Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 5 - The Diggers Rest !

[bookbook]

Thanks to teacuphalfempty for supplying the title .
so, its the 1st of March, the meteorological spring is here, and it's all systems go for the coming growing season. Let's hope for a good one -no pests and diseases, enough rain overnight and plenty of sunshine. Well, we can dream....

BookBook, arrgh broad bean angst!! Glad I'm not the only one! Have donre the same, bought some more seeds (broad bean express!!) and have put them in pots. Eventually dug up the ones i direct sowed and they'd done nothing! Unbelievable. The peas I sowed at the same time are through fine...

Evening!
a bit late as had visitors.
I did manage a bit of time this morning to plant the first of the leeks, and get the squash bed ready - forked over lightly, weeded and extra manure wheelbarrowed in . That was it...
I was gifted 6 spare broad bean plants! - so they will fit over the non germinated ones. And 4 cucamelons...
teacup - you hardly seem to have been here! Hope the salamanders have been doing their job! :)
Dorothy - Guernsey eh - does the climate change much being a smallish island, or being near the sea
Lulooo - mulching- anything that will break down I suspect - so straw/hay/compost/shreddings - but others may have suggestions.
Hardening off news - tonight was night 1 for beans and squashes. Read that around here, though temp shouldn't go down below 6º, wind chill would make it feel 1º - so beans went back in the greenhouse about 20 minutes ago. I left the sweetcorn out. Try again tomorrow night...
Framey - it seems to be all angst when it comes to plants. I only had one plant nibbled to death last night. I call that a (minor) victory :)
And now no plot until Wednesday - too busy

Planted out my courgettes and beans yesterday - and tackled some of the weeds on the path. In our contract, we have to keep the public paths around each plot weed free. It's a pain, because the council has just put down a few stones over earth, so as you can probably imagine, it's thistleorama.

I am also because half the water isn't on. I have a water butt, fortunately, but given that we're paying some of the highest rents in the country for water I'm getting sick of carting it up there!!

Grumble over!

I haven't even sown my beans yet!

I am on the early side I know! Ever since I've been growing veg (which isn't that long), Sheffield has had a godawful summer. It's not the rain so much as the lack of light - dark, overcast skies day after day after day! I ring my parents in East Anglia and they are sitting in front of fans because it's 25 degrees and sunny and here it is 18 degrees and drizzling .

So I'm keen to take advantage of the fact that we seem to be getting decent May/June weather just in case it goes a bit pear-shaped later. Also, for my own wellbeing, to get outside and soak up as much light as i can while it lasts! August here is pretty much guaranteed to be a washout.

Now I've said all that, we'll have a heatwave for 3 months!

No baby yet, alas. Doing a few bits in the garden yesterday seemed to encourage a bit of action so I'm going to step it up today.

Spotted The vine eyes refused to go into the fence - it think the slats are just too thin compared with the posts I put other ones in - so I just put in some canes and tied gardening string around my broadies a la Monty.

DD2 helpfully uncovered the potatoes I'd mounded up so I need to re-do those, and I'm going to mulch around my blackcurrant bushes and other shrub-type-things today. Might even try a bit of weeding.

One of my courgettes has sprouted! It's very exciting as I planted the seeds at least 4 weeks ago. Fingers crossed a few more will pop up in the next few days with the nice weather we're promised. It seems to be quite a warm area here - we've not had frosts since early April - so I'm very pleased about that. We've lived here a year now as of Saturday.

Quick dip in as I pretend DGS is actually asleep ( he is singing Old MacDonald rather loudly.....)
Maybe the difference in beans is pot sown, against direct in the soil?
Of course, it wasn't that bad last night, so the beans , squashes and courgetteswill be left out from now on.
Everything else is starting to get a bit big in the pots, so really hope to get some planting done on Wednesday/Thursday.
Only slug damage was to some cosmos- also waiting to be planted out..
Grouchy - take it steady!
Forgot to say - if anyone is still wanting a fruit bush , I was in Wilkos on Friday - they had named redcurrant/blackcurrant/gooseberry bushes at £4

Hello all, may I join you? I got an allotment 6 weeks ago and am finding this thread very enlightening!

I seem to be on clay soil with motherloads of stones (flint); DS1 is doing sterling work as the Stone Collector but he'll be off to college before he finishes clearing it (he's 5) I'm in the south east, on a relatively warm site on a gently inclined hill.

So far I've planted French beans (all of which have been aggressively slugged so onto 2nd sowing), carrots, peppers (bought plants), broccoli and pumpkins. Has anyone noticed that slugs don't seem keen on peppers or pumpkins?

I have a general question: you all talk about these lovely exotic sounding berries, but did you actually have a chance to try them before growing them? I have no idea where I'd go to find a jostaberry or a tayberry what are they like in comparison to more mainstream berries?

