Allotment/Veg patch thread 11 'We bid farewell to rainbow leaves but will keep plotting along'

[bookbook]

Well, nights are drawing in, leaves are starting to turn, harvesting carrying on
What a summer it has been!
Join in with the ups and downs of growing our own into autumn.
Last thread www.mumsnet.com/Talk/gardening/2951768-Allotment-Veg-Patch-Thread-10-Plotmenters-busy-into-summer-and-loving-James-Wong?msgid=71770088HERE

It has been a lovely sunny day here, only started raining a couple of hours ago. At the plot I did some weeding, cleared some beds and harvested my first outdoor aubergine! I am also still picking cucumbers, and beans, had to gather about 6 butternut squash (any good ideas on what to do with them?). I hadn't planned to plant the squash, it was given to me and I thought it would fill a space . The bed clearing involved removing strawberry runners, I have more than enough. They are bare rooted but being softly rained on ATM. If I take them along to a car boot tomorrow how much do you think I can ask for each? Some are single plants and some are runners with 3 or 4 plants. all proceeds would go to Dd's Jamboree fund.

Evening!
I have not been down to my plot today -It had been raining most of the night, and was still wet this morning , and it mizzled this afternoon too

Cath - mmm I'm wondering if it is still very minor bitter pit, but then again, you don't normally see the blemishes so much on the skin. May have to pass on that - nice to hear they are so much better this year. I love autumn raspberries too - mine are a bit small and squashy, and need to be cooked in truth, but the flavour is so good!
Newt - just a word of warning on your Christmas potatoes - keep a sharp eye on the weather and treat them as tender . I actually did mine in pots in the greenhouse, but you do have to remember to water them well to get a good crop ( voice of experience! )
Once - slowworms how wonderful. Never seen one in real life ...
elephant - butternut squash are ace! Let them cure after giving them a wash ( dry well) they will last up until Christmas or later if carefully stored. We roast them with garlic and rosemary. If enough left , they go well with baby spinach and lentils in a salad, or our favourite is risotto.

re strawberries - I have no idea, but why not go for 50p each or 3 for a £1 and see how it goes? you can always reduce the price if people aren't buying . They tend to be about 80p - £1 each for named , rooted plants online

Thanks Book for the advice. I heard about curing pumpkins on GQT to make them sweeter. The first BNS I harvested I did do a risotto but I found it really too sweet. Maybe I ought to add more lemon juice and black pepper or find a cake recipe. Lots of friends have been more than happy to receive them though.

Afternoon!
busy morning :) though sunny , it did try a little shower ...
Managed to get a lot done - more weeding, another 2 wheelbarrows of manure spread ( only 2 to go now ) sweetpeas dug up. Lots of harvesting - I went to get the last of the sweetcorn and - yep the mice'/rats had found them - lost about 4 of the nicest ones just brought home everything left. I swapped a cauli for some carrots - I have another 3 caulis all waiting to be picked !
I ordered my overwinter shallots/garlic/onions yesterday, due at the end of the month, so I need to get a bed prepped up for them.
elephant just a tip I picked up - I wash the squashes in very dilute bleach, then rinse them well.
Cath - I totally forgot to answer about PSB. I think it depends on the variety. As you may know, I grow quite a lot, to pick it over a long season. The first green lot are just flagging , the next purple ones are just starting - I've used the central head, and its getting the secondary sprouts now. Some are no where near, as they won't crop until Feb/March . I took some photos of mine in the brassica cage so you can see :)

Lovely looking harvest there book.

I am desperate for my sweetcorn to ripen. Have had brown tassles but no milky fluid. Did pick a couple the other week but theu weren't quite done. Hoping the warmer weather tipped for next week finishes them off.

Had an hour this morning. Pulled up a couple of tomato plants that were looking ropey. Plenty of green toms still on them but stems were going black so suspect blight. Still have quite a few plants full of green toms so sacrificed the gammy ones in the hope of sparing the others.

Also took the last runner bean wigwam down. And did a bit more on the corner of doom. We want to put the shed there. It's the most level bit on the bottom and also has some slabs already down so might as well use them. There will be space at the side of it for compost bins too. It's so overgrown and bramble infested down there I think it would take a good few years to get rid of it all so might as well build over it!

We also turned over some of the now empty beds. Well DP did. Mainly to avoid tackling the corner of doom I think.

He is lighting a bonfire later apparently. He has been lighting the bonfire for the last 6 weeks so I won't bank on it. His enthusiasm is waning a little now.

If he is not careful he will be getting a courgette up his bum! But have told him we need to clear the area then we can go shed shopping. He likes shopping so that miggt motivate him a bit!

