Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 14 ! growing into summer

[bookbook]

Well, here we are - its the end of May and after a cold spell , we are heading for summer .
Everyone welcome to join us in the joy of growing your own , sharing the ups and downs , tips and advice
previous thread HERE

I had a bit of a fight with the raspberry canes and stinging nettles today. I am a bit scratched and stung. Loads of cucumbers on their way and tomatoes slowly beginning to ripen.

Evening!
only a quick trip to the plot this afternoon - watering mainly , as still no rain here .
DH cut the grass , and I picked a few loganberries and a very few autumn raspberries .
My tomatoes are being slow to ripen too - just a few Sungold a day , the other varieties ( St Pierre/Roma/San Marzano ) nowhere near yet . But the aubergines are doing well - the first one nearly ready to pick .
I sowed my spring cabbages /spring greens on Monday , along with some backup winter cabbage ( Tundra) - they are all germinated . Had them on my North facing , shady kitchen windowsill for coolness sake . It seems mad to be thinking of next spring in the midst of a heatwave .

Great haul tiz and ouch elephant I’m struggling to get to the allotment now the school hols have started. Weeds growing like wildfire... have tried in vain to cover them for now and fingers crossed committee will be happy... home grown bits are doing really well first beans and cucumbers coming through

Afternoon!
well , we got a miserly amount of rain yesterday ,it drizzled/mizzled all day ..
But today a lot cooler , grey and a bit damp , so was able to get on .
I planted up my 2 new baby courgettes first ., Did a bit more digging up of old strawberries - they always seem to get bindweed tangling round , so a fair bit of that was dug up .
Then it was a case of getting some produce harvested . Sweet peas still going strong , but a lot of shorter stems now , so not many more pickings of those .
So dug up potatoes , and beetroot. Picked peas - went and had a look at the french beans and was a bit taken aback at how many were there - even the ones I had to sow a couple of weeks later have started - loads of tiny ones set on the purple ones .
Went to cut the brokali, (a bit late) , then the calabrese , and noticed the cauliflower ....
A nice haul , and I found a monster cucumber hiding in the greenhouse at home too - how on earth do they do that?
Just need to keep on top of watering and weeding , and also need to sow some more beetroot this week.

I've been to the plot today, we've got tomatoes, mange tout, peas, runner beans, green beans and purple beans for dinner tonight. I've harvested some onions, they had all fallen over and so I didn't want them to rot in the rain, and it means the long Italian squash thingy can now grow on the soil to hopefully get some crackers later in the season, the squashes are just so slow this year.

I've emptied the two water butts of all the collected water, and that with the water collected in all the trugs and buckets means my 3 main use water butts are all full. I use these as i have comfrey tea bags in them so whenever i water, I am also feeding. And I've bought the right connector for my 1000l water storage tank so once i run out i can use that water to top up the three feed butts.

I really enjoyed being out in the drizzle today, makes a change from getting drenched in sweat.

I do love it when every meal is made from the harvests, this morning we had fried onions and potatoes, with tomatoes and garlic chives and all fresh from the plot. It just tastes so much better.

Love seeing all the harvests !
I've had a bumper year with the blackcurrant,nearly 2kg so far & probably the same left still to ripen a bit .

I almost cut it down last year ,it seemed pointless keeping it now DD isn't here ,she picked them and made the Jam & smoothies .. but Dm said she'd like to take over , so It has stays for now.
She made a good few jars & I am pleased
with the outcome tbh .

Not bad over the years considering the plant cost 87p !

Forgot my harvest pic !

Well done Watcher with the blackcurrants, I love them. My plant has been going for 3 years, £1 from Poundland, I've got some in the freezer and had a few good desserts too.

ooh , strawberries Watcher - mine were utter rubbish this year ( hence digging them out) - lovely crops. Blackcurrant jam is just lovely .
I can up the ante on blackcurrant bushes - my big , old one was a free twig from 3 Ribena labels that my DD sent off for when she was about 5 ( hmmmm - and thats a long time ago ) . I would love to know the variety , as it is a fabulous currant , with big berries

Happy birthday Book. see what I did there?
I've finally pulled up all my broad beans and frozen some more. The cucumbers are coming thick and fast and the tomatoes are beginning. I planted out some lettuce seedlings so hopefully I will have a bit of a succession. Rain forecast here for tonight and I can't believe how happy I am .

307 g of pure carrot heaven tonight. Whoop.

Wow sackrifice that's a whopper!

