Allotment/Veg Patch -Thread 8 - Its spring - time to get busy!

[bookbook]

Thought I had better get a new thread ready to roll!
It has been a long, soggy winter , but the clocks go back soon, we may see the sun , so it will be all go, go ,go
Everyone welcome, join us the celebrate and commiserate on the joys of vegetables
previous thread HERE

Hello!
everyone looks to be enjoying themselves this afternoon :)
Red - mm - I have big old Hibiscus in the ground - they always seem to be bare around the bottom, and they do put out the leaves late - I always panic . Mine are underplanted with bulbs mostly, which is of no help if you have squirrels . How about violas and ? They spread quite easily and fill all sorts of little spaces , and I love the tiny flowers too.
Rosetinted - just jump in and ask! - chitting potatoes - cool and bright is the advice - just keep frost free. Red is right - courgettes are hungry and thirsty . One seed per pot- keep an eye on the water as terracotta pots evaporate off water very well :) Lettuce is fine - depending on variety, you can grow lettuce all year round . Keep your tomatoes warm though - they really don't like the cold .

Newt news very exciting. I've been involved with a school pond that had lots of newts and frogs managing together, although it was quite big. Spent a very happy afternoon in the greenhouse potting up some fairly desperate seedlings to give to a friend as I have reached peak tomato and have no more room. I've germinated some corgettes without a plan- inside or outside greenhouse better??

Back from the allotment, broad beans and bulbs are in. Peas tomorrow.

Cathpot, where I am (midlands) courgettes grow fine in the soil outside once the frost risk is passed.

We use a hot bed system. Each year we nominate a bed which gets all the composing waste: grass cuttings, leaves, stems etc. The following year we add a layer of fresh horse manure, cover the lot with weed proof fabric and then plant the courgettes through the fabric. The heat from the rotting compost/manure under the fabric gives off a lot of warmth which the courgettes seem to love.

At the end of the season we take the cover off and rotavate the bed. The worms do an excellent job of pulling the compost through the soil and improving it.

thanks, have found an old seedpacket of 'beefriendly self seeding annuals' so I guess marigold, nasturtions(sp?), borage...

sorry forgot, thinking of using those under the hibiscus.

I get so many ideas from here - thank you everyone!

I had a few hours in the garden this morning - till I got very heavily rained upon! And I currently have no shelter, apart from some overhanging hawthorns. So I got very wet.

But I started digging over, weeding and preparing my new potato bed. It's not really done but a bit of it is good enough for my earlies to go in later in the week.

I drafted in DH and got the border garden finished today - completely unexpectedly. Have set up the tiny (washing up bowl) pond with little bog garden around it and ordered a few pond/bog garden plants. It's looking so beautiful. Will share a photo when the plants arrive.

Next week I'm going to try sowing a few things outside, like lettuce, beetroot and my companion flowers (marigold, nasturtium and borage). I need to finalise my baby bath strawberry gardens, put straw around the plants, and get the borage growing beside them too.

DD1 chose some sunflower seeds today so I think the girls and I will set up a pot each to watch them grow before planting a few in the ground later.

I love this time of year.

Oh, and my bigger plum tree is covered in a profusion of blossom. It's so lovely after the sparse covering it had last year.

Red I read that as beef friendly, more tea needed.

grouchy tell me more about your washing up bowl pond. I'm hoping to attract frogs etc with a wetland area (hoping I don't sound too monty don there), but I have neither the space nor the money for a proper pond.

Hello! I have lots of questions, started growing at the end of summer, just a tiny garden, this year I really want to go at it though! 😀 I have a very sunny fence and have bought some of those cheap large-ish fake terracotta things that go on the fence, but wondering what I could grow in them, they're not VERY deep, would strawberries be ok there? Tomatoes, peas? Just a bit worried and unsure which plants need a lot of depth... thank you!

what is 'not very deep'?

toms don't need much, 20cm is fine for them but they will need support (tomato pots are quite small). strawberries should be fine as well.
salad leaves.
I have grown parsnips, leeks, beetroot in balcony boxes before.

beef friendly :o
I guess it makes for tasty milk herbal lays as in the archers?

User perhaps you could try the 'Tumbling tomatoes' variety that can be grown in hanging baskets.

112 I saw pictures on Pinterest like the ones in this link and am winging my own version.

DH dug a hole for the bog garden, we lined it with pond liner and put the washing up bowl in the middle. I've put some stones in the bottom of the bowl, with some larger ones to act as steps for hedgehogs (not that we have any) or other creatures that might fall into it. I've order some small reeds and two water cleaning plants to go in, plus some grasses for the bog garden section, and today I bought a few flowering plants for the bog garden bit too. I put stones around the outside edge of the bowl to hide the plastic. And I have an upside-down teapot to act as a hiding place for the frogs I'm optimistically hoping will show up in due course.

Hopefully it will all work!

kiwi great idea.
bees and other insects need water as well and they like to suck it up from boggy areas.
my dad, who keeps bees, has made 'floats' out of fabric and wine corks so the bees have a reliable water source.

Red I didn't think about bees etc, though every website mentioned dragonflies. I'm so looking forward to seeing what comes to visit, and excited for what the children will get to watch.

bees are incredible creatures.
they use the water to help keep the hive a constant temperature.

I've just put some bonfire ash on a bed I was going to use for potatoes. Is this a disaster? It wasn't a lot and I could probably remove the layer if soil with most of the ash in.

#rookiegardener

grouchy thank you so much for the post. I really like the idea of this and will redraft my allotment plan to try and incorporate it. I would love frogs to eat all the gross slugs.

Hi ash, I'll be honest I don't know the proper answer. I would have said it would be fine, especially if only a thin layer.

very quick dip in - back later after plot.
goodenough - ash is usually used to help fruit and flowers, as it has a dollop of potassium in it. But it is alkaline, so you wouldn't want to add it to a limey soil as it is, or add to plants that like slightly acidic soil. Its better in the compost bin, or added and forked in well before planting. If not much, I would try to dig it in so it is well distributed. Or rake it off if its just on top .
Right - off to the plot

Just remember, that cutting the grass can become quite traumatic if there are frogs about!

We're looking at getting a bat box put up, spotted where the bats we've seen flying about are nesting/roosting and want to encourage more. They're about 6 feet from our bedroom window so I want them as mosquito guards :-)

Thanks for that warning, tiz! We have to do a stone hunt before mowing (thanks children) so if frogs do arrive we can add that into our pre-lawn cutting search.

Bats! That's cool.

I hate digging I hate digging I hate digging I HATE DIGGING!!!!!

Viloot know what you mean.
The blisters only take a bout two weeks to heal.

As soon as you get the worst of the perennial roots out, look at permaculture. Lots of ideas for minimal dig.