Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 12! Plotmenters hoping for better weather

[bookbook]

Well, previous thread is nearly full, and I am busy the next couple of days, so thought I had better get this up and ready.
Thanks for the plot title Una
Everyone welcome to join in and share their experiences, tips, the woes and joys of growing their own .
Summer and harvests here we come ( and we''ll do our best to beat the pests)
Previous thread HERE

I picked most of the rest of our blackcurrants yesterday - got another 1.5kg. There are still more currants on the bushes that need to ripen, but only enough for making muffins. I think I'll add 500g of yesterday's harvest to the first for making juice, use 1kg for jam and then make the muffins with the remainder.

I finally have some baby courgettes! One plant has shrivelled up and looks dead but the roots are still firm and strong. Is there any hope or should I just remove it?

Today's plans include weeding the garden since it's finally cooler here (maybe 18C today) and picking the next lot of raspberries. We're getting so many this year!

Hi everyone! fell off the thread after holidays. Some impressive harvests you've all been having

Our courgettes have been pretty rubbish this year whereas gave spares to my MIL and hers are doing great. Typical!

So far this summer we have been harvesting strawberries, raspberries, lettuce, rocket, mizuna, nasturtium, pak choi, herbs, rhubarb, radish, broad beans, spring onions, red onions, french beans, fennel, beetroot, turnip, kale, chard, spinach, courgette, cucumbers (pickled). Tomatoes, peppers and chilis are coming along nicely. I can't remember last time we bought veg from the supermarket!

Morning!
Lovely morning , soooo much cooler here today.
blue - forgot to answer about potato foliage. Have they flowered, or died back? If not, I would leave as they need the foliage before harvesting . I know when blight rears its ugly head, you can cut the foliage back and leave the tubers in the ground, but you want the best harvest you can .
Grouchy - wow, fabulous harvests - bet you are pleased!
pretty - is that 80 gm of peas before or after eating half while podding? ( well, thats what happens here anyway!)
I went early as it was cool, watered and picked the last 3 blackcurrant branches - another 1.1 kg . I've brought home a few broken branches too to see about setting off more bushes. It is such a great fruiter, I would like to have back ups . Same with the red currant - I gave all my rooted cuttings away this year for some reason

I picked the very first few green beans - I do like to do that to spur on the plants :) Only 2 courgettes today!!! - will be making courgette and gruyere muffins later .
A few flowers cut too - though I couldn't bear to cut the sunflowers - in truth they have millions of little black beetles in them !
Sweetcorn are producing their tassels and looking pretty good - must water them now .

Bookbook - didn't snaffle any of the podded peas but had "checked" a couple of pods earlier in the day

Didn't have time to.... It was 5 minutes from picking the pods, photographing, podding and microwaving them!

Trying again to post the photo - if it's not there it's because MN is still not letting me

I found some tiny new leaves on my sad courgette plant so I cut away the dead stuff to give them light and air. Hopefully it will revive.

Thank you for the advice everyone. I'm going to get some autumn raspberries I think, they sound easier than the summer ones. How many canes should I start with? I've only got a small space.

My purple bean plants are growing well but the largest is still only 10 inches or so and no sign of flowers. They went in late so I'm hoping they'll catch up. I've got lots of green tomatoes on one plant (which I bought) but not even a flower on the others which were grown from seed I think (they were a gift). Would they have flowered by now if they were going to?

@TheHoundsofLove those tomatoes look lovely! What varieties have you got?

I'm determined not to lose interest in the veg plot when it turns cold as I usually do - I'll need to plant rhubarb and raspberries in the autumn (I think that's right?!) and I want to start some seeds indoors next year rather than buying plants so I can have a wider choice of varieties. So I'll be sticking with these threads for inspiration!

Just hoping for some rain now 🤞🏻

Evening all.

