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....

Hi everyone. You're all so busy! I hope my garden gets to that level next year.

Welcome, mog.

We've got fairly nice weather here today after a few days of beautiful rain so the baby and I are just about to go outside to do some weeding. DH has taken the older girls to the beach & it's lovely and peaceful.

started my second batch of comfrey juice today. the first one is ready to go stinking out the shed im a watering can to be diluted when needed.

I am in awe of all the industry; shamefully I must admit to a lazy day today for the first time ever, digging doesn't appeal!

It's ok, garden pottering is happening.

How can I get comfrey? Do you need to grow it yourself or can it be bought?

Blimey! So many new posts. Wonders if we might have been in ‘Trending’? Going to read through everything, meantime here’s a bit of post I prepared ealier:

Made it back in one piece, early hours of Tuesday morning (despite the French fuel thing). After a good nights sleep and after waiting for a break in the rain I went out to review the situation.

#Slugs and Snails. I’m sorry but I’ve been far too generous with my salamanders and have to invoke a salamander recall :

Courgettes; three out of six remain
Butternut squash; not even a trace of where the three of them were
Coriander; whoopee - just overhalf of the plants remain
Seedlings - various (which I had to plant out because they weren’t otherwise going to survive) gone.
Purple Teepee beans; you will recall (!won’t you) that three had emerged from the ground before I left. I have no idea how many subsequently made it to the light, but now there are none. N.B under an arch of bird netting - so can’t blame them. (Could be voles coming up from under.)

Not all bad news because:

Garlic; you know tennis balls? Well that’s how mahoossive they are
Potatoes; looking good and healthy
Tomatoes, peppers and aubergines; all surviving weird weather outside
Runner beans; good progress (must eat the last of last years’ from the freezer!)
Broad beans: flowering and happy, bit of blackfly
Radishes; weren’t gorne over as I thought they might be
Beetroot; well the five that were there have survived. No more have emerged.
Raspberries; There are going to be l o a d s (ditto re eating last years’/freezer)
Oranges; There is blossom. There will be oranges. It wasn’t happy in the pot, much happier in the ground.

The grass is very long. Have started mowing in stages - can only do 1/3 width of the lawnmower at a time.

Something’s been digging up some of my replanted dahlias.

(Back tomorrow when I’ve caught up )

comfrey is a weed for most people it grows everywhere and is a self seeding bugger.
you can also use nettles, borage, alkanet to make stinky green fertiliser.

Evenning!
house move 1 achieved- DD1 is now installed, kitchen tidy, fed everyone, bed made, basically habitable...and breathe....:)
Hello and welcome mog ! East Lancashire you say - bit damp?. Re ex plot holder, thats annoying, but maybe a trellis with a loganberry, or a row of raspberries might work, depending on which direction sun is. I do like a barrier to be productive :)
I also like enviromesh. I was incredibly lucky or inherit some when I took over shed and extra plot - really works against just about everything so far. I daren't look to see how much it is though.
I popped into my greenhouse to water before I left this morning, and blow me , 2, yes 2 crown prince squashes have germinated, from the second sowing. So I now will have spare - typical!
Its looking good for tomorrow, so hoping to plant out also.
teacup- glad yo got back safe , munched to death eh? so the salamanders are just not pulling their weight . I squelched about 10 slugs this morning, all hiding under and around stuff. I am cutting them in half and laying them out as offerings. I do have a thrush coming and trying to help, so I thought he may like some pre-prepared
WhoKnows - reading that makes me tired - surely there are not enough hours for all that?

Grouchy - thats lovely, you must be made of steel , and good for getting them trained up early!
LaContessa - if you are going to but comfrey seed, its best to get the Bocking one - its sterile, so doesn't seed everywhere. Sorry not sure which - maybe 4 or 14

Ooh, thank you book! I've googled it and must admit I don't recognise the plant, so not much hope of finding it as a weed. I have had borage around before so might consider using that.

