Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 6 - Weed 'em and Reap!

[bookbook]

Thanks WhoKnowsWhereThe Time GOes for the title of the new thread.
So, we head into summer, praying for sun, gentle rain and no slugs
Everyone welcome to join in and share joys and woes and advice, given freely!
Previous thread here
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening/2582241-Allotment-Veg-Patch-Thread-5-The-Diggers-Rest?pg=1

I do it by eye.
additional sugar depends very much on the sweetness on the fruit.
cream roughly a small pot per 300g fruit (so that it's just covered in the blender)

Thanks! Will try frying with an egg- when I get my kitchen back, there is a man in it at the moment taking the tiles off. My garlic chives are about to flower - is it true you can eat the flowers??

Morning!
I read that as trying ice cream by frying an egg! !
Yes, you can eat the flowers off garlic chives - best raw in salads, though I personally never seem get around to picking them .

Afternoon!
Only a picking and watering day today, DH came along to make sure that I was looking after the squashes - we rather disagree on how many fruit to leave on each plant. We had a polite discussion
Picked off all the broad beans off my oldest plants and pulled them out. I still have half a dozen plants ( I was gifted these - a later variety ) that are just nicely set .Then some french and runner beans. Pulled spinach and picked 2 more courgettes. Then had a massive dead head of flowers, and cut some for home. Just a nice , gentle hour :)

That looks really lovely bookbook. Hasnt stopped raining all day here even for 5 minutes. Had 6 kids charging about the house stuck inside all day so had to keep reminding myself the garden really needed a day of rain. Still not back in the kitchen so chard plans on hold and daren't make ice cream as yesterday I ate a whole malt loaf to myself. I am not in the mood for restraint it seems. My sister was round yesterday and very taken with the wild strawberries which have turned up in the patio planting and thought they were amazing for just appearing and getting on with it- which reminded me that actually yes they are. Unfortunately I don't have the same luck with cultivated strawberries, I've got some struggling a bit in the greenhouse and some struggling a bit in a bed. Hoping it's all transplanting woes and next year will be better.

Fried egg ice cream is a Heston Blumenthal thing isn't it?

I didn't get the time on my afternoon off to pitch up at the council offices, unfortunately. So relying on the postal service.... Fingers crossed!

I did pick up a greenhouse yesterday, really nice 6x6fter aluminium and glass. Kinda got it in eBay by accident! Only broke 1 pane dismantling it, and they gave me some custom staging they had in it as well. It's stacked in my back yard, fingers x'd nothing gets broken before I can get it up on the plot.

Book your harvest basket looks lovely- especially the flowers. How many varieties do you grow for cutting?

Here's a photo of my "harvest" today. Found the lemon had fallen off the tree overnight.

That's a beautiful harvest, books.

I'll get my first courgette soon, which is very exciting. Blackcurrants have finished so need to decide whether I should prune the bushes. Otherwise back into a waiting period. Peas nearly all ready, carrots growing well, new peas still not germinated. Still have plenty of lettuce and spring onions to pick. The new spinach has bolted yet again so I'm giving up on that this year. Have sown some seeds inside so maybe they'll do better.

Grouchy - poor lemon , and the same here with bolting spinach, but I am still trying...
We have yet again had no rain .
Phoenix - I didn't quite sort it out properly for this year in truth. I knew I wanted to grow flowers, so in the end of season sale in Wilkos I bought packets of white and yellow bee friendly annuals and in Aldi flog off 29p packets I got cosmos, cleome, scabious.I alway grow sweet peas,and had ordered those with my veg seed order. And I also had borage seeds. So I have cosmos,dahlia,scabious,marigold, sunflowers, borage,coreopsis, calendula,plus others.... I will be a bit more focused next year :)
Cathpot - 6 children, and rain all day - you need a medal!

Evening!
well a drizzly day here, but faired up enough to get the fruit cage properly weeded this afternoon.
Then had an old lady moment and realised I should have sown spring cabbage seeds along with the winter cauliflowers a couple of weeks ago. So rushed home only to find I don't have any seeds - must have used them all last year. So will have to have a quick dash out tomorrow, and hope the local man has what I want.

Hello all. There have been a couple of weeks of fiestas here, so access to wifi bar and parking have been a bit haphazard. Back to normal now.

I was thinking about that blanching thing. Given that green beans freeze so well without being blanched, I wondered why they were ever habitually blanched in the first place. I thought perhaps it may have been something to do with the standard of freezer that we used to have domestically. If we were to have tried the non blanche method in the 60‘s/70‘s/80‘s, maybe we wouldn’t have been so enthusiastic about the results. ? ? ?

