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

We had frost last night. I've harvested in as many tomatoes as I can. Some of them will ripen on the window/with a handy banana but those that don't will be green tomato chutney.
I've been shoving the red ones bit by bit into the freezer. I'll roast those and make tomato sauce for pasta. I'm lucky enough to have a US style pressure canner so the sauce will go in there.
Obviously some of the tomatoes haven't made this journey and have, instead, been eaten by me and mine. Yummy.

Frosty here this morning too.

Pulled some more carrots today and disappointed to still not have found a purple one from my heritage mix. Few more beans too, wonder if the frost will put the end to them, although sounds like it could be warming up again.

Frost for us today too, but then lovely and warm. Did my 15mins weeding and ate loads of raspberries because I didn't take a container to bring them home in .

It was 2º here this morning. Not had a chance to get to the plot , but want to go and harvest my squashes . Fingers crossed, I can get tomorrow or Thursday. I did spend some time cutting down a couple of the tomato plants in the greenhouse along with foliage , but left quite a lot of tomatoes on to hopefully keep ripening

Waiting expectantly for the first proper hard frost so I can get out and pick some sloes for sloe gin - they seem to have done really well this year, must be something about the weather.

Evening!
well, it has been lovely today, but am a bit hobbled by a dodgy leg, so not really up to much. DH came with me this afternoon, as after the cold snap overnight, I decided to harvest the winter squashes . Picked everything I could, as am away for the weekend . Rather pleased with all the squashes. I need to clean them up, weigh them and let the skins harden . Looking forward to trying the autumn crown ones ( a cross between a butternut and a crown prince ). I got 6 crown prince off 2 plants, 16 autumn crown off 3 plants , and 6 butternuts off 3 plants .

That's a great haul there bookbook

Look so pretty all displayed together like that

You did well well with your squashes bookbook. We harvested ours on Sunday after I discovered one of the pumpkins had been eaten by the slugs.
Honeyboat squashes have done very well for us this year - we've got about 15 of those. Crown princes have done OK but I tried growing some of them on top of a compost heap and a couple never got going - the heat I suspect. I'm going to try doing it again next year as the other plant romped away.
I'm going to look for different varieties to try next year I think. I grew Queensland Blue the other year and that did well so might try again.

My beans blew over in the wind. They have collapsed gracefully. Didn't have time to do anything about them last weekend because it poured with rain most of the time so will be sorting them out this weekend, weather permitting.

We also had a touch of frost earlier in the week - on rooftops not on the ground. This is early for us as we're in the South East.

I wasn't expecting it to get this chilly so early - we've not had frost yet but the chill in the air in the mornings and flopping peonies is definitely a warning sign! I have a couple of days of leave which is proving great for all those season change tasks in the garden.

So far I've pruned fruit bushes and have started clearing some raised bed space to get garlic etc in. Beans and indoor tomatoes are tailing off but I'll leave them a bit longer. I've also moved citrus and various other tender plants into the greenhouse for the winter - including the dahlia tubers which accidentally got wet and started sprouting. I'm hoping they'll get through at least some of the winter in the greenhouse and will have a headstart for next year. I have potted up some strawberry runners as I'd like to have some in pots to try for an early greenhouse crop.

Impressive squash hall there Bookbook! Given the way slugs devoured my squash plants I feel lucky to have got one nice sized potimarron and 5 munchkins from my late rescue sowing. I have also taken out my courgettes (shooting star) which have been a disaster; I tried to train them upwards but they've been sprawling everywhere and producing loads of tiny fruit that fail to develop before rotting. I have some interesting real seeds varieties to try next year instead.

I've also ordered some more compost so I can get on with winter sowings - spring onions, broad beans, tsai tai, lambs lettuce and some winter lettuce. Leeks and chard are doing well but unfortunately my broccoli have failed.

Any suggestions for other things I can put in now? I have a greenhouse (unheated) and a mildish climate. I will be doing garlic but find onions a waste of space and we already have rhubarb, asparagus and artichokes.

Here in Melbourne I've cleared half the rampant rocket, planted strawberries and just now, four tomato plants, two cherry and two Rouge de Marmande. For once I've gone for separate plants and staked them immediately. Spring onions are coming along nicely, as is daikon. Garlic will be ready in December.

Una we sowed winter radishes and spring onions the other day. Also if you have any small spare patches you can sow a winter green manure.
Also there are fruit bushes in the garden centres at the moment if you want to grow any of those.

Some of my garlic bulbs failed to split last year in spite of the cold weather. I can't quite decide whether to bother again this year.

echt what is the weather like in Melbourne at the moment? Do you have to hand fertilise your tomatoes? I read a book about bumble bees which said that they are the main fertiliser of toms in Europe but you don't have them in Oz, but some people who grow toms commercially argue that they should be introduced.

Cedar it's er Melbourne, so 25 on Thursday and 17 today.:o I've never hand fertilised a tomato and they always do well, but encourage native bees by growing flowering plants, so rosemary flowers winter and early spring here, as do nasturtiums. One of the things about Australia is that there is always, but always, a tree flowering.

The quarantine on bees and bee products is ferocious here - no foreign honey/bee products permitted at all. Not sure about the call for bees to fertilise tomatoes here: Australia exports bees as they are free (as yet) of the disease that plague other countries' bee colonies.

