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

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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

blossom end rot is a result of not watering them enough (or thats what my friend said about mine). though i thought i had watered them.....clearly not enough

Ok that makes sense - I've been a bit erratic with watering .

Morning!
Cedar - I have grown celery for the first time this year. I just bought a tray of plug plants, and on advice planted them fairly tightly in a square, so they could self blanch.They look well, but don't seem to be doing much, as in they haven't grown particularly tall, just bushy... May have to dig one up to look- I grew them to use in my soup bases, no-one knows , but it does improve the flavour ( I'm the only one who actively likes the stuff)
Cathpot - it can be calcium too , but yes to erratic watering as dreaming says. I had one bad year about 4 years ago. I had bought cheaply some big terracotta pots with drip trays to grow my tomatoes in ( delusions of my greenhouse looking nice....) . I watered as normal, so couldn't understand it. Only later , I realised that terracotta is very good at evaporating water through the sides...and though they had enough water to keep them looking fine, they didn't have sufficient to pull up all the nutrients. Went back to ugly compost bags !

I've been away - in London for a party and then at a conference in Cardiff. I am so tired, but determined to get up to the plot either this evening or tomorrow. I really need to pick some stuff and to weed. I don't think I've ever let it slip so far before, but I just haven't been around enough this summer.

Afternoon!
welcome back shove - ooh , that's fancy - a conference and a party !
ah, and you are going to be like the rest of us - always chasing the weeds. :)
Had a trip up to the plot today to do a bit of edging - hate that... But had a little look at the squashes. Good and bad news.
Good news - I have 2 set butternuts! - Tiny mind you....and is there enough autumn left?
Bad news - well baddish... 2 of the crown prince squashes next to each other on the same plant- they just seem to have stopped growing. Had look, and the stem had been damaged so no more growing. So I have brought them home. Think they will be okay. The others are all looking good and still growing. These two little ones were 4 lb 8 oz and 4 lb 4 oz...

Cedar, I grew celery for the first time last year, also from plug plants. Not sure when I planted out, but according to my photos on my phone I was harvesting full sized heads by late Sept. They were a bit green and stringy, better for cooking than eating raw. Looked lovely though. I left some to overwinter and they survived, with slug holes, but were massive and hard to dig out, I broke my fork on the last one.

WhoKnows - that celery looks great - mine are very leafy/ bushy, but not very tall - about 8" and they seem to be all leaf atm ...

OK so I'm a bit of a failure when it comes to the allotment. To be honest, I don't have the time, and we have three raised beds in our garden, but I do like the allotment as a reason to leave the house, go for a walk with the kids, be outside etc so while it's a bit of a failure in terms of output, it's good for my mental health.

The soil is awful and the weeds are up to my knees (it's only half a plot, I weeded it all at the beginning of the year) then I put down membrane to try and suppress weeds but they just grew threw it. The green house has weeds 5 feet tall !!!

However the raspberries are fab. The strawberries which I moved from under the raspberries haven't done well (we get very little rain), and the blackcurrants and tayberry I planted (I thought soft fruit might be less time consuming) look OK. I've just remembered I've two rows of potatoes to lift... I think someone has mown the asparagus again..

My current plan is cover a bit of the patch with cardboard and then cover with horse manure. It's fairly fresh manure free from a colleague but I'm not planning to plant for a while, just try and improve the soil. I've got half a pallet load of soil improver from the council to mix in and I thought if I put planks around the bit I'm working on I could just try and improve a small bit of the plot by making a lasagne like raised bed. It's never going to be as good as most plots on this thread but if I can make the soil better that's a start, right ?? I'm a bit embarrassed by the state of the plot compared to all around me, but it's not the least worked one by far !

Any other suggestions gratefully received. I am concerned that I might just be enriching to soil to improve my dandelion and creeping weed crop.

didi - i use a no dig method which means the seeds don;t continuously get dug onto the surface (or at least thats why i think i don;t need to weed that much compared to others at the site). In the autumn i either grow green manure, then later on chop this down and turn soil, cover with manure and thick black plastic; or i just cover soil with thick black plastic over winter (again maybe with manure under first). as a result i don't weed much

squash plants are also great at covering large areas and suppressing weeds

dreaming I'm tempted by the green manure route but I know in practise I won't get to dig it in at the right moment so I'll end up with waist height green manure and dandelions....

