a flat roof at the bottom of the garden (fibreglass, not felt) - I throw all snails and slugs onto that. Its quite big, so I just hope that a passing bird/thrush gets a takeaway :)
Never find the dratted things at the allotment though

A nice few hours at the plot yesterday. The Little Gem and Marina di Chioggia squash are both doing quite well now, and each have a number (ok,it's in the region of 2 or 3, but it's a number!)of small fruits. The Delicata squash are still rubbish though. The courgettes are doing better, but still quite rubbish, Tbh. And my cucamelons are still surprisingly small, but I am less bothered about them.

I also finally planted out my donated brassicas, and my PSB. I left them too long in pots, and they'd got a bit dry and bound, so I hope they recover. I had to take out my sorrel to make room -not sure I'll bother growing that again, unless I have an early gap that I want to make green. I need to make better covers for the planted - out stuff, so that might be a weekend job to buy and build. My cover for the cavolo nero is insufficient in that the kale has grown too tall/the cover was too shallow, and it's touching the tops of the nets. So of course beasties have laid eggs through the nets. So that's to address, too.

Question: do you all cover ALL brassica stuff all the time, or just when it's small and fragile, or at key times of year? There's loads of cabbage whites about right now.

agoodbook I really want to make a bird friend who will sit and wait for me to throw them tasty morsels, so they can chomp them for me. Tje closest I've got is at the pot where a brave Robin will sometimes dash in and chomp up leatherjackets if I leave them 2m or so away and then turn my back. Trouble is, I don't always know whether the bug has slithered off without me noticing. A flat roof sounds good.

I'm obviously much meaner than you lot! I'll happily chop them in half.
I did try and encourage a robin but he flew away when I tried throwing him a worm so I decided that my needs were greater.

The other year we grew cabbages which we didn't cover so they got lots of caterpillars on them. Failed to dig them up, left them in over the winter and they produced nice leaves which we ate the next spring. Not sure I'd recommend this as a way of gardening but it was interesting that the plants survived and recovered. I'm sentimental about the butterflies and not a huge fan of cabbage!

I've not got my sprouts or purple sprouting covered (keep looking out for old net curtains at charity shops but no luck so far). I noticed a few eggs on the back of some leaves last weekend so I've been scraping them all off - not sure if that's the best thing to do or not? We had a few spare plants so we've popped in them in the flower border with the idea that the butterflies could have those ones.

I try not to use pellets, and never metaldehyde which is dreadful for the ecosystem food chain and for getting into water.

However, I'm on heavy clay in a very damp part of the world. I'm quite happy with raggedy plants which have been a bit slugged, but sometimes if I don't use the organic slug pellets, I will literally lose an entire crop in the sense that the whole lot, meaning every single plant, will die. So I grow in the greenhouse until plants are fairly large then pellet when they are first planted out. (Or I pellet around seeds). With the organic ones, the slugs die under the soil and out of sight.

I don't think that makes it any better though .

Hi all, I have the deaths of twenty slugs on my conscience. But they all died swimming in beer, so I feel slightly less guilty. Slug hurling sounds quite fun but I'm not too sure of my aim. Might not go down well, if my neighbours end up getting walloped in the face with my slugs! Today I cleared loads of muck from my plot. I pulled out all the branches that had been left abandoned at the top of my plot. So my next job is to chop them into small chunks so I can burn them! Then I am going to create my wildlife pond. After that the herb garden will be planted in. Anyone got any ideas about how to improve my onions? I don't think I've watered then enough as they are very small! I think the adjacent raspberry bushes have taken over the water supply.

Evening!
spotted - I cover all my brassicas all the time - it saves a long of time and effort in the long run - firstly stops most of the cabbage whites , then stops the pigeons. First year I grew PSB, it grew through the net, and the pigeons decimated it.
cupcakes - egg scraping is good, but tedious :)
Linski - have your onions been in long? I don't grow them but my next door plot does- the necks have flopped over, which shows they are finished growing and ready to harden off for storing.
I was busy today, so only managed to dash to the plot to pick some veg for tea - French beans, peas at last and broccoli.
Then went back much later to water squashes and courgettes,( picked 2- one big , one quite large!) and do some quick hoeing. Picked my last strawberries as well - shall uncover and let the birds have the rest.
Glad to say the squashes are getting so they are starting to cover the ground as a good weed suppressant. And lots are setting on the crown prince - the butternut are just a bit behind.

