Allotment /Veg patch thread 4 "Lettuce and Peppers and Pears OH MY!"

[agoodbook]

as per Cupcakes :)
come and join in the harvest !

previous thread here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening/2386388-The-2015-Allotment-Veg-Patch-Thread-Part-3-already?msgid=55842529

DD and I harvested two more sweetcorn, runner beans, more courgettes (one of which she has adopted as a pet) and at her insistence some rhubarb, though I'm not sure if that's a good idea at this time of year. Oh and a handful of spuds, need to try and get the rest out now too. And more weeding.

Hoping to get a bit of free time towards the end of the week and go up there (my two jobs only amount to 18 hours a week including travel, but have to be squeezed into school hours which doesn't leave a lot of spare time. I also have to fit in three hospital appts at a hospital 40 mins drive away this week for eczema patch testing . Ironically my eczema has completely cleared up in the last week or so.

I checked my sweetcorn , but decided they were not quite ready - so they need to hurry up!
One of my NDN was picking squashes as its going to rain this week, but I am holding on for a bit longer I think, the stalks are still not totally 'corky'.
Poor you for eczema -its maddening the way the body does this to you

Evening!
hope everyone is well.
Rain all day just about, but managed to go and pick runner beans/purple french beans , courgettes /sprouting broccoli and raspberries.
Just had an email to say my shallots and garlic have been dispatched, bit sooner than they said :)

Been stuck in all day with the rain here, too, though DH went up to our fields and came back with some parasol mushrooms for breakfast :)

I've been bottling tomatoes, sorting apples and making damson jam with dd, so nice jobs for a rainy day!

Lovely Sadik - I have been roasting a melange of tomatoes/shallots/garlic and courgettes for pasta sauce and baked courgette brownies and courgette and cheese muffins. My DH had been speaking to a neighbouring plotter today while we were there, and said our courgettes hadn't done so well this year. Having no idea I had 6 courgettes waiting to be cooked today, he gladly accepted another 3 ! :)

evening folks
been at work today- it rained all day, and I am now wondering how many more beans ( and weeds) this has encouraged . Glad I picked raspberries yesterday.
My aubergine has gone on strike I think- not gone dark purple, not got any fatter, but just sat there. Its getting colder and darker, so may have to bite the bullet and just pick it - it looks like a pinky/purple cucumber. Think I will have to start them off earlier next year...

Morning all,
Mu total effort this week has been confined to picking blackberries in the garden and making a blackberry and apple cake (apples courtesy of NDN). Even if I had had time to go to the allotment it has rained a lot and having the skin test patches on my back has been more restrictive than I realised. I was given strict instructions to minimise all upper body movement to stop them dislodging, so no bending, stretching etc. Uncomfortable and irritating. Anyway they come off today.

astime - that sounds both painful and very trying to the patience. I'm glad you can get back to normal soon.

I've grabbed a window of dryness and just got back from the plot. And OK, OK, I am willing to admit, I may have overdone it on the runner bean plants. This is just one week's worth in the picture. Everybody is getting homemade chutney for Christmas. AND I MEAN EVERYBODY! If anyone else has recipes for chutneys, sauces etc made with runners please please please let me know!

I am so impressed with kohl rabi. It is very beautiful to look at - a really vivid purple. And seems to be loving the wet, cold weather. I will definitely do more next year.

The plasters are gone! I am free to bend and stretch again. Unfortunately it's been raining all day though.

Shove - I made this recently, it made 9 jars and is reminiscent of picallilli. Hasn't totally matured yet but is nice. bean and mustard pickle

Good that the plasters are off now, Time - hope the tests help you sort out your eczema and feel better soon.

Guess what - it's raining here too! It rained yesterday, the day before that, and at the weekend too. But it stopped for a bit this morning, and I also dashed to the plot.

My harvest wasn't as impressive as Shove's, but I did manage to get some more french beans - the big plant is producing still, and the dwarf ones are now too. Also some more tomatoes, apples, a courgette, some little gem squash and... ... my first corn. Which will be for tea.

I was a bit worried about my arch as it's been really windy here too, and the arch is so heavy and thick with squash plant that it could easily go over. And I'm still worried about blight, although actually it's turned quite chilly in the past day or 2.

