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

Hello again everyone. It's lovely to read about how productive your plots are - I look forward to reporting my harvest next year (or the year after!).

I got to get onto my garden today - not yet legally mine but I'm doing some preliminary clearing to get a better sense of what's there, how big it really is etc.

This is what I'm dealing with! Brambles and weeds over my head, a path which is invisible, hedges 3 or 4 foot wide etc. I had to clear brambles and hawthorn from the door to even get in and out. But I had a lovely couple of hours there earlier and loved it, just so wonderful, everything I hoped for, even in its overgrown state. I found some currant bushes and a cherry tree still in its pot but happy enough, and I think I've spotted young pear and apple trees. My allotment neighbours are lovely, helpful and very happy to have me (someone!) taking on the plot. I went back this afternoon with my daughter and she loved it too

A couple of questions - apart from spade, fork, secateurs, loppers, what's essential equipment at this stage?

And, if I have a bonfire how do I stop it spreading and make sure it's out before leaving? I'm going to need to start burning but I'm a bit worried I'll destroy the whole plot! Should I get an incinerator bin?

Thank you!

Hello everyone- I surfaced very briefly today as an ex student who now wants to go into horticulture is going to help me get some garden jobs done. I've done basically nothing for the past 6 weeks but occasionally look at the garden out of the window (and occasionally precariously try to pick my stupidly high up raspberries) . I had spent all of my day off today inside working so it was lovely to spend hour outside with her chatting and cutting back all the oregano on the front wall. book book well done getting your greenhouse cleaned- mine is a shambles and I'm not sure when I'll get to it. Definitely needs bleaching as tomatoes went so mouldy. Finally eating some apples from the old tree - they look appalling- so scabby , I think there are at least two separate issues with the skins- but actually taste really nice. I don't have freezer space so the rest are going to the builder who re-tiled the kitchen recently and has had his eye on them for making some sort of apple shnaps I think. I've offered the lot in the hope some will come back to me in liquid form! Bit more work to do tonight then one more day to half term!

Evening!
wow good - that is a bit of a jungle! Good to hear you have neighbours - I wouldn't be surprised if you get help from them , as it will ultimately benefit them too. I would ask if you are allowed a bonfire/incinerator - our site doesn't .That is a good basic tool set. I would add a good pair of thick leather/suede gloves as you are going to be tackling brambles in a big way. After that , a wheelbarrow would be helpful. Do you have any way of getting rubbish to a local council tip, or green waste - will again be worth asking the neighbours.
Cathpot - I bet you are exhausted - I know my DD is really ready for half term, and she is used to it more than you.It sounds like a plan to get help too. I am rather relieved I have the greenhouse done, but my heart sinks a bit at the pile of pots and plug trays that still need washing- it is just about my least favourite job, but I have done over half so far , so I need to crack on. It just seems to go on forever! And sounds as if the apples are worth the effort to get them sorted if they are tasty- so many are not !

So I've been a bit quiet on here but thought I would pop up again for some advice !! Why won't my pumpkins go orange !!! They are all green and have been for weeks !! Halloween is in 11 days they look like this

Sunshine - you are going to make shove jealous ! I think they are not orange, because they look a bit like my crown prince squashes - are they heavy, with a blue colour/tinge to the skin? If so, they will be bright orange inside :) . You can tell if they are ready to harvest - the stem going into the squash is hard and 'corky' looking, and the stem going away from that is soft, yellow and shrivelling up. So I would get them up, and put in a dry cool place .If they are crown prince, they should store for months.

That is a good crop of squashes! Pumpkins - the normal orange ones - are orangey colour from the start they don't turn orange. I am very impressed - I only managed two pumpkins in total this year and my butternut squashes either failed to germinate or got eaten when planted out. I've got my eye on crown prince squashes for next year.

We are having pumpkin soup tonight from one of the two we harvested (The other is waiting for Halloween). I'll also be using some leeks from the plot.

On the subject of tomatoes, I had to cut off quite a lot because of blight when they were still green. I put them on a large tray and covered with a tea towel and majority of them have gone red and we've been able to eat them. I've had to pick out the blighted ones every now and again but we ate more than I thought we would.

We moved our garden compost bin last weekend. Which of course meant emptying out most of it. So spent a lot of Sunday shifting it up to the allotment which was good exercise. There's some more to go up there still. It's funny, it looks like loads in the garden but when I get it up to the plot and put it on the beds it hardly goes anywhere!

sunny orange spray paint if you're desperate next weekend? Once the flesh is out and it's carved the paint won't do any harm. Unless it's flammable, maybe ignore me!

