Allotment?Veg Patch Thread 13! Are we weathering the weather?

[bookbook]

well, we have got to August , had heatwaves and thunderstorms. Goodness knows what happens next!
All welcome to join in sharing the highs and lows , tips and experiences of growing your own :)
Previous thread HERE

More green beans and tomatoes in the week. This week's tomatoes are being made into soup.

I'm not sure my sweetcorn is going to amount to much, suspect it was just planted too late.

Courgette plants got a reprieve as seem to be producing fruits again. It's been at least 3 weeks since the last courgette so I can face them again :-)

My wilko trip was unsuccessful, nothing of interest by the time I made it there. Truthfully I have a whole box of seed anyway so not sure I really needed more no matter how much of a bargain!

Evening .
Yesterday was just a quick trip to harvest anything ready, as I thought it was going to rain today ( rather silly, trusting the forecast! )
Today , I spent the morning planting out white and red onion sets, doing some weeding, and cutting flowers ( oh, and guess what - another courgette ....) This afternoon, we picked the pears at home - some had started to fall, so DH spent a bit of time up the ladder. A much better harvest than we hoped for earlier in the year :)

I keep forgetting to take photos at the moment. Still picking courgettes, runner beans, tomatoes, raspberries. My sweetcorn also fell prey to inadequate pollination as they were little stumpy things with underdeveloped to halves.

Also trying to get on top of the weeds, the soil is very dry again now so the roots are getting a bit concreted in. IT's very pleasant up there in the early evenings at the moment though, sun low in the sky, pumpkins and runner bean flowers glowing.

My plot is being overrun by Swiss chard - I planted a row of Bright Lights a couple of years ago, and when I dug them out I left one red stemmed plant in over winter as it was so beautiful. I didn't get any seedlings from it last year, but this year I started spotting them in early in Spring, took loads out and gave them away, have had a huge crop myself and the seedlings are popping up in lots more places on my plot now (very distinctive with their red stems). I think I will have to remove some but it seems a shame to dig them out they are so pretty.

Chop and drop @Meet0nTheIedge - put your weeds to work to improve your soil.

I have lots of garlic and thought about chopping it up and using it like lazy garlic! Has anyone ever done this, if so what did you put in the jar with the chopped garlic?

I would Bellini but it's mostly bindweed at the moment and I think the choped up bits would just reroot themselves and start again. I do hoe and leave annuals though. I could hoe and leave some of my chard too.

Garlic preserving - I read something years ago that said not to preserve garlic in oil as there is some sort of toxin that grows, might be worth a bit of googling.

The wind blew the greenhouse over and 'harvested' some tomatoes for me but no real damage. Beans continuing to come along well too. Also picked some sweet peas, cosmos and salvia.

Evening!
tiz - good to hear all is well.
Its been really wild here today, but rather warm. A bit weird. So I thought to get to the plot this afternoon for some much needed weeding.
Just got settled in , and some light rain comes . hah! methinks - go and pick raspberries before they get wet. Just about managed that when the rain came down. Well, across really . Even with a waterproof I got soaked , right though to the underwear . So I huddled in the shed, and when it eased , I went and tidied up, picked loads of beans , picked the courgettes and pulled some beetroot . The sun came out with a gorgeous rainbow, just to mock me !
I just have to hope its dry tomorrow, so I can get some weeding done

I dodged the showers today, sorry you didn't Book, and my soil was nice and damp again following torrential downpours earlier so weeds came out easily. It was boiling hot and blowing a gale at the same time.

Look what I got! A strawberry in September!

We didn't have any rain where I work, but there must have been plenty here as waterbutts overflowing and nice big puddle on my blown over greenhouse.

I've got some strawberries in flower. So might get a couple of late fruits.
Windy but mostly dry here but I know the weather was going to be worse in other parts of the country. Hope the beans are still upright!

We harvested more beans, spinach and beetroot at the weekend. Winter radishes sown the previous week had germinated and so had the winter green manure. Shifted more barrow loads of manure onto the plot as well.