£10 made at the car boot. Not bad for plants that would have ended up on the compost heap!

well done elephant !
Frouby - are the brown tassels dried up , and withered? I would be very tempted to pick one and see . Everybody has virtually picked all the sweetcorn over the last week or so up here.

Some were book. I picked those last week. The corn was small and pale and not very juicy or sweet. So I either missed them or they were too early.

The rest are just starting to turn brown. Well some are some are still pale. They didn't go in while june time. End of june I think. They are massive tho, some are 6ft tall! Will take some photos when I go up in the week.

An hour up at the plot today, picking raspberries (takes ages), weeding and digging out potatoes. Lovely, sunny afternoon. I'm planning half hour every day until I get back on top of the weeds.

How brown were the tassles frouby? We've had two meals out of ours so far. The ones that are ready have tassels that are very dark brown and crispy.

The problem I'm finding is that in stripping back the husks a little to see whether they are ready the insects then seem to get in if you leave the cob on the stalk for a while longer even where Ive tried to cover them back up again.

I detached most of the strawberry runners yesterday and now have eight new well rooted plants in pots. I only had one strawberry plant (which didn't really produce much fruit anyway) and so I let it just do its thing. Presumably that's zapped a lot of the energy out of the mother plant? (I know that feeling! ) but the babies look healthy. Where is best to plant a strawberry bed? Presumably as sunny a spot as possible?

I also, as an experiment, tried to transplant some of the thinned out carrots. After my last carrot disaster it was too upsetting to throw away the lovely straight baby carrots I was pulling up whilst thinning so I very carefully put them into new homes keeping the roots as straight as possible. I know they're not likely to be happy now that Ive moved them but I had the space so it was worth a shot.

I think my problem with my sweetcorn is cross pollination from the mini ones that were in the same bed as the normal ones. Sigh. You live and learn. The ones we picked had brown tassles but weren't crispy. I had one that had split too where I had poked it which is another reason I started picking. Will try and take some photos later.

Newt I did that with some beetroot I thinned. I had half a bed free so thought I might as well. They spent 2 weeks looking dead and pathetic but then recovered quite nicely after a few days of heavy rain. So plenty of watering might help.

Hi all. Have been on holiday and before that nothing was happening so I've not posted in a while.

Your harvests are all so beautiful.

I finally have multiple courgettes! And there's even a yellow one growing. So that is all very exciting.

My apples are ripe now (will post a picture in a reply) and they taste delicious. I've made some spiced apple sauce with the windfall ones. Should be lovely with pork, gammon, etc.

My sweet peas have been thoroughly infested with aphids so I pulled them all out this morning. It was revolting! The ground underneath them was liberally sprinkled with green. Far too many bugs for the ladybirds to eat. And my borage plants seem to have come down with some kind of mildew so I had to pull them all out too.

Otherwise, I've got some beetroot ready, the carrots are nearly ready, lettuce has finally gone to seed, and I have lots of green tomatoes.

PSB is doing pretty much nothing. I don't know if I've done something wrong, or if it is still growing.

Apples! And a picture of what the garden looked like when we got home.

Evening!
No plot - been doing wraparound care :)
Once - those potatoes look lovely - I remember you saying they have done well . They look like a redskin- so possibly Desiree or maybe Sarpo Mira ( thats the blight resistant one) .
Grouchy - that is one tidy garden :) and how lovely that all your hard work is finally paying off in fruit and veg. My courgettes died the death with virus, so had a very poor harvest . PSB - as on my last post to Cath - depends on variety. If it is the traditional one, they get very leafy, and start producing shoots well after Christmas , but there are earlier varieties. It will get there , eventually!
Newt - you may find they grow, but could fork, or mis shape, but they will still taste fine if they survive :)

I think they probably are Desiree Book, they are the exact right colour, shape etc and I often buy them, so it makes sense that I would have chosen them.

Hi all! Thanks for new thread book

Garden looking bare now - I've stopped planting and started pulling things up, ready to re-landscape it over the winter.

Quick question - what's the best way to store potatoes? I have lots of potato sacks (the old style hessian ones) but should I dig them, sit them out to dry, then wrap each one individually in newspaper? Do I need to clean them? Or can I just shove them all in sacks as I dig them out?! (Surely not )

Hello everyone. A beautiful warm sunny day here.
I've spent a while at the plot(s) this week. I have a deadline of 1st Oct to vacate the quarter plot. It's surprising how long it takes to move a few raspberry canes, my rotted manure pile and the compost I've been concocting since last summer. The 2 plots are on opposite ends of the site and I'm finding the lifting and carrying really hard work. A few barrowloads of manure and I'm exhausted!
It's nearly done now though - just have to move my compost bin and a big plastic storage chest that I'll keep until my shed is more watertight. I'll do those early next week and then I can truly concentrate on the new plot. I've plonked all of my shrubs & herbs into a vacant bed but need to find them a permanent home, but to do that I'll have to dig a solid deep mat of Crocosmia bulbs out of the front bed. The crocosmia aren't really flowering, I think they were so crowded that there wasn't any new growth.