Mad busy here on the plot. Have had an hour today thinning tomato plant leaves out and tying and staking them. Pulled the rest of the peas which I was disappointed with. Full of pea larvae I think it is? Lots of wiggly worms in them. Probably 2/3s so they are all on the compost heap.

Really pleased with my first earlies I have pulled so far. Not 100s of them but all about tennis ball size and no worm or slug damage I can see.

Had to capture all my norty chooks and clip their wings as we have had an escapee.

Beetroot seeds I put in a month ago are rubbish. Only a few germinated and same with my kale.

Runner beans doing well though as are courgettes. Butterhead lettuce all bolted or bolting. Outdoor melons have suddenly burst into life and the pumkins are doing very very well. I think I need to remove some fruits though. About 10 on each plant.

Happy harvest :)

Frouby my outdoor melons seem to have going this week as well. Today I harvested the first of the runner beans, the inevitable courgette, a few raspberries and the japanese wine berry is now in full production.

purple - the one thing about raspberries is they soon increase in number, year by year, so 3/4 canes would be enough to start with I
would think. But to get a good supply you could really do with at least 6, but I know you are short of space.
tiz
well, I have just got caught up with making stuff/freezing stuff.
Doorbell rings tonight - a fellow plotter had offered me some gooseberries ( I gave him spare cauli plants a little while ago ) and there he was with a bucket of gooseberries . Must be 10lbs of them at a guess !
Jam pan out tomorrow .......

The two autumn raspberry canes that I bought about 10 years ago are still well behaved and where they were. They haven't multiplied much. They could do with feeding though, as I've neglected them a bit

The summer canes however.......

I'd transplanted a few along the top the bank just below my raised beds and beside grass. The runners went everywhere - including half a metre into my raised beds. I had to pull them out.

I'd also left a few in what is now a flower bed while I was sorting out other bits of the garden. They are now rampant in there My project this autumn, once all the perennials have died down, is to try to pull them all out. I'll also transplant a few of the canes down to the slope below the greenhouse (where the raspberry canes are supposed to be) and there is a bit of a space beside the existing canes where dh dug out a sycamore stump to put the greenhouse in.

At the moment, about a 1/3 of my harvest is coming from the interlopers in my perennial bed But there are a few "new" canes below the greenhouse that I transplanted (as they were in the way of the greenhouse) so I lost this year's harvest from them. So that should compensate a bit next year.

Lovely thread.

Slow start to the year as was away and it was also cold. Bot beetroot, baby turnips and potatoes all good.

Peas and beans very slow.

Dehydrator on for more spinach from the garden this morning before I started work.
My two gooseberry bushes were munched by caterpillars overnight. Guessing from pissed off cabbage whites that can't get at my brassicas easily. I pulled off about 20 caterpillars this morning and chucked em in the ivy over by the garage.

could be sawfly bell - they can strip the leaves off gooseberry in no time flat. Funnily, they are usually really bad one year, the bush survives and they don't get badly infested after that.
I have been topping and tailing gooseberries this morning for jam. I have just got my jam recipe book out, and there is a recipe for gooseberry curd, and the gooseberries don't need topping and tailing ..- thats the next thing to do methinks :)

Thanks @bookbook . This is my first year with these gooseberry bushes - only about a year old - and I have exactly 3 fruit across two bushes. I have always seen this more as a bedding in year and didn't expect much. Was really surprised to see it.

The clouds teased us again by threatening rain that never materialised.

Another couple of courgettes and beetroot. The beetroot that I put in last week has all germinated well as well.

Beans still coming in dribs and drabs, I'm freezing them now.

Tomatoes are still stubbornly refusing to even start turning red. I'm not sure what's typical or if there's anything I can do to encourage ripening?

I have just two tomatoes going red tiz - I am urging them on . I am a bit surprised considering how warm it has been . But once they start, it seems to trigger them all.
DH and I went to water tonight, and I picked a little bit of calabrese which was trying to bolt , and yes -- another 4 courgettes.
No sign of rain at all here .

