Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 15 - will winter ever end?

[bookbook]

Hi everyone , just putting this up quickly , will add on later
Everyone welcome! :)

Thank you book I have beans and chard already planted, would love to plant some cabbage but it would need netting? I lost my crop last year to cabbage whites, I do have a netted bed which has broccoli in it but I have harvest most of them, do I pull them out now or harvest from side shoots?

I think I’m going to harvest my early potatoes today 😁, it’s likely to be a disappointment as I usually get a small crop when growing in bags.

The rain here is terrible! Such heavy showers but the veg are loving it and the sweetcorn is really shooting up!

Thoughts on when to harvest second earlies? Have only ever grown maincrop before and just waited for the leaves etc to yellow and wilt before harvesting.

The potatoes I've dug up so far are second earlies - Charlottes. Mine seem to all be at quite different stages, I pulled up plants where the flowers were just starting to die. If you have flowers, it might be worth a gentle root around?

If they're in bags/planters you might be able to get some of the potatoes whilst leaving the plants in situ

Evening !
Love - cabbages would need netting yes , though there seems not to be many butterflies at all atm , and haven't seen a cabbage white for weeks .
Restoration - second earlies are ready July/August normally ( about 60 days from planting) , so definitely worth having a rootle around to see what you have .
A damp and drizzly day here , and we had a lot of rain overnight , so I couldn't pick fruit . I did hand weed the asparagus bed , picked flowers and courgettes , along with the first peas - though not many .

Thank you for gooseberry picking advice , I got through half of one bush before rain drove me inside. Also some plums today and the last few cherries. Is it a particularly good fruit year, or have I finally got fruit trees and bushes the right age?

Evening .
I do think it is going to be a good fruit year for soft fruit . My pear tree at home doesn't look as bounteous as previous years , and I lost all my Victoria plums which had set ( a lot! ) to the late frost . But raspberries and currants are going to be good .
I had a go at picking sone currants this morning , but it was already damp, and then started to rain , so I had to give up .
Did pull some beetroot , and picked an odd shaped courgette though !
Weather is just looking rubbish for the next few days yet too

This is what I got my 'rootling' (love that word) this evening. Plants still in situ.

Bookbook also a noticeable absence of cabbage whites here, although I'm not complaining. I've actually still got my sprouts un netted.

I wish it would warm up though, I could cope with the drizzle if it wasn't quite so cold.

They look lovely @tizwozliz! Am going to brave feeling around one of mine today and see if there's anything worth digging up!

Rest of the gooseberries being picked today ready for a crumble. And am going to try making a meringue and top it with the compote I made from our blackcurrant harvest!

Was thinking about the next stage of our fence and hedge planting. Have decided to plant the Kitchen hedge mix from Habitat Aid, which has spineless gooseberries, blackberries, red and white currants and filberts! I can forage without leaving the house! Think it comes as a pack of 30 plants, so enough for about 10 m.

Afternoon!
well its been quite warm , and no rain today , so I managed to get more fruit picked this morning .- ( about half of the redcurrant done now ) Also planted up a few savoys , picked a cabbage for tea , and another courgette . The very first loganberries are starting to ripen enough to pick , and still strawberries coming in small quantities .
Hedge sounds lovey Restoration - I used to have a couple of filberts at home , but had to lose them when we did some building work Do you think you will get the chance to pick the fruit , or will the wild life get there first!

Bizarrely I seem to have some cauliflowers growing, I thought they were going to be brussel sprouts! I would never normally grow cauliflower as far too temperamental and indeed it was far too warm earlier in the year for them to form decent heads. Ah well, given that i wasn't expecting to have cauliflower anyway it's no great loss. We'll eat some of it as greens.

Irritatingly I was weeding round the fruit bushes today and tried to pull up what i though was a blackberry shoot, but was in fact a side shoot from the loganberry i purchased earlier this year so pulled that up too. I've re-planted it, but some of the root was snapped off so not sure if it will survive :-(

Last of the black currants harvested today, courgette patch is going crazy one end, slug eaten the other. Onions don’t look well at all... at home have had all the early potatoes, lettuce and Chinese leaves coming along well.

We have a potential new allotment site on a new estate about 1/4 mile away so have put my name down. I have outgrown the space in my garden. I think (hope) they are going to have a mix of different sizes because I’m not sure I would want anything too big to start with.

Where has summer gone?

Still waiting for courgettes although at least I see some promising signs now. Strawberries don't want to ripen, probably waiting for summer! Mange tout doing great. And I think I might have finally persuaded a squash to climb my a frame.