In truth LaContessa , you can drown any of your weeds in a bucket, and do much the same. Put them in a net, leave under the water for 2-4 weeks, then take out the net. Dilute the liquid to look like weak tea. :)

bookbook, could I pull up all my dandelions and dock leaves by the roots and chuck them into the water butt to 'marinate' and then use that instead of comfrey?

or is that a really silly question?

Morning!
Lulooo - I would put in a separate container to your main water butt tbh , and make sure no dandelion seeds get in there, but yes. I just checked on the site I read about this, and its 5-6 weeks they advise, rather than the 2-3 weeks from my faulty memory!
it was this site I saw it on
www.greenlifesoil.com.au/sustainable-gardening-tips/liquid-fertiliser

Afternoon!
Quite pleased- got a bit done this morning. Did finish the brassica cage and so planted out the first lot of sprouts and sprouting broccoli. Planted out celery, some scabious and cleome into the flower bit, and did a tiny bit of weeding. That will be it until Thursday.
It was warm and sunny :)
Spotted - your poor redcurrants... thats just so disheartening - it happened to me the first year I had any, but they had started to ripen , so my fault. But to take them when not ripe is just not fair!

afternoon.
I have a question on shrub hibiscus.
I stole dome twigs took some cuttings a winter ago and since they started showing growth they are in 5l pots.
they are growing really well now and I suspect the pots are getting too small. can I re-pot them now? and how big a pot should they go in?

Evening!
GreenMarker - well done for having magic fingers! If they are in a pot, I really cant see the problem in repotting at this time. If they are growing well, I think I may risk going up two pot sizes, as you have all summer for them to grow into them. You can always do the trick of getting the new bigger pot, putting enough compost in the bottom to bring the plant up to the right level in the pot, then putting the plant still in its pot inside, and filling around the pot. Then, take pot out, tap out plant, and replant in the ready made , right size hole . Does that make sense?
Well, this afternoon it was pottering. I am pleased though - my second sowing of basil has germinated, thank goodness, and blow me, some red cos lettuce I had sown ages ago have just popped up as well. Lets hear it for being too busy to bin them , which I would normally have done after 4 weeks... :) Must remember to sow some more spinach and beetroot for succession - going to do those in plugs as well .

Evening! No gardening for me today as I was still cream crackered from my mammoth planting day on Sat. I planted out loads of tomatoes and courgettes. Er, and that's it. I still need to erect my arches, and get some squash in. And a few more beans. And then fill in the gaps with tomatoes varied and interesting things.

I had a few tomatoes that got utterly frosted a month or so back. I threw the worst ones out, but kept others to see what happens. They seem to be alive... I have planted 4 of them out, but am now kicking myself as that could have been space given over to a surer thing, tomato-wise.

My planting-out really was tiring! My soil is the absolute opposite of friable. It's either hard as a rock, or as yesterday, it is like quicksand/sucky mud stuff.

I have to use a spade to lever out a big bit, which comes out with a big noise. Then put the tomato in, then break my clay lump up into smaller splats by hand, and then shove them down around the plant. Patting and pushing the splats in, but trying to get the right balance of firmness but not hurting the roots or leaving too many holes. So much for 'just fill in the hole'. I can actually see the layers of organic materials throughout my clay. It's very odd.

By the way, did I mention I am on clay?

Got to the plot for the first time in 2 weeks (in my defence the raised beds in the garden are looking good). The good news is that the weeded raspberry bed looks OK. The strawberry bed had a lot of weeds (gone now!). But the bigger bed we weed killered is now growing weeds again. And I'd need a mattock to dig it (imagine soil with the texture of chalk but the clump like properties of clay - no organic structure to it at all). So we put weed mat over a bit - but didn't gave enough bricks to do it all (plus it's rather bumpy because I started trying to dig it a month ago). I hope to get back tomorrow with 30 bricks to weight it down.

Bit depressing. But I found a pile of grass clippings which I put around the fruit bushes, covered with soil improver and watered well. Hope that works....

Busy so far this weekend with other necessary stuff... But got home with dcs around 6pm, handed over to dh, and had a blissful couple of hours alone in the garden with the Archers podcasts to catch up on.

