Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 14 ! growing into summer

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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

Ok so how many crowns for a small family, and how much space will they take?

We had a kiwi (Jenny so supposedly self-fertile) at our old house for about 5 years, but it never fruited. Here I'm trying issai aka kiwiberry - new leaves seem to get rather badly munched so it's not doing brilliantly and hasn't fruited in its first year but I'm hoping it will be better once it gets settled in.

Into proper strawberry time here here - mara des bois is particularly delicious. Asparagus is over but had a delicious globe artichoke and broad beans are still going strong. Runner beans have been a bit slug damaged and have lost one pumpkin but everything else seems to have been surviving so far.

We've still had no rain to speak of, a few showers but nothing that does more than dampen the surface and certainly not enough to fill my water butts which are now empty. I had to give in and buy a hose so I could give everything a proper soaking.

Planted out the last couple of courgette plants. Thinned onions again, I have way too many so have been putting them all over the place as I can't bear to destroy them. French beans aren't looking great, I think it's a bit windy in the space they've gone this year.

It feels like I'm behind where i was last year, I had courgettes and beans around about the 20th June. But i guess a lot can happen in 3 weeks.

Main battle at the moment is having to cover everything in netting/chicken wire to stop the local cats using my raised beds as a toilet.

Very interested in the chat about cardoons and kiwis. Are the kiwi-growers amongst us living in warmer areas of the country? Not sure how kiwis would handle the predominantly wet weather where I am!

I've had a couple of sessions on my plot planting things out. I haven't had much luck growing my own from seed this year. Sweetcorn failed completely as did most of the French beans. But fortunately there is a small plant nursery near my house which still had plenty of both seedlings, although the beans were a bit leggy & in desperate need of some support. I'm trialling protecting from slugs using collars made from plastic bottles with top & bottom cut off. The sweetcorn made it through the first night, hopefully the beans will also be ok! I also showed some sugar snap peas - I had very little success with normal peas last year (too hot and dry?) but was told sugar snaps are less particular.

My broad beans are coming on really well but also have huge numbers of blackfly. Although I've seen lots of ladybirds and lacewings hoovering them up.

Hopefully I'll get a bit of time at the plot tomorrow as the weather's due to be quite lovely! I have an ongoing battle with bindweed and horsetail. I dug up lots of bindweed when re-siting my raspberry bed but little bits must have been left behind as it keeps popping through.

That's a good idea Tizwaz - hadn't thought of using chicken wire on half-hoops to defer the cats - at the moment I use random pieces of chicken wire (which in winter get used to protect the bulbs in my planters), supported with twigs, old raspberry canes, twigs and various garden implements to deter the cats, but that would work even better - plus I could use the frames for fleece/enviro mesh (to stop the carrot fly) or netting (to stop the pigeons and cabbage whites)

Just got offered a rather large fig tree but had to turn it down as I have no idea where to put it (and I already have a small fig tree).

I almost have enough peas to go with a meal, super excited, spent all last week telling the kids “not to pick the peas”.

Planted out a few more beans today to replace one that looked a bit dodgy but the dodgy one now has flowers on it, seems weird as it’s not even that tall

Where do you find your half hoops or are they improvised? Have realised my broccoli is getting squashed by flat wire mesh and will also have sprouts , squash and celery to plant in same bed with strawberries already in.

Our hoops were in the shed when we bought our house - not very helpful but I've seen them for sale - search for cloche hoops.

The chickenwire works better for me than netting as I can lift the whole thing off for weeding. Netting always seems to take a lot of rearranging

Good morning.

It is good to read everybody's growing exploits and really enjoying the pictures. When on the plot we try to find some time to walk round the field and see what everyone is up to.

We had some welcome heavy rain last week so things are looking green.

Now harvesting the autumn planted onions. They dont store well so we are getting them home, slicing and softening them in the oven before bagging up and freezing. We will be having French onion soup all winter!

Salad leaves are coming on strong so had a big bowl of mixed leaves with dinner last night. Home grown strawberries with some honey berries for pudding.

Thinking about lifting some of my first early potatoes at the weekend to see how they are looking. When potato harvesting starts it always feels like the start of the real harvesting.

My garden is so full of weeds. I worked in it today for the first time since breaking my elbow. There is so much to do!

The slugs have been extremely interested in my beans. Will the stems whose leaves have been devoured grow new leaves or would it be better to sow more seeds?

My broad beans are about 15cm tall and already have lots of flowers on them! No sign of black fly yet, thankfully.