I've started clearing an area of grass in the half that we took over year before last. It's been covered over for a while which has killed most of the grass so just need to dig it out and then get some of the manure on top of it. Then we can plant it up next spring with something.

mynaughtylittlesister I preserved my garlic in vinegar. There's lots of recipes on line. It worked really well and looked pretty.

Opinion on preserving in oil was mixed. It night grow botulism but probably won't....

Hi everyone hope your allotments and gardens survived the wind. We had a few casualties uprooted but not too bad!

Does anyone grow shallots? This was my first year, and I dried them according to instrucitons I found online, then stored them in a dark cupboard in our house, but loads of them have gone mouldy...Just wondering if they don't keep that long.....

Can I jump in and ask a daft question? Our runner bean Wigan blew over in the gales. I was thinking to just strip whatever beans I can salvage tomorrow, but has anyone got any top tips for preserving them? Do they freeze?

hi NoCrying - they freeze really well . You don't even need to blanch them. I just cut mine up into nice size pieces , and open freeze, then bag up :)
I managed some time at the plot yesterday morning , so dug up the sweetcorn, and weeded ready to mulch for winter. Yesterday/last night was wild and we got 31.8 mm of rain , but quickly checked at the plot today , and all was well. So I hope everyone else is.
Due to go back tomorrow to get some work done prepping up a new bit of asparagus bed. We managed to get some free topsoil, which will help to fill the new raised bed. Loads of it there, and we were told we could go back and help ourselves to as much as we wanted. We filled 6 big compost bags, and will do the same tomorrow hopefully. The small thrill of getting free topsoil! - nice stuff too .

ooh, forgot to say - must have been a big structure - Wigan is a big place!

Came on here to ask about runner beans. Mine are still producing beans and flowers. When should I give up on them?
I've noticed the last few weeks I've had to de-string them (is that a real word?) ) so will they freeze well after de-stringing?

llangennith - you can leave them to keep going unless you are fed up of them . They will give up with the frosts. I don't see a problem with freezing after de stringing, but I grow the stringless ones ( well thats the theory, anyway! )

Perfect, thanks books

Afternoon!

• a couple of hours prepping asparagus bed, and some time harvesting . I finally found a cauliflower - these should have curded a month ago, so despite its small size, it has been picked for cauliflower cheese tonight , The beans are still producing, though they are laying in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the canes , poor things . DH and I went back this afternoon to shift 15 bags of topsoil . The horrible weather produced 31.8 mm of rain the other night , so my IBC unit is nearly half full! and the ground is nice and friable again, not so wet, amazingly .

Thanks bookbook

Have enjoyed reading this thread, having fallen off the last one.

Most of our tomatoes are still green but cucumbers (2 plants) are still being prolific. Have emptied most raised beds and rotovated the 2 spaces that are not raised beds. Somehow managed to grow over 10 orange pumpkins but only 5 butternut squash. Might look for different varieties next year!

My overwintering garlic last year did not grow at all and onions were not great ( lots did not grow, or were small). What variety of garlic are people planting for overwintering?

I, too fell off the thread. I really can't get my head around still harvesting beans but I am very proud of my 3 outdoor melons. My outdoor cucumbers have started producing again, all in all a very weird growing season. Now that it is September and the fauna seem to be behaving in a seasonal manner, can I remove the netting from my PSB? Others on the allotment seem to have their brassicas on show and naked.

I keep falling off the thread too. No plot for me this weekend as it was raining every time I was free to go. I did manage a half hour stint on Friday though, lots of weeding, a few more strawberries and raspberries to eat and that was about it. Oh and I brought home my ripe pumpkins this week - one had collapsed suddenly and I didn't want to risk the other ripe ones.

Now it's dark too early to walk up there in the evenings I have stuck my gardening shoes and bag in my car boot and am planning to stop off for 15 minutes whenever I can on my way back from work (I finish mid afternoon and our dress code is casual, so I'm normally in jeans which I don't mind getting a bit of mud on). Little and often, it's surprising how many weeds you can get out in 15 mins.

Rhubarb I'm planting 'Marco' again which I have grown before successfully. I got it from dobbies.