I have refresh-dug my pristine raised bed, and taken a deep breath to plant big seedlings. Climbing French green beans, yellow and purple bush beans and red kale have gone in. Have re-arranged some of the huge amount of strawberries that have reproduced themselves since last year. TLC for some chard has been frozen in time since last autumn and is now shooting up.
Still haven't planted the willow - it is amazing stuff and is shooting and rooting all over despite me only unwrapping and putting in water yesterday. Definitely planting it tomorrow, ahem!
Tomatoes, chillies, aubergines, gherkin, yellow and red peppers and 1 lone courgette doing well in greenhouse. Brussels sprouts recovering from being pricked out. 2 lone pumpkins not sure whether they are going to progress. Need to sow more curcurbits as love them and would really like squash to store.
4/5 Autumn-fruiting rasps from last year doing well (1 looks dead), as is a redcurrant and all the fruit trees. Blackcurrant jungle out of control, but no shortage of fruit for us and bird population of rural Staffordshire by the look of it.
2 more raised beds to de- weed tomorrow, 1 filled with nettles and bramble roots, the other with what I have just realised is couch grass, surrounding the rasps.
I am hoping to get th dcs to help tomorrow, and finish with more strimming.

Hope you all get some gardening time on this lovely Bank Holiday.

(Grouchy, you should be reclining in the garden feeding your new baby and dozing in the sun, I think, instead...!

Zebra - you're doing really well!

I have clay now, but it's what I'd call 'normal clay', which I now realise is what most people are talking about when they discuss clay soil. My last garden was literally just down the road from the place where they make Yorkshire Flower Pots, i.e. a clay pit. And it was a whole different level of challenge. I recognise exactly what you are saying. It's really, really difficult to get the soil going. It's either rock hard, or it's massively heavy. If I tried to dig in mine, it was literally like lifting out big huge lumps of heavy wet potting clay that would not break up.

For ages it seemed like adding loads of organic matter wasn't doing anything - and then all of a sudden, it started to break it up. One of the things I found really helpful was grit, grit and more grit combined with a mixture of rotted bark (larger chips) and compost (smaller chips) and magic gypsum, which really helped. You will get there!! Each year it will get a bit better and then all of a sudden... magic will happen!

It's hard, hard work though!! For ages I felt frustrated that the things that seemed to work for other people on clay didn't work for me. Now I realise that there is clay, and there is CLAY. Unfortunately, it sounds like you have the CLAY variety.

I've planted out half my tomatoes. I'm going for a Big Zebra-inspired Tomato Experiment this year. I have 6 in the greenhouse and 8 in the front garden (south-facing) - 3 in pots and 5 in a raised bed. And I shall put some in my allotment. Hopefully I will learn a bit more about what works doing this after last year's tomato fiasco. I have 3 main varieties: Black krim, San Marzano and Outdoor Girl.

Reporting back on the technique of digging clay over several days as suggested by Luloo. I turned over some big clumps full of grass and weeds a couple of days ago and left them to dry out. Went back last night and they were like concrete blocks with the roots well and truly trapped inside them. I think my soil is too clayey for that to work. So it's back to turning over and clearing immediately for me.

Morning!
quick dip in as have DGS here :)
Spotted - you did well, considering you are poorly! Now, you may well already be doing this, but when you plant out, can you backfill the hole with a mixture of compost and grit? So take out your clay clod, and leave it on the side, take around a bucket with nicer planting mixture with you , and put around and under the plant. That way, you are doing a small and regular addition of better stuff to the soil.
quince - got the bug now by sounds!
I lost every tomato last year , when I planted them in the garden, not the plants, just the tomatoes , so good luck shove
Well, hoping to at least do a bit of tidying in my sadly neglected garden while DGS plays out there, enjoy Bank Holiday!