Evening!
tiz - know what you mean about the strawberries . Courgettes okay her at least though .
It has been wet the last couple of days , and I have been busy , Last trip was Sunday , when I did some more fruit picking , flowers , courgettes and a few strawberries One blackcurrant bush is now picked - the second , bigger one isn't quite ready yet . Still a massive amount of redcurrants left to pick , but it is tricky when its so damp .
My autumn cauliflowers are almost ready to plant out in the brassica page . Not a moment too soon - I saw a cabbage white today :)

Gosh, my strawbs have been the best they've ever been! So odd how it's always different. In fact they're the high point of my growing year thus far - everything that was in the dodgy compost is iffy at best, and things I've resown in better compost are not really growing.

Loads of black currants, but like bookbook it's hard to find a dry moment to pick currants. I made jam last night, but for the first time ever, it didn't set. I shall have to reboil today but don't want to start it off until the gas engineer has been, so I'm just giving it a wobble every time I walk past in the hope it has set.

Nope, still not set

Today I picked my first courgette though. I DEMAND my glut, forthwith. I never quite manage 'too many courgettes', even though I plant multiple plants.

Wilderness do t go too small, as you'll run out of room before you know it...

(I meant don't)

Checking back in, it's been a while since I posted.

I'm having a terrible year for fruit. I brought half a dozen strawberry plants home at the start of lockdown in case we weren't allowed back to the allotments, they are bearing some nice fruit in a pot at home. Other than that, zilch. I left about 30 plants in at the plot and have had about 10 strawberries. My gooseberries vanished as usual. Virtually nothing on my redcurrant bush which I pruned hard after fruiting last year, maybe that was the wrong thing to do but it looks so much more compact and healthy in itself. Just holding out for autumn raspberries and blackberries now.

I've got lots of flowers starting to bloom, lots of green tomatoes and more cucumbers than I'm going to know what to do with. My sweetcorn are looking very vigorous and strong, broad beans are doing well, pumpkins have all got flowers on and looking very healthy. Just no fruit.

My strawberry bed is completely swamped with weeds. I lifted all the plants in spring, cleared the bed (or so I thought) and replanted them. Totally overgrown now, bindweed everywhere. It's hard to weed there without dislodging the plants as they are so shallow rooted, so I think I am going to lift them all soon, bring them home for the summer as I have space in my beds for them here, start new plants from runners and relocate them to another part of the plot for next year. Then I can have another really good go at clearing their current section.

I picked another few courgettes yesterday but some of them are rotting at one end. I googled it and it seems to be pollination difficulties or intermittent watering? Anyone else have experience of this?

I also picked more peas and my first French beans.
Tomatoes and cucumbers all growing well... We just need some sun back now don't we!

I think it's incomplete pollination, howdid -often happens and seems to sort itself out.

First French beans? WOW! Dwarf or climbing? I'm still nurturing young climbing beans, yet to be planted out...

50something I always assume it's pollination problems. As soon as I see a hint of the end not growing, I harvest and cut the end off.

I grow mine in pots in the greenhouse (which is my slug-free place) so I have to hand pollinate anyway. Yesterday I was in that awful situation of having two female flowers open and not a male in sight - I had to pull an old male out of Monday's female and hope the stale pollen was still up to the job. I'm thinking next year of buying a parthenogenetic variety.

@TheSpottedZebra I've been picking dwarf French beans for a few weeks now, only a few here and there and the weather means they take forever to reach a decent size but my freezer stash is mounting up quite nicely.

My strawberries haven't been bad this year, just very stretched out.

Picking potatoes every few days now, it's the sensible way to do it, just picking what is needed, but not quite as satisfying as seeing a huge pile in front of you.

Yes dwarf French beans here too... Delicious in butter with the courgettes 😁. Thanks for the information about the pollination. Mine are in large pots outside. Should I try to hand pollinate them then do you think?

Evening!
no beans here yet - they have only just started flowering .
Cold , grey and damp today . Picked a cabbage , flowers , courgettes and a few strawberries . The first sowing of peas proved very poor , so have picked what few there are , and pulled them out . That means I can prep up and use that space for the autumn cauliflowers that are ready to plant out.. A small bonus were the volunteer potatoes I had left in next to the peas too :)

I think the cold hasn't helped the courgettes - I have noticed a few more male flowers appear in the last few days , even though most of them have gone into proper production.