Allotment/Veg Patch - Thread 7 - The Harvesters Arms

[bookbook]

Well, it's been an interesting summer, to say the least.
We are now heading into the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness :)
Everyone welcome to join in and ask for advice , share their woes and just enjoy growing!
previous thread here

ZEBRA!!! ZEBRA!!! ZEBRA!!! YOU ARE BACK POSTING!!

This is SO exciting!!

So sorry and sad to hear you've had a rough time. It sounds as though you have had a bereavement - I'm so sorry, there are no words to describe how hard that is. for you and your family.

I am looking forward to hearing about your great tomato growing plan. I am so of your ability to make them produce kilos and kilos of fruit.

Gojis - I think I read somewhere (James Wong??) that they like to be treated mean and hate rich soil etc. So maybe attacking it with secateurs is a good plan? I have one that has also done nothing, so I will bear this in mind!

This weekend was hardy perennial sowing for me - my Hardy Plant Society seeds came and I am delighted with them. I got all my first choices! Many of them need cold stratification, so I have rushed them on so that they can get blasted by the cold weather before things warm up. I have a lot of things which are incredibly slow and frustrating to germinate, e.g. trilliums, so I might be living with some of these pots for quite a while! Veg-wise, I got on some leeks (Oarsmen), some onions and just a few Caulis in the hope that they will be ready for midsummer (I'm doing All the Year Round).

Morning from the warm place.
Just had to pop on and say a wonderful hello to Spotted - hope this year is better FOR YOU :), roll on #YofF#

Hallo bookbook hope it is lovely and warm where you are and not miserable and grey and raining like here.

Hallo SpottedZebra we've missed you on the thread. This year will definitely be the year of the fruit. My loganberry in the back garden regularly renews itself by rooting it's shoots - it runs along the fence so I mostly just leave it to it. I transplanted a couple of plants to the allotment the autumn before last and they took but didn't produce much in the way of fruit last summer. I'm expecting better things this summer.

Hardy perennial sowing sounds interesting Shove I've never attempted to grow much in the way of perennials from seed apart from oriental poppies which did well.

Picked up my seed potatoes, onion sets and seed order over the weekend. For potatoes we're doing charlotte and sarpo mira but that's all thanks to the blight last year. I've also chosen to try a purple pea, a heritage variety of squash and kale which I've not tried growing before. (I don't have the seed packets to hand for actual varieties). Need to do a bit of planning I think!

Cedar - I have a bad combination of a love for rare shade plants and insufficient money to buy them! So growing from seed makes a lot of sense. It is more of a faff than with veg on the whole - coaxing stuff to germinate can take literally years - but worth it

I like the whole idea of purple peas. It must make picking SO much easier! Heritage kale sounds intriguing.

Hello - checking in rather tardily for 2017 .

book hope you're having a relaxing time. I'm still in UK but leaving at the end of the week. Top left Spain had been in drought with reservoirs half empty - but the rain started about three days ago and it's forcast to rain every day for at least the next two weeks.

So good to see you back Spotted (I've n/c'd) #YoF 🍒🍒🍒

Cathpot thank you so much for that link to realseeds, I bought four packets from them. Just need to get some White Lady runnerbean seeds before I leave.

shove - hope you got your tooth sorted. I had an ingrowing toenail (now have half a toenail). I was brave...

teacup ig

just about to go for a walk out for supplies of bread , and a cup of coffee before it gets too hot for me its lovely and warm here - about 21º-23º at present, but due to get hotter shortly.
They have had a reasonable amount of rain here over the last months, so quite green . The locals are wearing boots as it's their winter
Just to spread some warm and sun - this is our walk from the local market back to base , it's a lovely hours ramble.

sorry derailed thread !

book - it's stunning! I feel warmer just looking at it. It sounds like you're having an amazing time.

I'm so happy you are here as well igardener. It's like a beginning of the season reunion!

🎈🥂🎈 😁

Good afternoon, I was hoping I could join in the thread, which I've only just discovered.

I'm in Scotland (central belt) and grow fruit and veg at home mostly in a greenhouse and raised beds.

I don't have any friends or colleagues who share the interest, so I have no one other than DH to talk to bore to tears about it!

clara - welcome! You're in the right place for veg chat. We are happy to talk horse poo and hailstones and humungus courgettes and all of the other things that many people don't really discuss in real life!

