Allotment/Veg Patch Thread 16 Weather weirdness prevails !

[bookbook]

Hello to everyone !
pull up a garden chair and join in with the trials and tribulations of growing your own , against the odds of weather , pests and diseases.
Previous thread is HERE

@Panda368 I'm a novice and have grown turnips no problem this year, sown in the spring. The packet says you can sow them in august too for harvesting just before frosts.

Evening all, I haven't kept up with posting.

After a slow start things are looking good at the plot. I have picked most of my redcurrants this week (far fewer than you Book but I didn't net the bush so a lot went to birds). Sweetpeas are just starting to grow properly, I have had two flowers. Sweetcorn and sunflowers are shooting up, cucamelons are starting to scramble, onions will be ready to uproot soon. Lots of flowers starting to come out, cosmos, calendula, borage, Californian poppy, lavender. Bindweed everywhere and the grassy edges getting pretty wild but it always seems to be too wet to cut ATM.

@PoseyFlump @bookbook thanks for the welcome! definitely only planning on growing what we eat.

Current plan following some googling and a visit to the dobbies website for "things to plant in August"

• Spring onions
• pointy cabbage
• rainbow chard
• winter salad leaves
• radishes
• cauliflower

The parts and filling for the raised bed should be arriving later this week so hopefully I will be able to get started this weekend and see what happens. We have a cat so any ideas on how to keep him out of the 'fresh litter box' looking thing I will be assembling would be appreciated.

I was thinking of making some kind of lattice with bamboo poles to go over the top?

@Panda368 sticks poked vertically 4inches apart. Cats like to be comfortable when they crap

I have harvested our first courgettes! One has got significantly larger than the others, it was hiding under one of the giant leaves so I hadn’t spotted it Planning to harvest some peas this weekend.

We harvested our first peas today, they were delicious. Also getting a steady crop of raspberries, which is odd as I thought they were Autumn fruiting, they definitely were last year.
My strawberries are a bit disappointing; I bought some ‘mats’ to put round them to protect the fruit and they just haven't grown well. Then I found ants under a few and so I removed all the mats. Hoping all the rain will help.

Strawberries, mange tout and courgettes this week. Probably the last of the strawberries, new puppy has discovered the strawberry patch :-)

French beans are very slow this year. I've started to pick the odd one for my freezer stash but nothing significant.

Is anyone a courgette expert? If you have lots of young fruits, should you just leave them to grow to a reasonable size or are you better thinning them out a bit and using some as mini courgettes? I have a plant that currently has seven 10cm long fruits

Evening!
The sun and the rain are really turbo charging the plants .
I tend to leave them to get on with it in truth tiz
and CaveMum - it happens to us all !
Had a full morning at the plot today . I hoed around all the spinach/beetroot/swedes /leeks etc .
Planted out some flower seedlings and spring onions .
Then started picking - sweet peas /dahlias /peas/broad beans/strawberries ./blackcurrants Started on more redcurrants - it is a never ending job , there are so many .
More picking tomorrow ......
Suddenly realised this thread is nearly full , so will get around to starting up another shortly .

new thread HERE