Afternoon!
Gin hello :) Common way to do potatoes is to dig them up, and leave on the top of the soil for a couple of hours, to let the skins dry . Then shake or brush off the soil, and put in your sacks - normally thick paper ones are used now, but I don't see why hessian ones are any worse. Just make sure they are in the dark and cool somewhere so they don't go green. I tend to look at mine fairly carefully, and leave out any that look a bit iffy or are damaged. I use those up first.
timtam - that does sound exhausting. Just think though how fit you must be ( or fit to drop ) . Thats the only trouble with new plots. Holding stuff somewhere until the right space is ready
I have had a good couple of hours at the plot this afternoon. Such beautiful sunshine. I am slowly finishing weeding one bed, and have now barrowed my last two barrows of manure onto it. The manure bin is officially empty ( well, apart from a few scrapings).
I harvested another crown prince squash - just one more left now. So I will have got seven off two plants, am pleased with that. Picked a swede, some cutting celery and two leeks which have produced seed stalks. Will make minestrone soup tomorrow with tomatoes out of the greenhouse. I hadn't picked raspberries for about 4/5 days so there were quite a lot to pick!

Ah lovely, thank you! May do that tomorrow if it stays dry.

One of the tomato plants got blight so I've pulled that (and the others!) up today. I feel like it may have been my fault - we got a new dog a week and a half ago, and neglected the tomatoes. Loads had split and I'd not picked them off. They did well to last until now though! We had a really good crop.

I lost a few tomato plants to blight this week too. Also my fault. They all blew over and off and were touching the soil so went a bit rotten. Had a good crop and still got plenty on that are green but if I lose them now I lose them.

Had an hour up there tonight. Had 4 more courgettes. Thought they had done and was going to pull them up but still flowers and mini courgettes coming. Also got another 1lb or so of tomatoes, a curly cucumber and an almost ripe sweetcorn that the ants were attacking. Buggers.

Have had a good ferret around the sweetcorn. Some really tiny ones have gone yellow but split open and something has got to them before me. Still have quitw a lot on so am am going to keep a close eye over the next week or so and try and beat the critters!

Still have leeks, a late crop of dwarf french beans, peas and beetroot to come.

Had a bonfire tonight too. There is something very primal about lighting a fire. We spent about an hour sat watching it lol.

Dug up all the potatoes. We have masses. I wonder if I could part roast some and then freeze them? (Always looking for ways to have food in the freezer DP can shove straight in the oven without defrosting, late at night after work)

Will take a photo of the now very bare veg garden soon once I've tidied up

Just looked it up - apparently I can par-boil the potatoes then freeze them, to be roasted straight from the freezer. Excellent. Now just need more freezer space.

Hi there.
have not yet been on the new thread...
sunflower question: had some gisnt ones and a red giant one.
last year the head I saved for seeds went all mushy over winter. is there a better way to safe seeds?

the squirrels have started to destroy the heads. so for now I have taken them inside where they are drying on a pile of newspapers.

Afternoon all

Gin apparently you can mash and then freeze potatoes. You could make some shepherd pies maybe? Or fish pie I suppose.

Had another hour on the plot. Dp had a dodgy tummy so been off work. Fancied some fresh air so we got some bits done.

Took the strawberries and their billion runners we have had in pots at home and shoved them in one of the top beds that probably won't be moved. Have sort of squashed the runners into the soil and hoped for the best. Mother plants out of their pots too. Not sure how they will do but they were struggling in the pots anyway.

We also had a good 45 minutes clearing the bottom bit. DP has kept having a go at it with petrol strimmer but he seems to spend more time sat fiddling with strimmer than actually strimming so we tried it my way today.

I had the hoe. He had the loppers and rake. I hoed, he raked then got the loppers on the stubborn bits. Cleared a lot more a lot quicker than with the strimmer. We know now where we are putting everything too.

Also called in a shed factory on the way home. Ordered a 7 x 5 shed with a decent sized window. Delivered and fitted for £345 which I thought was a decent price. Especially as it's fitted as it would have been a full day job, lots of swearing and stress for me and dp to build it.

So quite a productive afternoon really!

Thanks Frouby - that would be a good idea but I'm not the biggest fan of mash (unless it's sweet potato mash, I could eat an entire saucepan full of that...)

Just trying to find ways to stop DP eating the Aunt Bessie's freezer roasties when we have a hoard of fresh potatoes