Fruit & Veg growers Club 2007

[nikkie]

What is everyone planning to grow this year?
I have the bluberry bushes, strawberries,apple and pear from last year and hopefully i will get some proper fruit this year.Will be growing peas/tomatos/lettuce for definate as they all did really well. Cape gooseberry plants did well but fruit needed a couple more weeks of sun and never quite made it ,possibly start earlier this time.

culling complete

Just wanted to come back to say thank you for the tip, eyesfront - so simple and so effective!

defintely blight -we get it each year at this time.

You can cut of all the plants - clear all away (burn if you can). Then in a few days dig up the spuds - some will be completely mushy - others will be ok - but they won't store well - so keep an eye on them every week for blight - they tend to brown and blotchy to start with before going to a mushy pulp.

Hi just wanted to pop in and tell you we've had broad beans, peas and beetroot for tea from the allotment!! We were so funny, ate each bean seperately!!

Total disaster on the brassica front as everything has been eaten by slugs so no home grown sprouts at Christmas for us. . I'm so disappointed, that's the courgettes and all the brassicas.

The grass is so high on the approach path that if I venture over I may never reappear. I hope you are surviving the rain and getting some fun from your garden/allotments!!

burek - I often find that the seed potatoe goes mushy/gets eaten but the new growing potatoes are fine. As the brown patches aren't spreading quickly and give that your potatoes have already flowered, are you quite sure it was blight?

Earthy - sorry about your brassicas but congratulations on your dinner! Our broad beans & peas will be ready in a 2/3 days. The courgettes are growing really fast, gave away about 10 at school this morning. Also have marrows (by accident)! Cucumber, butternut squash and pumpkins all coming slowly atm. The potatoes are dying back so I might start digging some up and putting some more leek seedlings in. Most of the lettuce has bolted now and I can't be bothered to plant more.

The celery has recovered from the rabbits and has regrown perfectly. The sweetcorn is still quite weedy.

The tomatoes aren't up to much. Strawberries are just finishing. Apples going great guns and we hardly lost any during June 'drop'. Most unusual.

Phew!

(b urek here - new name)

oh, duchess! I could cry, I really could! It is too late now either way. We tend these plants like babies, don't we? Feeding, watering, weeding. It was heartbreaking to cull them.

OK, stiff upper lip and all that. On the positive side I have learnt about potatoes and all about blight, ready for my second gardening year in 2008.

We have a water cut at the mo so for now I am fretting about the next time I can water the veg. It's been over 3 days now and we have temperatures in the thirties every day. Have used up all the reserves.

oh I am so sorry, feel so guilty now, I should have said about the seed, but it doesn't always go that bad and there is a good chance it was blight anyway. was there anything big enough to eat? if they were just tiddlers and you took all the tops off they probably wouldn't have got that much bigger anyway. and it is a TERRIBLE year for blight in England, and given our weather you won't get much sympathy for no watering

the ones I pulled up had 2 tiny ones, and the rest were medium to large, so I'm sure there is plenty under there to keep us going this winter! Ate some last night - very nice.

I had heard that blight was bad over there this year. Hope you weren't affected.

Thanks both of you for your help!

Oh, and stop being so mean and share the rain! I'm sending you some of this sunshine right now

I am now eating my toms/carrots/strawberries/blueberries , over run with peas and still waiting on the apples!

Hello, sorry I have not been in at all since asking your advice some time ago

we have had tons of marvellous lettuces, and the tomato plants are looking tall and healthy, even though we are only now getting flowers

I came in to ask for advice on our late carrots - they are nice and bushy up the top so I pulled one to see what was happening and found a very undergrown carrot just a few mm wide - I stuffed it back in! How do we know when they are ready to eat? And when I moved the leaves, lots of little flies came up is that something bad?

small hopeful bump

Franny this any good?

we've been tothe allotment today after weeks off because of family stuff. We could hardly get in, the grass was so high!!
However, we came back loaded up with a wheelbarrow full of potatoes, another of onions and shallots, a bag of beetroot and salad, another of various beans!!

We had been thinking that we'd chosed the wrong year to take on the lottie, with the rain, but we are so delighted!!

eating pea fritters and chips tonight, using own potatoes, peas, and eggs. Now this is what gardening is all about! (apart from the eggs of course). I'm so excited (can you tell I'm a newbie!).

And have been making courgette and tomato chutney every day this week.

Hope you are all enjoying the fruis of your labours too.

skips off happily

franny, when did you plant the carrots? With mine, planted various times in March, there is an enormous variation in sizes that doesn't correlate at all with when they were planted. Some are huge, others v undergrown as you describe. I scrape away the earth at the base of each plant to expose the top of the carrot so I can see which are the biggies to lift first - perhaps you could do the same to some of the others & see if they look any better? Not much idea about the flies I'm afraid - if they are true carrot flies they will leave lots of holes all through the carrots themselves, but I don't know if you ever actually see the flies with them.

Hi all, can I join this thread. Have just been weeding and watering and have quite a big space where lettuce and failed spinach have been. Any ideas on what veg I could plant now? I do know it's quite late but I can't bear a gap and need something to anticipate!

When did you plant your carrots and what variety are they Franny?

Mine were planted in April (Nantes variety) and are only just getting to a reasonably substantial size. A good few still have considerable amount of growing to do.

Don't know if you have carrot fly - did you protect them with a barrier when growing them?

bump