Oddly, some creature has dug a big hole in the bed that I am slowly putting fruit plants in. The bed had been manured, and I also put bone meal into the planting hole (although as a veggie I think I'm being a hypocrite here and want to find an alternative). But the creature hasn't actually dug up the plant, just dug a hole, and there's no ahem, offering in there either. It looks awful now as there is mud all over the path, the gassy path that my neighbour must have kindly mowed the other day. Kindly, or they are commenting that I'm too messy? Eek.

Evening
AsTime - hope the tests help .
shove - your plot looks amazing, so pretty and structured :) And bountiful as well! (Though I did think on first view that you had managed to grow bananas !)
Spotted - rabbits, or does another plotter have a dog they bring with them?
I will be embarking on mixed veg pickle for the first time. I did try piccalilli a couple of years ago, but wasn't best pleased with it. I now have a recipe book for jam /pickle/chutney which has proved very good, so I am going to use the recipe in there, but its a mix, not just beans. I cant link as its an old Marguerite Patten , but I can certainly write it out if you would like? I noticed on Gardeners World last week, they showed the WI making pickled runner beans .
It rained all yesterday, and today has been beautiful, but wasn't able to get there today - just too many important things to do. And I have DGS tomorrow,( also going to be a nice day) so it will be Friday before I get there , and probably a jungle....

AsTime - hope that the tests help them to help you.
Shove - fabulous crop of beans. This isn't a chutney recipe but we've been eating a fish tray bake dish where you basically pile loads of beans in a dish put in pine nuts, a bit of oil, then put fish fillets on top, chopped up pancetta/bacon around it and cook in the oven for about 15 - 20 minutes. It uses up a lot of beans. (Unless you're a vegetarian in which case it will be no use at all!).
Zebra - something has been digging in my garden. No cat poo so I am thinking possibly mice or probably rats. I had a pot which had beans and lettuces in and they had bolted so I abandoned it to the slugs when we went on holiday. When we came back something had dug right down into the pot. Hopefully yours is just a neighbours dog having a look.

No allotment so far for me this week as I've been working and in the evenings its been raining. Last night it poured and poured. Might pop up there this afternoon just to see what's what. Suspect that the green manure seeds I planted just over a week ago might have all got washed away!

Ick to rats, Cedar !

The clods from my plot hole are too big for rabbits or rats, and the o ly dog that anyone brings to the plot is a geriatric old thing that finds walking a bit too much so I am ruling hose out, and guessing fox. But why wpuld a fox dig a hole and leave the bit where the bone meal actually is? So it's not a cunning fox, maybe one at the bottom of the learning curve? Actually I also saw a dropping on the site but not near my plot that I didn't recognise but wasn't cat or dog, so could have been fox having eaten lots of blackberries. Anyway....

Lovely day today, which is a bit unexpected. I have lots of errands to run but will hopefully get some gardening done at some point. I've just found a tomato plant that had snapped in the wind (at home), so I need to cut that, and recover the tomatoes somehow. I have so many that I've not been bothering to ripen the odd green one, but there are quite a few so I think they can go with a banana. I've also not bothered with any chutney this year, as I still have some from previous years 2 or 3 ago actually. And I/we don't really eat it, or pickled foods either, so I have no runner bean recipes to share. I've just been cooking and eating them, or freezing them. They'll lose their texture a bit, but that's ok. I did a lovely runner bean curry, if that's any food for thought?

Oh, having said I don't make chutney or pickle, I do make jam. And today, or soon, I might make chilli jam, as my chillies are finally doing red. I just need to buy more vinegar...

That will be going red.

bookbook - now bananas really would be an achievement! Though I do remember seeing someone gardening in/around Yorkshire who was growing them. I sort of half admire the tenacity of that type of gardener, who looks at nature and says 'I'm going to do the opposite'. It is far too much work for me, though!

Zebra - Hooray for corn! I buried some bokashi mix (sorry everyone) that hadn't completely fermented earlier in the year. And I also had a hole appear, quite a bit one too. I concluded it was a fox foraging after bits of cat food in there. It continued until the stuff had decomposed and then stopped. I wonder if the fox could smell the bones and had a good ole dig to see if you'd left any goodies in there?

Cedar - eek to rats! And that recipe sounds lovely, but unfortunately I am veggie!! However, I do like piccalilli so I will definitely be giving time's pickle a go. book - I'd love your recipe if you do get a moment to write it out, but totally understand if you're busy.