A little while back, a neighbour gave me a carrier bag of peas in pods. I immediately started podding and blanching for freezing and while I was doing it I thought ‘I must keep a handful back unblanched - to experiment’. But, of course, on autopilot I went and blanched the whole lot. Looking forward to books results with broadies.

Other news:

The smallfurryanimalsthatliveunderground have now started on the chard. Sowing more. My strategy now is to keep collapsing the tunnels with my fork so that it’s hard work for them to get back to the goodies.

I have a courgette mountain.

My green tomatoes are, at last, turning red.

Still no rain - 1mm is forecast for tomorrow lunchtime.

A sparrowhawk swooped down towards the palm tree and rose up again with a sparrow. So swift. So silent - apart from the sound of ‘swoosh’.

Evening!
Its a hard life , having to cope with fiestas teacup
You have reminded me about the broad beans too - it had dropped to the bottom of the 'to do' list .....
I do think we have better freezers. My DM had one of those little boxes at the top of the fridge- just enough for a cardboard container of ice cream, and a few small bags of raspberries and gooseberries... Mine is humungous and packed. At the moment, getting ready to buy one for back up in the garage, as I have no idea where all the beans and tomato sauce are going to go .
No idea yet what your small furry critter is?
I went to buy spring cabbage seeds today - having forgotten it is Wednesday, and we have half day closing still here.. Ah well, one more day wont matter. But I got a good load done this afternoon. I weeded and readied and got planted out the first load of winter cauliflowers. Whilst doing that, I managed to dig up half a tray of volunteer potatoes - one of them a red skin , which as its the new bit of plot, must be from about 3 years ago.... I also spent a fair bit of time getting rid of the non compostable green/brown rubbish - raspberry canes and cabbage stalks etc into the green waste trailer, so am now tidy again. Palmed off a cabbage to a neighbour :)
And picked french beans and another 2 courgettes. I was almost catching up with them, as I have made courgette brownies and roasted veg. but even using another 2 tonight, I still have 3 in the vegetable basket!
Had to water again - when are we going to get rain here I wonder?

I saw this and thought of you

Belle not sure that is asparagus I can see behind the sign !

Evening!
Hope everyone is okay.
Still no 'rain

I have been weeding out couch grass and bindweed and watering today.
The first of my Brokali Atlantis was ready to pick.
Also needed to get cooking so cucumber and courgette soup made and cucumber raita to go with the indian I made for tea. I only have 1 large cucumber , and 2 courgettes left in the vegetable rack - well, until tomorrow.... :)
Trying to keep on top of things, as I have guests over the weekend.

Hi books. I'll send my rain your way. I'd like to get my washing dry.

Have now harvested the last of my peas and pulled out the plants, as well as some triffids nasturtiums that were completely taking over. Hoping that my clematis can now do some rapid growing with less competition for nutrients.

I need to get my brussels sprouts in. I think this is about the right time to plant them? I'm going to direct sow some and then do a few indoors just in case. I've got a load of eggshells that I can crush and put around the place I plant them in a possibly vain attempt to restrain the slugs.

And I do need to do a load of weeding. Will actually have to get the weed basket thingy out of the garage.

Weather is meant to be ok tomorrow so I'll hopefully have enough time to get it done. We've got high winds forecast this weekend so I also need to get a few more stakes in to protect my shrubs and little trees. Will probably tie them up and then release them next week.

Hi again!
Grouchy - its a bit late for Brussels sprouts tbh - they needed sowing in spring - have you plants, not seeds ? If so, you may at a pinch get away with it. They are long, slow growers and they take anything from 8- 10 months in the ground depending on variety.
But please yes for your rain! we too are expecting the wind - hope my wigwams are sturdy enough.

Hello all. Beach day today so nothing useful in the garden apart from releasing aphid killing little aphidius bugs into the greenhouse. I could barely see them but could just see an aphid being grabbed and shaken like a rabbit by a dog. DD2 goes- 'well I didn't expect THAT to happen'. Pulled ivy out of flower beds for an hour and a half yesterday and only cleared 3m, 10m to go.... Still no kitchen, so chard recipes on hold. Blackberries look good - builder hopefully should be done tomorrow so hoping to make blackberry and apple sponge.

Oh boo. I have that written down in my spreadsheet but looked in the wrong row! I might try some anyway because we have funny weather sometimes. Have loads of seeds.