I tried pumpkins last year. I had one. The size of a potato .

I've just been over to my plot and think I will copy the pro's this year and dig my scrappy stems and leaves deep into trenches to compost.

sunny - bloody hell that's LOADS of squashes. I am MEGA JEALOUS as book predicted.

I had 4 plants, which I cossetted and nurtured and fussed over and you know how many squashes I got??

ONE.

One measly squash not even as big as your largest one.

Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah.

(I agree with book that they look like Crown Prince squash, not pumpkins. Which is awesome because they store well and are much tastier!)

meglet - maybe you and I will have better luck next time?

cedar - I know what you mean about the compost, and well done for doing that most stinky of jobs! I am always shocked by how much rotten stuff I need to do a really good mulch!

Afternoon!
I had to smile Cedar - the first year I had my plot, I took down a whole dalek of compost, thinking I was mad, and spread it out and it looked lost!.
meglet - hello - I like your thinking on the paint, but it seems such a shame.....:)
Well, not really any plot today, but did go down and harvest. I got worried about the butternuts, so went and picked them, along with some perennial spinach for tea. I got given a great big bunch of chrysanthemums too from a neighbour. .Considering the amount of attrition I have had on the butternuts , what with poor germination and then greedy slugs, I am sort of pleased ...the biggest ones are about a kilo each, and there are lots of too small ones. I have washed them, and they now reside in my greenhouse to cure.:)

DOUBLE SQUASH ENVY!!

sorry shove - but they are nothing like the ones that are at the end of my plot. She has done absolutely nothing with them , and they are truly enormous!

I would settle for half as good a haul as yours, book, let alone your neighbour's! (I am always fascinated, though, by the way you get some batches of seed that romp away and are super-productive in virtually the same conditions as others that don't do so well. I know it's genetic variation or slight alterations in conditions at crucial times, but knowing the explanation doesn't stop it being endlessly interesting to watch).

I have just been moving a leycesteria in my garden and am covered in mud! I whacked it into a holding bed earlier in the year, and it has thrived despite being on only a few inches of soil above hardcore. Digging it out was a nightmare - it had gone right down through it! A mattock was required.

Hi everyone. I've promised my daughter that we'll grow our own pumpkin for next Halloween, but seeing the trouble some of you have had, I think my promise might have been rather rash!

I managed to get to the end/back of my new garden today - I can't get down the middle path as there are three or four huge bags of soil of some kind in the way, so I navigated a circuitous route around the side through a very overgrown hawthorn hedge which seems to be merging with the brambles. But with only a few scratches I made it and cleared a path, and found the footings of a greenhouse, a filled-in well, some cold frames, hundreds of terracotta pots, quite a lot of broken glass, and ... the dreaded knotweed!

There's more junk than I thought there would be, but no signs that anyone's been dumping stuff or anything, just lots of accumulated garden rubbish. So I think at some point I'll need a skip. But there's lots of potential back there too.

And the knotweed isn't as bad as it could have been. It's probably only a 10 foot square patch and quite contained in a corner. So I can probably ignore and avoid it for a while.

I am thinking of getting a man in with a brush cutter to attack the top however many feet of brambles, weeds and grass (not the knotweed, obviously). Even with my more optimistic head on the thought of clearing it all with loppers, a few inches at the time slightly fills me with dread. At least is it's all cleared to a foot or so then I can get round the plot and deal with what I need to.

I'm learning that I'm going to have to dig out every bramble root - so if I can actually get to them that'll be a start!

I'm still not too daunted by what I've taken on - it was so wonderful finding a path to the back today, listening to the birds, investigating

Even worse I let the kids plant stuff this year as first year on allotment. My youngest planted spring onions and pumpkins in the same slot. I just left them and this was the result. No touching fiddling anything, I've just left them and they grew !!

Afternoon!
well Sunny -that just proves that maybe shove and the rest of us just need to give them a little bit of loving .... neglect .
I have been at my younger daughters today, planting some raspberry canes. I have total respect to those of you on clay... I will say no more!
So no plot, and will have to be a bit careful tomorrow as I seem to have got a twinge in my back - nothing serious, just slowing me down as I will have to be careful. And tomorrow is supposed to be garlic planting. We shall see
could you hire a brushcutter good ? - though it is sounding as if you need a absolute ton of cutting to get through, though it is lovely to know that it is inspiring you to get to the bottom of it, however long a haul!

shove I'm going to swot up on pumpkin growing on time for next autumn. We don't need many, just a handful of football size ones would do.