And has anyone tried Earth Matters Slug Blocker gel? It has no listed ingredients what on earth is in it?!

Hello contessa! The slugs around here certainly seem fond of beans. Last year it took me four lots of sowing to get any going, I finally succeeded by using beer traps. They were even climbing the bean poles! As you say, never had trouble with peppers or pumpkins (or my hydrangea, unlike someone on another thread).

Re berries: I only knew what a jostaberry was like because my mum grows them (she gave me the plant). Maybe somebody else at your allotment site will have one you can try?

Welcome Contessa!

I'm growing jostaberries - well, trying to. I don't think I'll get any fruit this year, alas, as the plant is quite new. And nope, I've never tried one, but I read that they're a cross between blackcurrants which are my favourite, and gooseberries which I also love, so I am sure they'll be delicious. If they ever fruit. And I bought tayberry plants without having tried one of them, but they turned out to be amazing!

Evening!
and welcome Contessa
you will start to find that vegetable growing is a fight to the death against pests, diseases and weather .
Sounds like quite a good mix - clay for nutrients and stones for drainage!
Jostaberry - we had our first proper harvest of them last year. They look like a larger blackcurrant, and mostly taste of blackcurrant, but with an undercurrent ( :) ) of gooseberry
Tayberry - a cross between raspberry and blackberry - looks like a longer, slimmer version of a raspberry, more wine coloured, with a lovely flavour. I have a loganberry also, but the blackbirds got to them before we did last year, so only had a few to try. Almost wine like, and perfumed .
I think i am rather lucky at the plot - being chalk and flint, the slugs are still there, but not so prevalent on the beans and such - much more of a problem with potatoes. ( All fingers and toes crossed for this year) And all my neighbours spend a fortune on slug pellets , so maybe they all go to their plots to die?
Are you growing peppers outside? - mine are in the greenhouse....And no, there is not much bothers with pumpkins I am glad to say - a bonus definitely!

Hmm, I like the sound of tayberries!

Although the slugs are ignoring my small pumpkin plants, they are besotted by the trombocinos and courgettes. Make of that what you will

I do have the peppers outside; it's pretty warm down here! I figured that I'd do well to choose produce that doesn't need constant watering, as it's away at the allotment and I can only get there twice a week.

I have an extra problem in that I'm vegan; I tried slug pellets out of desperation and the rigid little bodies are lying there reproaching me all that mucus too. It just looks grim. I don't mind buying shares in copper tape if it means avoiding seeing that again....

Its really nice to beable to source as much of your diet from things home grown, and even more so as a vegan I guess.
Take into account you are on a gentle hill. Things that need more water, try to have at the bottom of the hill, and things that can cope better with less water at the top.
I have become very hard with slug and snail sleuthing - snails get thrown on my garage flat roof, slugs get chopped in half !

Lacontessa - That's an interesting dilemma. I have a great amount of sympathy for your views (I try to reduce my dairy consumption but lack the moral fibre to go fully vegan, though perhaps I will work up to it one day!).

My experience with growing things has also been that it is sometimes a case of 'either you pellet, or you lose everything'. I would possibly make an argument that when we buy lettuce, courgettes etc from the supermarket, we are simply side-stepping the issue of pesticide use and ignoring the fact that the food we've bought depends upon it - whereas when we grow ourselves we can at least make a decision about how much we use, as well as avoiding broadcast methods of chemicals.

I'm thinking through the ethics of it, and I guess your solution depends on how you approach the issue. One solution is to use nematodes instead on the grounds that it's pitting nature against nature, and they're already in the soil, so perhaps less likely to cause damage to wider ecosystems. Another is beer traps. A further idea might be to use ferric slug pellets under quite strict netting so you limit their impact on wildlife. This has been what I've done so far - I try never to use them in the open. But having done a little bit of amateur sleuthing on this, I'm sort of thinking nematodes and beer traps might be altogether more ecofriendly.

I don't know about others, but I find that there are sensitive periods for slug attack. Once I have got plants big and strong enough, they seem to fend them off much better. It's in the first weeks when they're tiny and delicate that they get massacred. I start off a lot of stuff in my greenhouse at home and then plant it out and this seems to reduce it. Of course, you can't do it with things that don't like being moved, like carrots - I haven't managed to get any of mine to germinate this year, and I suspect it's bastard slugs!!

slugs - you could try a wildlife pond. i've started one this year. its a washing up bowl dug into the ground, filled with rain water, some water plants and large stones so things can climb out. The tadpoles are just getting legs now - so hopefully loads of frogs (though apparently they will die if they eat anything impregnated with slug pellets)

I must admit I have already resorted to nematodes, as a result of reading about them here it doesn't feel like quite as much of a perversion of vegan values if you use biological rather than chemical warfare, weirdly. DH gives me face when I say that (he's a happy carnivore) so I know the logic is flawed but sod it! I do also pick the snails off and fling them, or transport to an area of the garden which they are welcome to devour.