I'm going to look for thick plastic on eBay - the current weeds have grown right through the membrane I put down. I'm hoping to get the strimmer up to the plot this weekend to chop the weeds down. My compost pile isn't composting (so dry) so I think I'll take them home to burn.

Evening!
who switched the lights out? I went to water in the greenhouse at about 8 , and it was nearly dark!!!
didi - a handhold from me. Its hard . I think the cardboard/manure is the way to go. Weed membrane is really useful, but as the weeds grow through , its much harder to remove. Cardboard on the other hand will rot down and help improve the soil, while keeping weeds down. You are doing your best !
(It was much easier for me when I started. My DC were grown up, so though I had a very busy working life, I could leave the house, and not have to consider anyone else. So I managed about an hour every 2 or 3 days, and a bit more on a Sunday morning.)
My way of dealing with it at the time, was to clear a bit of ground and plant something, rather than just leave to weeds to reinfest. That was in early spring , so somewhat easier than autumn/winter :)

I tried pumpkins to cover the plot. I even planted them in holes in the cardboard. I think the deer ate them all - lost 8 fairly large plants in two weekends (4 each weekend, I don't learn!).

Clearing the plot was easier in the spring - I hadn't really thought about it but the soil is so rock hard now so maybe that's why but seems like such an up hill battle (the allotment has awful soil - grey, nothing to it really, the wind chases stuff away!).

Afternoon!
oh no - deer? - defenses needed there then....
Just avery quick trip to the plot this morning turned out a little longer than expected. There was a 'join in' allotment BBQ , which I popped over to say hello at ( took some chocolate courgette brownies) , with no spare time, I didn't stay long, just a quick chat to everyone. But, lots of neighbours where at their plots, and harvesting.... So I had gone to pick broccoli, a cauliflower and raspberries. Came home with a tray of apples, 4 sweetcorn and 3 aubergines as well. :)
And it was drizzling. But we never got all the rain we were supposed to get over night

Hello, I joined the thread a few weeks ago and have come back to say I've just harvested a huge potato!! It is the length of 3 normal potatoes. I'm so excited I've actually grown something. My carrots are now sticking out a bit too, when should I dig these up?

Afternoon!
Mamaka - it's lovely, isn't it when you can grow something to eat. Carrots - I would just gently pull up a couple and see - that to my mind is always best, maybe ease out by loosening around with a hand fork. Sounds promising though :)
A lovely autumn start to the day here - down at the plot ( not early mind - about 10) the leaves were still glistening with overnight dew. It was more of a faff around today - some digging over/weeding where sweetcorn had been. Picked french beans, which I gave to my NDN on the plot. Waded in and deadheaded flowers - though I actually dug up some of the cosmos as they seem to have just about given up the ghost. They have flowered their hearts out mind. ( Interesting that the dark pink ones are truly gone, while the white and pale pink are still putting on a bit of a show , and they were all treated the same....)And cut another bunch of sweetpeas too.
This afternoon, did a proper pick of my 'Roma' plum tomatoes - not quite 2kg , and plenty more to come. So this afternoon it has been tomato sauce making , along with more raspberry jam making. (The raspberries need to be done quickly at this time of year - I picked them yesterday and they needed picking over to get rid of a few slightly mouldy looking ones.) I now have to decide how to cook the aubergines I was given yesterday . Ah , feet up and a quick look in my new Ottolenghi cook book methinks ... :)

Hello all. Poking my head in after a holiday to clear my mind. Having a bit of PND so struggling to keep on top of things at the moment, but the holiday has done a lot of good.

Heavy winds have wreaked havoc in the garden again so tomorrow will be a day of removing broken plants and doing lots of weeding. Will take everything out except beetroot and courgette, I think, and get the garden ready to dig in some compost for the winter.

Just popped on to reply to you Grouchy . Glad the holiday has helped, PND is a pig , so try to be kind to yourself

Evening!
Been too busy today for getting to the plot, and no time tomorrow either.
But have had a quiet half hour to sort out my seed box - I pick up the seed catalogue this week .I love browsing and choosing seeds :)

Thank you, books. I found gardening is very helpful.

Cleared a lot of my garden today and failed miserably at getting my children to pick up the 6 million seeds left behind by my nasturtiums. They'll be growing everywhere for the next age or so.