Hmm, no floppy necks yet, I planted them around the middle of May as tiny onions. They have obviously grown but I just expected them to be bigger? In my rush to plant I didn't keep notes on what exactly I was planting. My shallots have just started bending over (I planted them at the same time) so I have hoiked up a couple of sets to dry out. They look fab so I will use them for coq au vin next week. I will hang on in there and keep watching the tops to see if anything happens.

agoodbook the marestail is merely growing around the big leaves on my squashes and pumpkins. They're not quite acting as the weed suppressant I'd hoped for - or maybe they are and the weeds would be worse if they weren't there!

Linski my onions have begun to flop over which means they won't grow any bigger. The quality of the soil will make a difference to how they've grown. We gave my daughter a couple to put in her part of the plot and they've done much better size wise than the rest which are probably in poorer soil. My plot neighbour told me that to get them bigger you need to feed them - this is what the champion onion growers do apparently.

We got enough french beans off the plants in pots in the back garden for our tea. And the runner beans are suddenly ready. I realised this on Tuesday - the first ones were quietly sitting there just waiting to be picked!

Evening!
cedar - I don't want to worry you- but did you hear Sundays GQT about horsetail? Miners underground came across the roots.......
Well, it was blackcurrant picking day today - hard going, much harder than redcurrants - but was happy, managed to get most of them in the pots -poor DH dropped his (luckily not full! ) and we ended up with about 4-5lbs. And picked the other redcurrant bush - not many on, about 1lb. That ones coming out this winter I think.
Finished unleashing the peas from under netting and putting up chicken wire around them ( a little late for some of them, but the peas don't care ).
Put tiles underneath all my little crown prince squashes - we counted 8 so far, and picked another courgette - tomorrows tea now!
until the runner beans start to need picking, ( just starting to set now) and a bit of everyday harvesting, I have a very necessary window of weeding opportunity.... :)

Thanks cedar, I have been rubbish at feeding my veg. I've spent all my time planting but not factored in the feeding. But next year I will be wiser so things may be better then. I'm going to dig lots of compost in at the end of the growing season. I'm going to soil test all my beds next week so I will have an idea what ph they are. My tomatoes have started ripening though which is excellent!

Is everyone else rained off this weekend? SO much rain, and wind too.
We had a brief break from the rain yesterday at dusk, and the garden looked very much quenched -so much better for it! But now it's hammering it down again, and gusting about everywhere. I've picked lots of tomatoes from the garden. And admired my blackcurrant jam pots, and made a cake with the jar that wasn't quite full.

I bought some more mesh yesterday so am all poised to raise up the height of the covering on my kale. I think I'll end up covering all my brassicas too. Not only do we have lots of cabbage whites suddenly, but also againt the constant hordes of fat pigeons.

Afternoon!
spotted - the joy of your own jam, and tomatoes :)
no rain here for ages - really dry -its forecast for this afternoon and tomorrow- I really hope so!
So I have spent all morning weeding , then picked peas/beetroot/french beans/carrots/potatoes and my first picking of summer cabbage - hopefully enough not just for tonight but tomorrow as well ( we have 8 for tea tonight)
Just about on top of the weeding, though I do have to get DH to do a good strimming session as well. My compost/weed bin is a towering heap, in danger of collapse!
I must sit down, soon and work out next years plan , so I am up on where all the overwintering stuff is going, and sow some spring greens, which I had planned on doing last week -where did that time go?
Its still July, but it feels like autumn- I noticed we have a warning for cold on Wednesday/Thursday nights . Ah well :)

Ooh - I have ordered mustard as a green manure to sow on the area my potatoes have been. I think I can sow, grow and dig in before winter, when I can then mulch.
Linski - its all in the soil, and feeding with compost is by far the best, along with rotted manure, chicken pellets etc.

I've been rained off today. I went down to pick my berries and empty the slug traps once I finished heaving I refilled them and returned them. I thinned out my swedes and my turnips. My runner beans are a disaster. Clearly planted too late, most are dead but two are growing. one has set flowers which has puzzled me because the plant is tiny! I will hang on and see what happens. I gave my plants their seaweed Sunday dinner then I made my way to the gate. When I got there, there was a letter that had been left in a plastic sleeve. It said, "free 6 x 6 greenhouse buyer collects" I rang and low and behold, I now have a greenhouse! Woo hoo! I'm so pleased. I'm now googling the best way to remove and resite the greenhouse. I will keep you all posted. I'm so pleased especially as tomorrow is my birthday!