I would love a shallow pond in future, when the kids can be relied upon to not drown in it. Providing a home for the natural predators of slugs is surely just biological warfare by any other name plus I like frogs.

It is lovely growing your own veg - even DH likes them with a nice side of meat! He doesn't get the gardening aspect but appreciates that it gives me an immense amount of joy, so we muddle along.

do nematodes work for snails as well?
I have loads of both and am afraid if I kill one off the other will have a big party.
but so far I havd been lucky with using pellets when planting out and as soon as the plants get going slugs/snails are not a problem anymore.

On the Nemaslug website it says: 'Nemaslug will kill snails, but is not particularly effective due to the snail's life cycle. I would not recommend using Nemaslug for snail control. However if Nemaslug gets into a pond it may kill water snails. Keep application 15cm from the edge of ponds.'

Evening!
only time I have had today- just gone and watered everything, despite promising myself I would start watering in a morning to not help the slugs. I have lost one borlotti bean, 3 cosmos plants and have a badly nibbled dahlia.
But news from the greenhouse- I have 2 teeny tiny tomatoes on my Sungold cherry tomato , and a flower bud on each of my aubergines.
So all in all, not unhappy tonight.
On slug thoughts - maybe it could work, but I straw around my strawberries, and it seems to work - do you think it would work around the base of beans- just a thought....

Boo to more slug damage, booky
But yay to baby tomatoes! You're ahead of me as I only have (a very few) flowers.

No gardening for me today, apart from the carrying about of tomatoes assorted plants as they get hardened-off. Am planning a big plant put at the weekend - french beans, my poxy few borlotti that the slugs left, courgettes, squash, and many, many tomatoes.

My chillies are only about 2 inches tall. They were crap this year, and v probably won't come to anything, so maybe I'll have to chuck them and actually buy some plants

I didn't do peppers, or aubergines this year. Or tomoatillos or cucamelon! In fact I don't seem to have grown many things - apart from tomatoes and cucurbits. And my lovely fruit. What else can I grow outside that's new and exciting?

Not a root, not a brassica (have got broccoli raab and cavolo nero readying), not a bean, nor a squash. What's left? I really don't have much room...

Did anybody see the article on BBC news about this probably being a really awful year for slugs? Wondering if there's any point even trying with the beans tbh.

I had 2 lovely looking dahlias and a hosta but DH threw a scaffolding board on top of them and snapped most of the leaves off. so if it's not one pest it's another!!

Spotted not a root... Not a brassica... Not a bean... Not a squash... That's pretty much everything isn't it? Erm... Lettuce?

Grouchy hope you're not too uncomfortable. Or have even had the baby! I hope you will be naming him / her in keeping with our Year of Fruit theme.

I did see that about slugs Cupcakes - depressing eh? all due to a mild winter not killing the little *
mmm Spotted new and exciting and not on that list rather limits the options. I'm stumped - there is daikon and things like pakchoi I guess. Jerusalem artichokes? My (sadly not exciting) thing is celery... but I know you don't like that!
Now, hoping to plant up my cutting flower area later this week - I have lots of 'mixed' annuals in white and yellow, then I have dwarf sunflowers, scabious, cleome, asters, cosmos. Should I plant them in blocks, or just wildly plant willy nilly? ( rather like last year....in a rush)

I can't keep up with the thread!

Thank you Luloo for the digging tips, that makes sense. I dig little and often as I have to take care of myself (I have prolapses and a bad back), so I tend to turn over about half a dozen forkfuls of grassy soil, then kneel down and de-root it all with hands and a hand fork. Leaving the clods for a day or two seems sensible, I don't think sieving will work though, it dries like concrete round the roots and teasing them out by hand seems to be the only answer, it's satisfying, if slow.

I've been to the plot three times today, but only about an hour in total. Firstly to water my seedlings and do a little digging this morning after dropping DD at school next door, then back with a bale of straw to put under my strawberries before picking her up again, and then half an hour this evening, more digging. Oh and I have mulched my onions as per Doreens suggestion.

Cupcakes - that's exactly the sort of thing my DH would do . He strimmered and killed two of my three lavender plants last year and I found my remaining red cabbages in the compost bin a few weeks ago.

Hardening off is coming along nicely, I'm hoping to get a few things planted out over the weekend, climbing beans, courgettes, sweetcorn, sunflowers, cosmos, tomatoes, all raring to go. I went to the garden centre on Sunday and bought some plug plants - cucamelons, a few herbs and, oh I can't remember what else. We too are blessed with a garden centre with reasonably priced plug plants for just about every sort of vegetable.

Are you all putting your tomatoes out too now? Or waiting a little while longer? Or not putting them outdoors at all and keeping them in the open?