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....

Can I just warn you all not to lean over bamboo canes as you push them into the ground? Because if they snap, you end up with a bruised boob. Bloody lucky I didn't lose an eye!!

whoknows best of luck with the exam! I did on last October (work related. Somehow I thought doing an HND equivalent in 5 days would be a good idea...) and actually the worst thing I found was physically writing for such a long time. With a pen! On PAPER!

My pumpkins also have yellow leaves at the bottom. They always do. I thought it was normal! they always recover though.

Just spent an hour dodging the rain. Finally got everything ready to put my beans in tomorrow. Slug defences in place so crossing my fingers I'll actually get a harvest this year.

My middle cropping blueberry has failed dismally this year. The plants that should crop in July have lots of berries. The September ones have lots of flowers. The August one...nada. I guess we must have had a cold snap at the wrong time. It's also started growing from the root, the leaves look completely different to the main plant. Does anybody know if blueberries are grafted? If so presumably I need to cut off the growth from the rootstock.

DH has the whole weekend off so I'm hoping to have some decent gardening time. We shall see...

Thanks bookbook, I was thinking I'd feed them as a general cure-all but I may also be over-watering; I fret that they'll dehydrate and so might have gone the other way also thanks to cupcakes, that is comforting!

By the way, I was wrangling a strawberry net (all I had at the time, don't you judge me) to be a tiny temporary net for my brassicas when I noticed my allotment neighbours fling a large-yet-fine-mesh luxurious sturdy-looking sort of net over their array of bamboo poles and hosepipes. Where can I acquire a fine net of this sort? I assume online is cheaper?

DH keeps promising to get me some scaffolding net for my brassicas. Very fine but incredibly strong. Could that be what they have? If so, eBay is the place to get it, apparently.

also called debris netting?
I bought butterfly netting for brassica cages on line. Paid a bit more to get it to last a few years , and its on year 4 so far :)

btw ^ouch* Cupcakes !

Yes that's the stuff. Just had a quick look on eBay and you can get a 1m X 50m roll for £17.99 with free p&p. DH reckons it's pretty robust so should last a few years.

yes, I read on a gardening forum about it, after I had bought the expensive butterfly netting ! :)

dont think 1m would be wide enough though- you need to cover to the ground, over hoops etc

I guess you could always get 1m x 50m and cut it to size, then tie sections together? Bit of a ballache mind you.

Scaffolding netting, eh? the 'Oh we'll save so much money growing our own vegetables darling' line of argument grows weaker by the day

It comes in different widths! The debris netting, I mean.

So, my Plant-Out started today, with a whimper as I was feeling a bit poorly. A couple of courgettes, and my purple beans, which meant I had to erect a cane wigwam too. Oh, and I took the cover off of my big bed, 'my best bed', that had been covered all winter, and had had c. 5cm of much applied. Er, it's still very very clayey. Darn.

Tomorrow - the tomatoes. And more courgettes. And more weeding.

I dont understand the ones who say it saves money, at least, not when you first get going. Compost, seeds, bamboos, pots :). It does get cheaper by the year as you get a stock of things, but it takes time . I look out at car boots, auctions, am on a gardening fb page and share/swap things. But it is joyous to eat really fresh veg, and it does eventually become no more expensive. We grow a lot of soft fruit, which is never cheap, we just eat more of it because of that!

oh no Spotted on Bank Holiday weekend too. Hope you feel better soon.
We are all planting out ! Snap with the courgettes.
I just have to finish about 3 metres of tying netting down, and the brassica cage is ready to go too

On the subject of netting, I used a length of Enviromesh over wire hoops over my brassicas last year and was really pleased with it, which is just as well because it's not cheap. The mesh is really fine, so not only does it keep out pests but plants can't grow through it, so it doesn't get all tangled up and it was very easy to unpeg and lift repeatedly for weeding, harvesting etc (I had red cabbages, so I was lifting and harvesting one at a time, as well as sprouting brocolli). I'm hoping it lasts a few years.

Scorchio here today, but I was at DS's school fro Sports Day for most of it and when I got home I had a headache, so all I have done is water everything (plants at home and the allotment). I need to get up to the plot this weekend with the strimmer and give it a good going over, plus more digging, but am going to have to ration my time.

Cupcakes - a whole HND in 5 days?! . YY to worrying about writing for a whole three hours with pen and ink, no cut and paste, the horror!

Sorry to hear about allergies, bamboo stabbings, general aches, pains and feeling unwell amongst you all. Hoping the weekend finds improvements all round.

To be fair we had lots of pre reading before hand, and it was related to my job, so the week of classroom time was basically going through exam prep. Still hard work there! Passed by the skin of my teeth thank goodness.

Re: the scaffolding net - I don't have a huge amount of space for my brassicas so 1m width will be fine for me. Lots of different widths available though.

I'm going to get my beans in today.

With scaffolding netting, check whether it has a hole in the middle! Many do, because that's where they tie them onto the scaffolding poles - I didn't realise this when I ordered. I use it for brassicas and it's been OK so far, but I go for enviromesh for my roots (carrot fly!!)

Apparently, you can get it for free from a building site one they are done if you ask nicely!!

Get well soon Zebra! And whoknows - how on earth do you fit it all in?! Amazing. I am in awe of cupcake's 5-day HND as well.

Hi (waves shyly)
Newbie allotmenteer here could I please join in?

Hello mog! Come on in! We're very friendly. If a little fruit-obsessed. And accident prone

Yay! A new member! Hi mo!

Hello, mog and welcome! What are you growing, and (roughly) where are you?

Cupcakes -congrats!

thanks for the lovely welcome!
In East Lancashire. Growing potatoes, onions and weeds at the moment. Took plot over in November last year and it had been neglected to say the least. Only problem we have is that the previous tenant who was evicted lives next to the plot and tends to wander through (no fence) and have a good nosy any suggestions on lovely prickly fast growing plants to keep him out?

So, talking of fruit (yes!), it appears that I ought to have protected my redcurrants. As they have yet to ripen but have mostly been stripped from the bush.

And one of my blackcurrants is very illing, due to extreme greenfly. There are also ladybirds on it, so I don't think I'll do anything to it, other then hope that they don't spread to the other bushes.

Oh no, an interfering evictee - that's awful, mog. That is the type of thing that would dent my enthusiasm pretty fast.

firethorn
brambles
my parents have put up firethorn around the house after they were burgled. they prove pretty effective.

Zebra (sorry I don't know how to do names in bold ) I've not seen him but dh has. He tried to sell us the shed but it was already ours as he hadn't cleared the plot in time. It's now blown down in all the storms so we're breaking it up and using it as bed edging.
Firethorn? Thanks greenmarkerpen I'll look into that today

The Great Plant Out Day today.