Something has eaten the teeny tiny Brussels sprouts seedlings I had, alas. But the raspberry plant that was killed in the strong winds we had a month ago has sent up loads of little shoots so I dug up some of those and have put them in gaps in my baby hedges. Will be interesting to see if they grow.

Harvested a few little beetroot. I'm enjoying those very much so I'm glad I decided to put them in.

Now making proper plans for next year's vegetables, as well as deciding what to get for the new flower garden we're going to make.

I also planted a sambuccus nigra we bought while on holiday and it looks so pretty.

An elderberry bush? Glad things are going well for so many of you. My courgettes are finally producing. My pumpkins and butternut squash aren't doing much though sadly, they aren't setting although there always seem to be bees buzzing around them as they are next to a borage plant.
I picked a load of purple french beans and green runner beans and have been freezing them today. I went for the freezer bag with ziplock and straw air removal method as I couldn't be bothered to blanche them and internet reports say it works as well.
I was disappointed that the TV series Eden showed so little/ nothing of their fruit and veg growing in Ardnamurchan.

Hello everyone!

I am so excited to discover this thread. Have just been reading through pages of old posts.

Apologies, my post got a little long but I don't have many fellow growers in rl (yet) so could really use some advice.

We've had our allotment since April and it looks like wilderness itself. The weeds are waist high in some places!

The tomatoes are divine though, I'm very proud. We also managed to grow a few beetroots, beans, radishes... But I had planned for and sowed and planted so much more! I think the slugs got most of the stuff as we didn't use slug pellets and didn't do much weeding, so we paid the price I guess!

Question for all of you more seasoned allotmenteers: where do i start? Last spring, I sort of prepared a few beds (not raised) in spring to sow lots of veggies in. Most of the seedlings did come up although others (like kohlrabi and beetroot) never really appeared (slugs? Rabbit? Bird? We did cover with netting though). Also, the weeds just kept creeping into the beds because the rest of the plot is so massively overgrown (nettles, brambles, waist high unidentified weeds and plenty of ground cover too). I then learned that slugs like to hide around the root of weeds too! Slugs really dessimated 90 per cent of our efforts I think.

We have two kids under 3 and so little time. This weekend I turned the soil once again on yet another few squares or overgrown soil. I had done the same patch 6 weeks ago but it was completely covered with weeds and grass once again. So this time I've covered it with some cut up blue ikea bags, in the hope that it will stay clear until the spring ready for sowing.

I still have no idea how to start working through the rest of the plot and how to keep on top of it once the weeds start going wild again come spring.

Do you guys always turn and dig up the soil? Or do you just use the hoe to cut the weed above the root? How do you prepare beds for sowing? I'm a little confused and clueless so any tipps would be hugely appreciated!

Thank you!

Hi all- long time lurker here. Have a veg patch at home. Big successes with tomatoes in the greenhouse with watering collars and my first year of runner beans.

Now I'm digging up some potatoes what can I sow in the gaps? Or shall I just mulch and cover for next year? Too late for onions and garlic?

Hello all! Quick one from he because I am facing technology Armageddon in the shape of broken laptop, broken router, broken mobile phone, broken dishwasher, and a massive chip on my car windscreen courtesy of a big lorry. It's like the eleventh plague of Egypt at my house.

Hugs for grouchy. I hope the sunshine helps lift you.

I am ankle deep in green beans and calabrese, but thoughts turning to next year's crops and what I might grow. I am giving up with sweetcorn and squash. I think without building hotbeds or something I am doomed with them: even the earliest varieties won't come in time for me (I have about 3 corn cobs that will be edible). There has already been a low night temp at my plot and all my nasturtiums died!!

When I started with my allotment I covered it with thick black plastic and uncovered it a bit at a time a tip I got from George Monbiot www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2008/apr/05/growingyourown.vegetables although a breathable membrane may have been better for the soil but more expensive. I did try a tarpaulin but the weeds still survived under that. I needed heavy stones on the black plastic.
A fellow allotmenter rotavated some of it for me which many people say you shouldn't do but which made digging the heavy clay soil much easier. If there are rabbits then prioritise putting a fence round your plot. Do it slowly. Potatoes are good for getting an allotment started as you put lots of manure down for them and their foliage keeps out weeds.

rebecca I didn't realise that was another name for an elderberry bush! I might even try making elderflower cordial etc. It's this one.