I had a visitor to my wildlife pond yesterday, I was beyond excited! I got swept away reading the posts about asparagus and bought some half price crowns from Marshall's. Now I need to get them in quick and hope for the best I guess, so that's the main job for tomorrow. Lots of rain here again today. Oh and my peas have started flowering which I'm very happy about A's they were looking a bit sad not too long ago.

Evening!
yayyyy! raining properly here at long last ...
3dogs -it really depends how much room you can spare. Personally, I think I wouldn't want less than about 9 or 10 -They want to be about 15-18" apart so you could have 3 rows of 3 plants in area of about 2m x 2m , or a bit less.
Gnome - I still have some autumn onions growing a bit , that haven't yet gone to seed, but I too will be harvesting and cooking with them soon . Not done them before , but I'm not sure I will again - may stick to garlic and shallots .
aw Grouchy - not sure they will regrow if the growing tip has been munched , so annoying .
Pyxie - he's lovely!
I did a bit of quick hoeing in the brassica cage and watering yesterday . I am very slightly concerned that 2 of my brassica plants seem to have wilted- not sure why , so need to keep a beady eye on them. There doesn't seem to be beasties , so concerned about the roots , and cabbage root fly, which has never been a problem before now .
Popped in today to sow another succession row of peas , and cut the grass before the rain . The forecast is for plenty over the next few days , here's hoping .... Picked chard from a few thug plants too

Well it REALLY rained today , which was great for everything apart from DH who was mid fibre-glassing new pond..Swapped some chillies for baby leeks with my neighbour - we have a very thick old stone wall between us with an overgrown hedge on top and leave the plants in a secret space tucked under the hedge like a cold war spy hand over - I got an email saying ‘your leeks are on the wall...’

Oh I love the drop zone for swapped plants,think how useful that will be in an invasion!
pixie those are my crowns, only joking, I did see them and I do have space but would have had to clear a bed of flowers and prepare the ground, and I’m not sure I can keep up with the fruit and veg I have in.
I planted kale in my spare space in the end, with thinnings from my salad bed on the edges. But I have no netting or cage over it, kale is tough right?

Oh and I pulled up my thug kale yesterday, put it on the compost are the leaves edible once it starts to form flowers

How big do Kohl Rabi get before they are ready to harvest? Some of mine are getting quite big, I haven’t got a clue what they taste like or how to cook/prepare them but they look amazing.

Also...
My peas are doing well, got loads of pods. What can I plant when they have finished? Peas don’t last long do they?

evening
you need Sackrifice letting you know about Kohlrabi . I've not grown it myself .
Love -I will be planting autumn cabbages and cauliflowers - I sowed some last week . But spinach , beetroot are good too .

This is one of my biggest, I think it still has a bit of growing to do 😁

I think you let kohlrabi grow to around the size of a tennis ball. It's not a problem here though as the slugs have eaten most of the plants, they bravely keep trying to grow a leaf and then it's eaten.

elephant slugs have been a real problem here on my other raised beds, these are planted in my new beds which are placed on top of fake grass, haven’t had hardly any slugs on them. My rhubarb has been destroyed by snails.

I've had some success with that wool stuff which seems to deter slugs in the short term - not the long term though. And I also use beer traps which work well. This year we've had so little rain, though, that I've not got around to putting any down. It did rain some on Tuesday but not really 'proper' rain.

Direct sown seeds have been really hit and miss this year so I've quickly sown some more into seed trays. I think next year we'll just concentrate on doing it this way although our problem is that we run out of space in the house to put things but I think we'll invest in a small cold frame for next year. DD is past the age of kicking a ball around the garden so lot less risk of things getting broken.

This weekend we'll be hopefully planting out the rest of our squashes and pumpkins, getting the dahlias out of pots and in the ground, and lots and lots of weeding. Also should, fingers crossed, be some strawberries to pick.

I have flowers on my round courgette plants this morning (super excited), another week and I should be able to harvest a few things, spring onions almost ready, lettuce and strawberries. The rhubarb I moved to the old compost heap is going crazy and carrots looking bushy. Looking forward to this weekends rain which will give everything a boost.

Saw lovemusic's post without the formatting in threads I'm on and so was wondering what on earth 'elephant slugs' were!

A few slugs came out here after recent rain - they have been eating my marigolds but not (yet) sprouting seedlings or veggie leaves. I killed a few last night when the garden was damp.
Beer traps arrived today and I'll set those out tonight - I hope they like Corona :)