I saw the pickled beans on GW (not that I watch it or anything, you know), but my instant cheapskate reaction was "Bloody hell, that amount of sugar and apple cider vinegar doesn't come cheap!" I'm not sure I'd enjoy pickled beans enough to make it worth forking out. However, perhaps I'm just being conservative and should give a batch a go. With pickle and chutney it somehow seems more worth it because it takes a while to use up a jar! Which is probably quite counter-intuitive and silly of me, really.

Time - I'm glad you can move again. It must be a relief.

beans: there is a german recipe for beans with belly pork and pears.

it's delicious (even if you leave out the meat).

www.food.com/recipe/birnen-bohnen-und-speck-pears-beans-and-bacon-103786

apart from harvesting courgettes and toms not much going on here...

Hello everybody, hoping I can join you and hop on and off? I don't have an allotment, I have a long garden with a fairly good sized veggie patch, and I like growing things to eat! I also have an 'orchard' area at the bottom of the garden - big patch of grass with a 3 apple trees, an ancient cherry that probably needs to come down, but I'm reluctant as the blossom is lush... a pear and a plum that are small but not in a good spot (underneath a huge laurel hedge in a load of shade).

On that note, two years on the trot I've had plums coming and then overnight they've disappeared - not even a sign of stones! Anybody have any ideas?

Anyway I'm hoping to pick everyone's brains and watch to see what people start planting at this time of year, as I never seem to garden over the autumn!

Hello puffy and welcome!

An orchard? I am so jealous, or honestly love an orchard.

I blame the squirrels for your plums going missing. I blame squirrels for many things actually, and they've ad all my hazelnuts this year and lots of my pears and quince too. And the quince are big and unripe, and they're stealing them off the tree!

An old boy at the allotment told me that when squirrels stash so much, and so early, that it's a sign of a bad winter ahead....

So, that's nice.

I wish that were true! They all disappeared last year, too (after delivering an absolutely delicious batch the year before and last years winter was pants...

It is a lovely area, but it's permanently a mess, the garden drains to down there so The grass is more moss than anything else and it's dark and shady.. I'm a bit stumped really. Dh needs a manshed workshop, we need a big wood store and I'd like the trees in a better spot, so it all needs altering

I'm off to the garden centre later to look for spring veggie plugs, yippee!

Morning!
welcome puffy - glad you plucked up the courage to say hello :) not everyone on here has an allotment, thats not a requirement. And yes, ask away, there is usually someone who can give an answer.
Reading about your plums, I would agree with spotted about squirrels, once they have found a useful source of food, they don't forget.
If possible I would leave established fruit trees - are the pear and plum old and just small, or are they young? If old, I would try to attack the laurel hedge to a better size , as it sounds as if there is not a problem with being dry, but if young, then yes move if possible, but wait until the leaves have all gone and take as big a root ball as possible.
And plenty you can be planting in plugs for spring :)

Welcome Puffy I too would love to have an orchard. Even if something is stealing the plums. Most likely to be squirrels. If it was birds you'd have the stones.

Quick pop over to my allotment yesterday afternoon - pulled up a few weeds in passing. My winter green manure has germinated (well I hope that's what it is!). Its rye and vetch so I must look for pictures of the seedlings later on.

Picked a few more sweetcorn, but something has been nibbling so left one or two to be completely nibbled.

My squash plants are dying back so think I will have to harvest regardless. I grew Queensland blue because my friend gave me some seeds and out of the three plants that survived the slugs I've got three squashes coming. Not sure whether I should have expected more to come but they were shoved into an area that we dug last minute and hadn't put much in the way of nutrients into it so that may be why. They're not very big either, again I don't know if that's their size or the rubbish ground. My friend tells me she's not had success with butternut squashes but I notice someone else has grown them and seem to be coming on well. I do have seeds from my accidental over ordering earlier in the year so I will try those next year.

Hello, another non allotmenter here. Growing in our very thin but long garden.Started a veg plot when we first moved in but have admitted defeat on that as it's at the very end of the garden and a bugger to water. So I'm digging a new one nearer the house.

Hooray! Welcome new peeps!

I add another x1 to the orchard envy.

I went on Rightmove today and found a farmhouse that was falling to bits but had 10 acres. 10 ACRES! I immediately started planning a gigantic garden with a massive veg plot and AN ORCHARD. I showed it to DH and apparently we can in no way afford it and it is in the middle of nowhere and the house has no roof and requires lots of very expensive building work to make it habitable and it would also be very, very cold in the winter. Some people are just discouraged by the smallest things. What are such minor setbacks when you could have an orchard?