First frost here last night!!!!

By hilarious coincidence I've just watched Australia's equivalent of Monty Don's "Gardener's World", AKA "Gardening Australia" where they offer good advice to an entire continent, a 60-second-segment at the end of an hour's programme on what to do this week. The part that caught my interest was the advice for growers of quandong (native peaches) to guard against the depredations of emus and camels.:o

I was well-chuffed to see I'd got my tomato planting right.

Thanks echt that's interesting. Camels and emus, makes my worries about the local cat using my allotment as a toilet seem rather tame!

No frost last night as I think it was cloudier.

I'd love to try varroa-free beekeeping Australian style - the little pests are a real nuisance! Emus and camels are less of an issue...

Cedar I used to have problems with garlic not splitting but got much better results last year by spacing them out well - might be worth a try? I've just come in from planting two rows of garlic from this year's harvest which feels pleasantly self-sufficient!

Cedar I've tried winter radishes in previous years but without success (slugs again). I've sowed some spring onions and will have a think about green manure - I have various packets but never seem to get round to sowing it which is a bit useless. I have far too many fruitbushes/trees so will resist that temptation!

We've been given the blow that the allotments patch has gone up for sale (alongside a 10.5m lots of various farmland/industrial situation). So currently we're very unsure what'll happen now. The parish council previously leased the land so they may buy? We may be able to buy as a group?. The asking price leads us to believe planning permission hasn't been granted so hopefully developers won't look twice. Obviously feeling unsure what to do now as we'd been working on beds still, But??? Sigh!

Oh no Flying! You are going to have to have lots of meetings try and get the parish council on side.

Have a look at the 1922 Allotment Act. Are you sure they are allowed to sell it?

Afternoon!
been awol down south over the weekend, so today was first day back at the plot. Still got gammy leg , so can only do an hour .
echt - mmm camels and emus eh?
Flying - if its a private allotment site, I don't think you have any say. If the lease is up for the Parish Council, then maybe they can consult about buying it. But in truth, thats not the problem is it - it is the hard work you have already put in, and the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen. Good luck .
Its a bit cooler here today, and breezy. So a quick hour trip to do a bit of hoeing ( not allowed to dig yet) and pick anything that needed picking. I sprayed the sprouts with soapy water too ( absolutely covered in white fly ) , but I'm not holding out much hope for them doing much if anything now. I picked my last cauliflower - the other 2 I thought were cauliflower, turn out to be round cabbages I must have planted them in the gaps .... I think I have probably picked the last courgette too , and the last remnants of borlotti beans. Ran out of time, so tomorrow will be taking out plants and wigwams, and a bit more hoeing .

Flying how disheartening. Find out what the parish council thinks and also look at the development plan for your area. That will tell you whether that particular area has been identified as a site for future housing or other kind of development.

A couple of my broccoli have produced white heads having already produced green ones. Does anyone know what has caused that? I think we've given up on it anyway as the netting I used turned out not to be big enough and the cabbage whites found their way in. Last couple of lots of broccoli have resulted in me finding a caterpillar on my plate which is not ideal!

We cleared our beans at the weekend and our squash plants. Managed to shift some more manure as well. Need to finish forking over the squash bed and put some of the manure over the top. Then we can focus more on some of the wilder parts of the plot and get on top of the various weeds trying to take over.

Just back from a week away, not sure what the weather has been doing in my absence but everything is starting to look past its best.

Looks like the last of the beans (the frost we had a couple of weeks ago has finished them off), a handful of tomatoes and a courgette.

Will assess things properly tomorrow, forecast looks to be warming up and sunny so might be a last hurrah yet.

Hi folks, I hope it’s OK to jump on here. We don’t have an allotment but have 3 large raised beds, currently 2 veg and one fruit, a potato patch, a greenhouse, more pots than is sensible and a few small fruit trees.
We are in northern Scotland so the season is short and we’ve already had a couple of morning frosts.
The veg beds had been pretty neglected for a while aside from harvesting and most things weren’t doing much and getting very choked with weeds. So we’ve harvested the last of the broccoli (some but nothing like as good as last year), cauliflowers (hopeless, wont bother again), pulled the onions and got rid of dead peas, beans etc.
We still have carrots and parsnips in the ground and some leeks, which still look very tiny.
I wondered how people prepared their beds for winter if they weren’t growing in them? I went off to the garden centre for well rotted manure thinking to dig that in and cover them with black plastic - as my dad would have done but reading on line seems to suggest planting a green manure and then mulching with manure or compost in the spring before planting. We definitely need to do something to help them. They were filled only with topsoil when they were made 2 years ago and we dug a lot of a kindly neighbours compost in. Things did well that year but so did the weeds! This year it wasn’t nearly so productive despite the hot weather and plenty of watering (no water shortage up here!) but we didn’t add any compost or manure, I just scattered some chicken manure pellets around a couple of times. So I’m thinking we need to improve the soil for next year.
What do people usually do in the autumn to prepare for the next spring?

@tizwozliz - I see a lovely pasta sauce or ratatouille in your future.
Or chutney if you are up for it.

@DrWhy - I'm going for green manure. And I might leave root veg in until I need it.
Also thinking about an autumn set of onions because I've been successful with the this year.