I went a watering this evening. I was the only one there. I heard a huge roar that echoed around the plot from the houses and pubs just after 7. It was quite surreal.

There's no sign of rain here either - I'm going to put the sprinkler on this evening.
Purple I have Chocolate Cherry, Sungold, Gardener's Delight, Black Cherry, Tigerella and Corazon. Taste wise, our favourites are Sungold and Black Cherry, but have decided that we still really like the mixture as they look so pretty and the flavours work well together. My Corazons are now ripening too - I think I'm going to make tomato soup and a big batch of sauce.

I've finally got trusses set on 3 of my tomato plants so that I can start feeding them. The other 4 plants are still just flowering (one has only just started flowering).

It turns out I'm allergic to cucumber leaves : got a nasty wee rash (initially thought it was a bite, as I react quite badly to flea beetles, which like to bite me when I'm picking raspberries - although not touch wood this year) where the hairy bit of the cucumber leaf grazed me.

In good news though, there are 3 cucumbers plumping up nicely and another 2 teeny ones have appeared.

Will just need to protect myself from cucumber leaf attacks in future

Morning!
cloudy and cool here , so zoomed off to water and pick .
pretty - I started feeding my tomatoes as soon as the flowers started , I don't wait for them to set - weak feed every watering, as DDad always did them that way. oh, cucumber leaves are prickly , not nice.
I watered the sweetcorn and flowers this morning - everything else got a really good soak last night.
My potatoes are looking really sad - and quite a lot have given up with the leaves, so I dug two of those up. Lots of small and sad looking ones, but enough for a boiling I suppose. Dug up 3 beetroot , picked the last few peas off my first sowing - second sowing just coming along now. Picked the few sad broad beans too . French beans starting nicely now, but not the purple ones - they have lots of flowers, but nothing set yet - same with the runner beans. Picked a few raspberries and logan berries , then started on the jostaberry . I have done about a third of the bush , and got just over a kilo so far .

Cooler here today as well. Although I think the sun might come out again in a bit.

We've been busy watering and watering. Some of the direct sown things are definitely not doing anything - far too hot I guess. We've had some green french beans, the purple ones are not far behind (I realised that they were hiding camouflaged as stems), also picked first runner bean. Others are growing quickly now and I reckon will be ready next week. Lettuce is doing OK and so is chard.

Raspberries are coming to an end and first blackberries are ripe (they are next to a wall which helps them to ripen early).

Squashes and pumpkins are suddenly growing everywhere but they are mostly producing male flowers so far. They'd better produce some female ones soon.

I made loganberry jam with my loganberries the other week. This year they've gone from being under ripe to overripe in a matter of hours so although there's lots of fruit and I've been picking daily there are still a lot that have gone horrible too quickly.

We're away for the weekend so will be giving everything a good soaking before we go.

Still no rain here but much cooler and cloudy today. Still not harvesting much but my broad beans are doing well and not a blackfly in sight. Also a photo - these are some leftover leeks from last winter, the bees are loving them

Those tomatoes look so beautiful together Hounds.

Today we picked another load of raspberries. Not sure how much, but will measure them later as they're going to be turned into jam. (Enough for maybe 2 jars, I think, but that's plenty.) The children are really keen on the idea of jam and there were too many for pudding even over the next two days so it seems a good time to make jam. I can't believe how many berries we're getting this year. I think we had a grand total of 6 last year.

We also had our first meal-sized harvest of broad beans for this season and I think they were the best I've ever eaten, so that feels good!

My tomatoes are still growing beautifully. No fruit set yet but plenty of flowers and they look amazingly healthy.

More courgettes! 30 g of wild strawberries and some beans that I must have missed yesterday. I thought the purple beans were going to be much easier to spot but that doesn't seem to be the case.

A squirrel has got into my brassica cage and feasted on sprout leaves so going to have to make something more substantial. I've told the squirrel he's welcome to a courgette or two but he's only interested in the sprouts!