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

Thanks Mere. I've put them in a vase of water by the windowsill so let's see what happens bookbook. The leaves haven't wilted yet so I'm trying to stay positive.

I feel my posts are getting a little bit repetitive

Feeling utterly miserable. Only went out to water the greenhouse, but got carried away, and am now soaked through. You know it's bad weather when you come in from the garden and the cats are already inside. So here's my first ever produce picture

Are those figs in the middle @MereDintofPandiculation ?

It's dried up here now, but very very gusty. Expecting a few casualties amongst the plants

Yep. There's another one ready right at the top, but that would have involved getting very wet indeed so it will have to wait till tomorrow or Friday. That brings us to over 50 so far this year.

Complete list: blackberries (with a couple of alpine strawberries, sugar snap peas, french beans, runner beans and a couple of sprigs of purple sprouting, oakleaf lettuce, Worcester apples, figs, cucumbers.

Wow. Impressive with the figs @MereDintofPandiculation. How long have you had your tree?

Just some tomatoes here..

Hope these strong winds don't break what's left of my tomato plants. So far so good.

Does anyone have a tried and tested tomato soup recipe, I've googled but seem to just find ones using mostly tinned tomatoes

www.allrecipes.com/recipe/39544/garden-fresh-tomato-soup/

Here's one @tizwozliz. A lot of the reviews at the bottom have changed it slightly for different flavours.

Ah, coeliac so flour a no go (I'd never check that tomato soup has gluten in it normally, must do in future!)

Just use cornflour Tiz. A little less than stated maybe or GF flour. My guess it is only in the recipe for thickening, or you could use cooked potato to thicken.

can I ask you all what to do about Aphids?

i've had a really successful year and am very happy with most of what I planted

however, none of the beans survived the aphid attacks. I even decided to grow a 2nd lot completely under a mesh but by some miracle, and I don't know how, the aphids got those too.

Is there any way of stopping them without resorting to some sort of pesticide or do I have to give up and just never grown beans (!)

They use the flour to make a roux which doesn't work with cornflour or gf flour in my experience.

@BlueberryDream did you try just spraying with soapy water. It's been a bad year here for aphids, but soapy water treatment was enough for me (and some helpful ants)

I've been trying to identify my mystery squash/gourd/pumpkin. I only recall planting crown prince and various summer squash. Anyone have any ideas?

@tizwozliz that looks like my Atlantic pumpkins (which are more yellow than orange even though the packet looks orange)

yes tried soapy water plus oily water spray and nothing worked! argh! hate resorting to pesticides

and tbh I'm not sure what pesticides would work (have never used them). It does say we should burn any plants affected. I didn't do that this time but maybe I should (the plants were eaten to nothing).

@BlueberryDream perhaps it was just a bad year. If it makes you feel any better.. I resorted to pesticides and they STILL killed all my runner beans and my indoor plants too. I was sorely tempted to buy a ladybird farm on gumtree but just gave up on the idea.

It has definitely been a bad year here for them. I normally only have issues with certain plants, e.g. roses, but this year i had aphids/greenfly on my aubergines, chillis, fennel, gooseberries, raspberries, luffah, sweet peas, chitting potatoes!. My beans and peas were actually unaffected

Rookie We've had the fig tree probably 25 years. Then 14 years ago we had to move it because we were about to extend our porch and it was in the way, and we were able to give it a little more room, so it's now about 3m wide and high, and 1.5-2m front to back. I also took cuttings, in case the move didn't work, and we've got one of those as a secondary tree, vaguely fan shaped, about 2m diameter. We're in W Yorks, 400ft above sea level, so not obvious fig country.

I've also got one I was given as a cutting by a friend in S Portugal, but that has never produced a fruit, and I am beginning to think it is a variety that actually needs the fig wasp to pollinate.

Blueberry Which beans? Blackfly on broad beans can be lessened by sowing either early or late, and by pricking out the tender tips once the beans have reached height. I've never found aphids a problem on runners or French.

Morning!
oh jealous on the figs Mere - which variety is it? Lovely harvest pic taken after extreme weather!
I have not found a tomato soup recipe that I like in truth tiz - tried a few , but don't bother now .
Gorgeous bowl of tomatoes Rookie - bet you are pleased with those despite disasters .
as Mere says - I only have had black fly/aphids on broad beans , though I did this year , have an infestation on just one of my sweetcorn plants ( right in the middle of the block , and none of the others weirdly) The ladybirds came in and sorted that one out for me .
In dire circumstances I do have Neem Oil , which is wondrous , but I have only used it once in the last couple of years.
So yesterday I went to the plot in the morning , checked all was okay after the horrid weather . It tried to drizzle on me , but basically stayed dry . I prepped up more space for winter veg , and hand weeded the asparagus bed, then picked courgettes , the first sweetcorn , and a few french beans . These are slowing down now , they never really thrived , and refused to climb too . But I have had a reasonable crop off only 8 plants . The borlotti are looking good though .
Today in the greenhouse , picking ready for cooking sauce for pasta - I will use the aubergines and courgettes from yesterday , along with onions and garlic with the cooking tomatoes .

bookbook Brown Turkey. I thought, being in Yorkshire, I'd better go for the hardiest around. They are beautiful fruit, very rich in flavour (make the blue ones you get in supermarkets seem a bit watery), and sliced in half they are a rich purpley-red, so lovely to look at.

I’m a bit disappointed with my produce (lack of) this year, my beans haven’t done well at all mainly due to bind weed growing over from next door, French beans only produced a handful unlike last year where I was over run with them. Have only had 4 courgettes and now the plants are dying off. Cauliflowers look poor but had a good broccoli crop. I have squashes and pumpkin still to harvest and lots of tomatoes waiting to turn red but not much else. Is there anything I can plant to harvest over the winter? I have leaks in the ground, a few swede and PSB growing from seed.

It was broad beans @MereDintofPandiculation . I grew them early and they got destroyed and then tried later under mesh and the bastards still got them. The farmers round here have fields of them - healthy plants with no aphids! Maybe they all tried to congregate round mine! I will look into the ladybird farm, that sounds like an idea!

@Lovemusic33 I believe you can still do spring spinach and cabbages if you like that? Or the salad crops again like radishes. Onions and garlic can also go in the ground now

I wanted to also ask if anyone is having trouble with their pumpkins going rotten. I've raised mine off the ground but with all this rain, I've only really got one left and even his bottom is going quite mouldy!

Blueberry Have they got broad beans grown for the food market or field beans grown for fodder? Field beans are the more rugged relative of broad beans - they taste the same, but are smaller. More robust - I usually grow a tub of them alongside the broad beans as a back up.

If your pumpkins are going rotten, you need to pick them, cut off the rotten bit, and cook or freeze them. The rot will just accelerate if you leave them.

I think they are the fodder ones in the farmer's fields. Really popular round here (that and wheat which I can see has had a lousy year).

My poor pumpkins! I better go and sort them out today. One is giant and needs 2 people to carry it!

Thanks for the advice

That's if the rot is in the fruit - if it's feeling soft. If it's just surface mildew, no need to worry yet.
I wonder if putting straw under it would help prevent rot, the way you do for strawberries?

So so wet, hoping we still have a bit more warmth back before autumn proper, it was single figures here overnight.

I think my sweet corn is going to be a write off again. We had so much rain around when they first had tassles that all the pollen was just washed away. I did my best to try and distribute some but I'm not sure it was successful.

Tomatoes still ripening steadily, although plenty of green left too. A few courgettes, mange tout and some baby carrots - i didn't do a very good job of thinning, so have pulled some now in the hope that the remainder will grow a bit better.