Cathpot That sounds kind of cool. I must get some.

Good evening!
Book you have been busy!
Grouchy i've planted things out of season and have had some successes - never tried Brussels sprouts though.
Cathpot those aphid bugs sound very interesting!

I've been away for a week so popped up to the plot to check it out. Not much to see obviously but the sweetcorn plants are still there and are growing! The slugs have had a good chomp at my coreopsis - hopefully there's enough left to survive. New ground elder plants are growing around the sides of my weed membrane so I pulled all the bits of root out. I fear this will be an ongoing task for years! Under the membrane looks OK though, no weeds at all.

A relative gave me some old garden ornaments, gnomes & suchlike, so I put a couple on the plot. I hope it doesn't look too kitsch. My kids were really keen to have "their" ornaments on Under the membrane looks OK and I thought it would keep them involved. We also made a very little mini-pond out of a shallow dish with stones in - I don't think we'll get frogs but hopefully the insects will use it and maybe some birds too.

Not had much of a chance for gardening the last few days. DH harvested the elephant garlic which does have huge bulbs and almost makes up for the tiny normal garlic bulbs we've managed this year. I might try again with the elephant garlic as only had two cloves to plant. (I naively didn't realise how big the cloves were and that there were only two in the packet and tried to split them as I was planting them!).

bookbook how are you not getting any rain this year? The rest of us seem to be complaining about it but you seem to be dry all the time

We are harvesting beans aplenty now - we had fish with beans and spinach the other night which was delicious. This weekend we will be harvesting our maincrop before the blight truly sets in, and also our onions. Then digging over the maincrop bed and probably planting some green manure. I also want to try to plant up some suckers from the raspberry to get some new plants from it. And transplant leeks which desperately need it. Oh and weeding, plenty of weeding to be done .

Evening!
no plot today - trying to make chez book respectable for visitors !
but will be popping to pick stuff in the morning.
those aphids sound amazing Cathpot and ivy - it took us a couple of years to get rid of - it tip roots everywhere.
I like the idea of kitsch plots timtam - on our site not far from me, a lovely old gentleman is making a real go at this - he has a pink shed with a bright blue roof, and an amazing array of 'things' in between the plants.You really don't need much water for frogs, so you never know.
Cedar - not totally sure on the rain - it seems that it goes north and south, and bypassesus! We did have some last week, but ended up a just a damping- (about 2.5 mm on my weather thingy) My water butts are nearly empty too.
I think it may be the geography - I am right at the far east end of the Vale of York, right on the edge of the Yorkshire Wolds. So if the weather is coming from the west , as it seems to all this summer, then the Peninnes seem to get it, then York , and its dry by the time it gets here .

Morning all.
2nd of 2 beautiful days here, so hoping the few tomatoes will be on the road to ripening! Sweet peas doing well enough to pick a small jam jar full most days. I have Brussels sprouts seedlings which I kept in the greenhouse as so reluctant to plant and go to certain do of slugs. There seem a fair few less slugs now, though, so I will put those out in the raised bed this weekend. Maybe some lettuces too. What else is good to planet now veg-wise?
I still have the willow cuttings I sent for in the late Spring, didn't plant them due to life getting in the way, and they have sprouted massively just being in a bucket of water. Pondering planting them either side of a section of path to form an armchair as they get taller.
Birds got all the Morellos (as usual) but the rest of the fruit trees doing well. My beloved quinces are small pear size now and looking fuzzy and beautiful. Loads of plums, gages, wild plums, and a few apples and pears.
I ordered some scented leaf pelargoniums from eBay, which are tiny and not well- rooted, but attempting to nurture them for nice house plants over the winter. Attar of roses, apricot, lavender lass and prince of Orange. When mature I put a leaf in sugar, or at bottom of a sponge cake mixture to flavour and it is glorious (so technically just in this thread as edible).
Glad to hear your successes this year, and new venturers like me! Book, your harvest baskets are amazing.
Getting my mojo back a bit now. Planning LOTS of weed killing and bed-forming over the winter. We will harvest the brambles first though!
What plans do you all have for Autimn/Winter?

Gosh - I'm back in the UK. And all my plants are still alive, a few looking slightly thirsty and I even have ripe tomatoes on all 3 plants at home. Haven't been down the proper garden yet - just needed to eat.

Hope all is well with everyone.

I need to tell my toms dirty jokes I think. still only green...

Well done Doreen! Ripe toms sound good. Mine are stubbornly green still, but growing at least!