Holy crap, the size of that carrot!!

I've had an hour this morning and an hour this evening to make up for a few days away. Only managed to get a fraction of the weeding done but I'm learning to live with the weeds. Besides, the plots either side of mine are worse
Heard some people complaining about the bees again today. There's a couple of hives on the site and people reckon they're being chased by the bees. Can't say I've ever had a problem with them, as soon as they work out I'm not a flower they're usually on their way.
I harvested beetroot, potatoes, patty pan, strawberries, raspberries and the first of my runner beans.

I know, right?

I've just eaten 1/3 of it in a veggie stir fry. It was so delicious I am going to have the same again tomorrow.

I sowed more spinach today in the bed that i took the onions out of. Another 40 odd plants. I suspect if we have a hot august they may bolt but it's worth taking a chance on them.

Everything is well watered now so the rain can go away!

Beans and courgettes again, think this will be on repeat for a while now and just have to share how pretty my beetroot was

Woken up to most of my cauliflower, broccoli and sprouts eaten by catapilars. Not sure if I can save them? Gutted.

agh Love* - cabbage white strikes again . Can you pick them off /squish them? If you can , plants should recover and grow again from the centre , just knocked back a bit . Long job if you have a lot of plants .

pyxie - if the queens have been mating with wild drones they may have turned ferel. we have re-queened ours this year to solve the problem. which direction are the entrances - are they away from people, and is there any fence type structure to force the bees to fly up higher rather than flying into people?

ooh , forgot my manners!
Thank you elephant - one of my presents was a seed propagator!
Lovely harvests, and that carrot .
Pyxie - we have a beekeeper on our site , and the bees were rather aggressive early on - he checked with other bee keepers in the area and found they were having the same problem . They also chased one of the plot holders . He was able to move his hives to a quieter spot , and they have settled down now . ( The plot holder who was chased does vape , and he wondered if the bees were attracted to that .)
Rain overnight , and forecast more today . Yesterday I just picked a few loganberries and watered squashes . I must get the tiles out and get them under the squashes so they are not sitting on the soil .

We had a colony that seemed to produce bees that liked following us round the garden - that queen failed and since then we've had no more issues. It's not so much the open mating as our other hives also have open mated queens and are very gentle, so it's partly lock of the draw and partly the general temperament of bees in the area. A good beekeeper should requeen or relocate a hive if it's causing problems on an allotment. High fences also help with getting bees up above head height.

There were quite aggressive bees on our plot towards the end of the summer last year, I and one other plotmenter were stung, there may have been others. Earlier this summer I couldn't walk down my ususal path to my plot because the bees were swarming around the hedge. It was directly in between where the 2 different sets of hives are positioned. I need to ask about that one.

elephant - swarming bees are very unlikely to sting you as they have no honey to protect. they are more interested in finding somewhere new to live asap. if its a regular problem the bee keeper could put a small bait box out for them to hopefully swarm into. i think the weather this year has made the bees grumpy....same as me at times.

They are all over my whole crop 😭 2 raised beds or PSB, my purple sprouts and my cauliflowers (around 20 plants covered in them). It’s hard as I love butterflies and don’t want to kill them but I want to save my veg. Tempted to pick them off and chuck them next door 🤣

Sprouts can normally come back from that sort of attack. I use my spare sprout plants as decoy sprouts and they often survive

Oh, Happy Birthday booky ! Will you use your new prop soon, and what will you grow?
Hope this rain and flooding hasn't been too bad your way? Hope no one else here effected by it also.

I think I'm writing all my squashes off this year. I've no idea what happened, but they have just been shite. They never really got going, and certainly I have no fruit set. Courgettes are still paltry - on many plants the fruits look to have set, then just rot off. The ground was well-manured, and I have watered loads. No obvious sign of disease either. Hmm...

Love what a shame re cabbage whites! They set to so fast, don't they? I've not been to my plot for a few days, so I am now wondering if my brassica (uncovered) will have been munched. I've seen loads of white butterflies in my garden.

Talking of the plot, I noticed that the untended one next to me was finally strimmed, so I asked about it again and it's been let. And there is apparently a 5 person waiting list that somehow I'm not on, despite my asking regularly about it. Oh well, my dreams of a plot extension were never meant to be

The home beans are now in full flow, but my plot beans are still rubbish. I have new plants to plant out up there, maybe today. I've never plated beans so late: I feel like a pioneer!

Such pretty beetroot tiz - are they chioggia?