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

I'm having huge rhubarb envy

I've been away for a week so can't wait until tomorrow to see what's going on in the allotment. My husband was around but I think he basically just watered things!

We're going to have an Easter egg hunt there for my DS and nieces tomorrow- I have to lure the kids to the nearby playground while DH plays easter bunny!

Gin - poor you, hope you feel better soon.
Gnome - I'm not a fan of rhubarb and ginger, as I'm not a big fan of ginger ,but rhubarb and vanilla is lovely.
sorry Cath

does your DH have ears Eating ?

I agree that rhubarb and vanilla go together very well. We sometimes have cold stewed rhubarb with vanilla yoghurt.

Can I join? Trying to get back into veg growing after a long hiatus. I managed to clear four bin bags of ground elder and construct a couple of raised beds. I have some peas, beans, carrots, courgettes and tomatoes waiting to be hardened of and go outside (I think the beans and peas could have been planted out straight away but I was worried the toddler would destroy them before they started). The only problem is the beans and peas shot up in a week and I haven't even started hardening them of yet. Can anyone tell me if they need to go out before they reach a certain size?

My red PVC arrived today and I spent half an hour or so trying to work out how to put it round strawberries that are already up and spreading. I cut holes in squares in the end and wiggled them through. The answer to my initial worry of whether it would be possible to integrate red pvc into the strawberry bed in an unobtrusive way ( as I am growing fruit and veg in our garden rather than an allotment) is an emphatic no it is not. It looks extremely odd. Also I have wildly over ordered PVC. They had better taste DELICIOUS.

Also welcome flop , I'm not ignoring you I'm just not very knowledgable!

Welcome Flop no, they don't need to be a certain size, but they desperately want to twine or climb, so they get rather messy IYSWIM .
They don't want to be planted out until hardened off, and in the case of French or runner beans , they don't want to be planted out until after your last predicted frost date.
Cath -

Flop good potential of frosts on Tues and Weds. Keep hardening them off. They need planting before they risk being snapped when transferred.
Cath we are going to need photos of the red PVC clad strawberries [need a suitable PVC smiley]

With beans, do you put the supports up as soon as you plant them out, or do you wait until the plants have got taller and then build the support around them?

Gin we start the beans inside and at the same time start building the supports outside then after the last frost date:

www.plantmaps.com/interactive-united-kingdom-last-frost-date-map.php

we take the beans to the supports. If the beans are long enough we wrap them around the supports but otherwise they flop about a bit but soon work it out. We plant one plant and one seed at each support.

Thanks Gnome - do you plant a seed next to a plant so you have a longer supply? (Sorry if that's an obvious question!)

Ooh Gnome the last frost date for my area on the map you linked to is a good two weeks earlier than the one I found online. I'm desperate to start planting out (and DH is desperate to get the seedlings out of the house as it is not "a makeshift greenhouse") so I'm going with the date you linked to! Excited!

Yes my date is a lot earlier than I expected too! I think I saw a rough guideline in an old gardening book which said 2nd week of May. That link lets you zoom in to your actual village, and it said 1-10 April for me there! Hurray.

Morning!
interesting frost map there - mine is still May1-10. I have always used the one on the garden focused website , as it then sorts a calendar of work out for you, to go with the info. Mind you I do think we are in milder conditions than even 20 years ago.
Well, I have woken up, and it is sunny! where is the rain. I need rain. May have the chance to go and do some more work after all.
Gin - you don't need a longer supply for beans - they will keep producing until the frosts if you look after them. With runners, I can get fed up of them before they give up :)

Gin it's to try and extend the bean season and also to make sure we dont have any gaps in case we have a casualty.

We are on the border (quite literally, it goes through the town) between 10 April and 20 April. Being in a field in a not very built up town I think I will be erring on the side of caution. Even if the last official date has past I think it is possible to get a little pocket of frost especially in a hollow.

I'm actually in the Netherlands and the traditional time for the last frost is ijsheiliggen (also 2nd week of may) but it is so sheltered where we are I think I could risk earlier (the weather forecast doesn't show any frost for the next 2 weeks). So maybe harden everything of for two weeks and then plant out...

And that's interesting to hear about the beans - do they all keep producing until the frost kills them? I was going to plant new ones every two weeks but might not if the first set will keep on producing

Tell me about it book - we still have a freezer full of beans from last year

Flop I think I remember MIL saying they just keep coming as you pick them. I had to go and pick beans every day when they were on holiday, to make sure they still had a supply going when they came back!

yes, just keep picking, and maybe water in dry spells.

Ah thanks gin! I will probably plant a few more over time as insurance but that's really helpful as I calculated otherwise planting out 2 new bean plants every fortnight for the next couple of months would probably be too many beans.
Part of the reason I want to grow beans and peas is to encourage my son to start eating them again but he might just react in horror at the piles and piles produced by 20 plants...

And thanks book book. Watering things is my weakness to be honest. I may need to put an eye catching poster up in the house to remind me.

20 plants - you will have a lot of beans get the recipe books out :)
upthread someone said about having 7 courgette plants. ( sorry, can't remember who) I did that the first proper year on my allotment. I now plant 3...

Three courgettes is enough for me too, but last year they got attacked by slugs so I have sown six again.

That frostmap is interesting, we are in a pocket of 1-10 May, which I would agree with. Interestingly, the border to the next area is showing as being about 1/4 mile from our house in a line which tallies with our own observations that the weather is often completely different just down the road.