Hi there,

I am seeing progress in my patch at last. The peas are reaching skyward and I sowed a second short row yesterday for august picking. The courgette plant I bought looks almost ready to flower, and the one seed I sowed myself that germinated has it's first real leaf out, so I'll plant that during the week. I also had 1 summer squash germinate (a bit behind the courgette though sown the same day). I have 2 broad bean plants in the patch, making slow progress. I sowed a bunch more seeds 2 weeks ago and a few leaves popped through over the weekend, maybe another 5 plants (we love broadies) - but the few that didn't will be spaces for my broccoli plants to go out next week.

Homegrown radishes in my salads for lunch this week - yum. Although there may be a week or so with none as the latest sowing seems to be slower to get moving than previous ones. I also had buttered leeks on Saturday night, about 40 minutes after pulling them in the garden, with fried whiting and mashed potatoes. Quite tasty!

I am very upset though with my french bean efforts this year. I sowed a big window box with dwarf ones and only half came up, and none of the climbing ones came up in their pots to sow out later! I might try and buy some more seed this weekend and take a chance on late sowing.

Thank you Cedar03 and Shovetheholly for the parsnip advice, and the heads up regarding fennel. I never knew he was such a psychopath - that’s unfortunate as it’s so pretty! New plan: parsnips around my last lonely Gardeners Delight tomato… I know they are not especially companions but I’ve got a limited amount of large pots… and they both need planting so let’s see!?
We have a row of parsnips at the allotment too which have all sprouted, but who knows how much they’ll like the clay surroundings when growing up.

GrouchyKiwi I can’t believe you’re gardening again not even a week after giving birth! That is amazing and truly impressive - bravo.

TheSpottedZebra I feel your currant pain, as DH’s beloved blackbirds have also munched half of our red (but green) currants whilst I wasn’t looking! So infuriating, I hope they loved them because they’re not having any more!

Bookbook how did you lose the tomato fruits last year? Birds? Do we ought to net those as well?!

We earthed potatoes and planted our tomatoes with some basil yesterday, Going to sow carrots today (hope it’s not too late?!) and thin the beets, which is already making me sad.

We’ve started harvesting lettuces, mustard and kale in earnest and it feels really good! Though it does take an awfully long time to clean the critters and soil of all those indented leaves!

So for successive cropping, I ought to soon re-saw: peas/beans, lettuces, beetroots, radishes… anything else major I am forgetting?

DH and I are going away for a few days tomorrow (to celebrate our 2 year anniversary - it’s flown!) and it’s just so dry here right now, I’m worried about my salad and rocket seedlings… Maybe I should cancel the trip, AH!

Hello- still virtual gardening and enjoying everyone's updates- although worried I'm going to get back to some sort of slug rampage. The growing season is over here and I'm not back in uk until late June, I've left somethings in the raised bed to sort themselves out and I think I might just have sacrificed them.

So currently on my virtual list , (Himalayan birch , scientific number of gooseberries) I'm now thinking about elder- just had sone elderflower cordial and remembered how much I love it. Are they easy to grow? Soil is rich (ex- cow field) but quite acid, and we are on top of a hill so pretty windy. Might have to sneak a small one in somewhere as DH not keen on letting me plant trees due his obsession with lawn space. He will be away for months though so he won't know. Anyway- thoughts?!

Congratulations to Grouchy 🌹 (I’ve managed to catch up with all the news now!)

Sympathies to the hay fever sufferers and hello to more diggers

Been busy resowing loads of things, including Purple Teepee beans in pots never, ever direct sowing any bean again.

I don’t think I’m going to have many onions for storage. Small furry animals are eating them underground and just leaving me with sad looking leaves. Between that and the fact many of them are bolting, I’m feeling a bit defeated. Still, I’m now picking a lot of them in their young form and using the green leaves as well. (Actually, I planted the sets at two different times - be interesting to compare re bolting. Will let you know)

Re slugs n snails - I’ve noticed that they’re not as interested in the redder sorts of lettuce.

book do you have a certain sinister look on your face when you’re cutting the slugs in half? And what do you use? Scissors? A small sharp knife? The blade of your spade? A cheese wire perhaps? 😈