I would love to join too and on my 2nd year of planting but interested in old varieties of veg (and wondering about planting fruit but we may move so I should probably wait! So far we have apples and raspberries)

I had success with cabbages and broccoli but need to relocate the broccoli as deer ate the lot (they ate our leeks too).
Our potatoes got blight but we ate them in time and they were the best I've ever tasted ! I only bought them in Pound world's gardening aisle

In book's absence (she is good at all the social niceties, I am am oik) - welcome snowdrop!

chuck is an expert on old varieties of veg. I swear she has seeds for the ancestor of the cabbage as eaten by Diplodocus.

Quite a few people had potato blight last year, so you are not alone! A few of us are growing sarpo potatoes in response - they are more blight resistant than other kinds.

And EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE to igardeners toenail. OW OW OW OW OW!

Thanks for the welcome

We've given up with potatoes: always seem to have rubbish yields no matter what we try.

My main ambition this year is to get raspberries established along an east facing fence. We planted some year old canes last year and they all died. Not sure what the problem was (the canes, the soil, the location) but if at first you don't succeed, try, try again (well, only a couple of times more).

clara - that is strange. Raspberries are generally pretty bomb-proof, so something strange must have happened. I worry that it could be a virus in the soil or something, as this would affect your new canes too and there would be little you could do - can you describe what happened? They are hungry for manure and dampness so rich, moist soil is their preferred thing.

This is such a lovely thread! I even tried to start st the beginning but October had different topics to now I decided so I might need to find my way to the older thread too.
Thanks for the good potato variety tip- I will look out for it. Our tomato escaped blight as was in the greenhouse but anyway only yielded 4 or 5 small ones!!

Yes, unlike other places on Mumsnet you really don't have to RTFT here! It's kind of weird to do so, actually, like time travelling back a few months. Just jump in!

I hear your pain on tomato yields. I really struggle to get them to ripen in the weather we get here. I did get a good harvest last year because I grew early and cold-weather varieties, on the recommendation of Zebra. She's our resident tomato whisperer. She gets bucketloads of fruit, it's like that Spanish festival where they are bathing in them.

🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅La Tomatina🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅🍅

Hello clarabellski and SpringSnowdrop

I'm not doing potatoes this year either - mine keep getting eaten by voles. I did do some in 40L trugs last year, but they (the trugs) are now occupied by leeks, garlic and Welsh onions (which are also eaten by the voles if I grow them in the ground!!!) I encourage the local friendly feral cats to patrol my vast estate, and they do catch some of them but they're not keeping up with the numbers.!.!.!.

But what about your tooth shove?

Re: raspberries

This is how I did it.

1. Yank them out of the ground in a very haphazard manner (from north end of garden where they were not wanted).
2. Leave them in a heap against the wall (at the south end of the garden).

3. Scatter a pathetically meagre amount of garden soil over the top.

1. Do nothing.
2. Delight at the way they immediately become the stars of your free range soft fruit corner.
3. Have raspberry pigout every year.

(7. Spend forever trying to contain the spread)

Hahaha. I get loads of tomatoes because I sow - loads. And then loads more, just in case.
And then I take and root loads of sideshoots (aka 'armpits' ). And then some more armpits.

And then I get really early blight, which is why the tomatoes will stay at home, safe with me, henceforth. apart from my leftovers which will of course go the the allotment

And hallo to the Newbies.
And thank you for the lovely 'welcome backs' from the stalwarts. It IS such a nice thread!

Spring where are you that you're fending off deer? Are you very rural?

zebra - I know what will happen. We will get to May and you will have 6,000 tomato armpits that you cannot bear to part with and you will be planting them at your plot, on roadside verges, in the park, in neighbours' gardens in the middle of the night...

igardener - it is a bit better. It doesn't hurt like there is a small demon drilling into my jaw any more. In fact it doesn't hurt at all. But it keeps happening over and over (this is about the 7th time) in spite of the fact that I am a manic toothbrusher. It's a wisdom tooth that has never come through properly (Ha! How symbolic!) and I think I need it taken out. So I am back to the dentist on Friday to beg for help.

I like the idea of having voles. They are super-cute. Less so, however, if they eat all your roots. I have a mouse at my plot that gives me insane levels of cheek. It just sits in the fruit cage right next to me, completely unafraid, asking me why I'm stealing its breakfast.

Hello!
Just marking place for a lurk for now if that's ok. :)

I've been growing veg in tiny beds and pots for years, but have been promised an allotment by my parish council! 🎈
They've not been marked up yet as they're new, and the soil will clay and rubbish, if my garden is anything to go by. Its positioned on a mound which I think will be rubble from when the nearby houses were built. I have access to unending manure sources.

I want to get going!

Welcome uterus!

I hope you get good news about a plot soon! Don't worry about the rubble... you'll clear it, and if you have tons of manure, that will deal with soil issues!