I'm not doing spuds next year (rotation so will do them in the back garden instead) so I'll have plot space for pumpkins.

Morning!
a beautiful morning at that. I did in the end take it steady, so no garlic planted out. But I did have an hour down at the plot and planted out my perennial cauliflowers. Being as they are a little expensive, they have organic slugs pellets, adorned around, and covered with a butterfly black netting cloche thing. :)
Actually meglet what I am truly thinking of is buying my squash plants next year. We have a nursery called Vertigrow near us, and they sell shed loads of lovely veg plants. They do crown prince and others varieties I like - they were IIRC about £1.50 /£2 for a big plant. Now the seeds are cheapish, but you only get 6 in the packet, so allowing for my poor germination this year, its a serious thought for me.
I am going to do a bit of pot plant washing this afternoon, cosy in the greenhouse , then I won't feel I am getting too far behind

well, I may even wash the plant pots as well !

In fairness to my pumpkins I think we only planted two seeds and they both germinated and I got one pumpkin off each plant. It was the butternut squash that were a disappointment. I'm going to try crown prince next year.

More clearing at the plot yesterday. Ground was still quite dry in spite of rain last week and I struggled to get the fork in every now and again.

Harvested a few more beetroots which are quite small but were planted relatively late in the summer. Also celery which is being eaten in soups even though not great - I think we should have harvested sooner. And a few spinach leaves as well. I noticed that the cabbages I've ignored as they were eaten by slugs have made a recovery and actually have a few leaves we could conceivably eat so will think about harvesting one or two of those soon.

Afternoon!
Hope everyone is okay.
Cedar - 100% germination rate :) - better than mine - I sowed 4 crown prince, which all came up, and 7 butternut, only 3 came up. Then I had 2 plants slugged to death , and ended up using the spare crown prince,( when DH had asked if we could have more butternuts this year) . Ah well, at least I got some!
I was still taking it carefully today - back is almost better, but not quite. I dug over and planted the overwintering shallots. Took up the courgette plants and started to dig over ready for the garlic. There were still a few courgettes on there, so I was a little sad, but enough to do a couple of servings . Picked some cavalo nero for tea, then decided that was probably enough.

Really glad your back is a bit looser, book. It's miserable to have an ache where you can't really avoid the pain! Do take it easy - it's not worth risking an aggravated injury!

I am currently making bread. Not because I am having a sudden fit of domesticity, but because I have found out something that disturbs me a bit about wheat farming. I was walking by a field of corn a few weeks ago, and I thought to myself: "That crop is the wrong colour! It is grey! It looks like it is dead!" And I took a closer look, and it WAS all dead. So I started to wonder what on earth was going on.

So I did a bit of googling, and I have now found out that lots and lots of farmers are spraying their entire crop with RoundUp at the end of the season. Yes, that is the whole field. And it is all deader than a doornail, and covered in a chemical that the WHO has listed as a probable carcinogen. The reason for this is to get around the traditional problems with drying it adequately. But it has put me off buying any flour that isn't completely organic for life, I think.

shove - that is just . I will have to keep a look out- all around us is farming ...Mind you it has brought you to bread making. I have made our own bread for years, mostly with a breadmaker for day to day loaves, ( it is one of the most regularly used machines in my kitchen ) but also by hand for more variety. When you eat the bought stuff its all air!
Back is just about better, just slowing me down a bit now - stupid spasm , so the plot has helped loose it!
No plot today, apart from getting some spinach as I have a full on day in the kitchen - my son in laws birthday tea to do. A full Indian followed by a deep custard tart, (!he does choose some combinations ...) and a cake ahead of me ( though the main curry made yesterday ). And a load of tomato pasta sauce and some courgette brownies while the oven is on. I love a cooking day.:)

(whispers - the contents of my teacup are no longer important )

This is just a quick post as I have to catch up with the thread and the internet connection here keeps vanishing.

My top three Butternut Berthas are;

in 3rd place 'Baby Bertha' at 2.98kg (apx 6lb 9oz)
in 2nd place 'Bonny Bertha' at 3.02kg (apx 6lb 11oz)
and in 1st place 'Bloody 'ell Bertha' at 3.9kg (apx 8lb 10oz)

Off to catch up etc. . . . I'll be back

well igardener - I know who you are! so my best 3 butternut squashes put together just about compare to Bonny Bertha.....:)

I LOVE the Berthas! And 3.9kg is a whopping great one. I think it should be named Behemoth Bertha.