Allotment/Veg patch Thread 17 - onwards and upwards

[bookbook]

Wow - cannot believe we are on thread 17 !
As always , pull up a garden chair and join in with the joys and woes of growing you own .
Previous thread HERE

oops! haha - old thread ..HERE

Ate my very first cherry tomato today, grown from seed. And it was delicious! Couldn't be more pleased

Thanks for the new thread

Wow, I'm a long way off ripe tomatoes. One of the jobs for the weekend is to add some additional supports, lots of green fruit.

Have taken a look at the garlic in my last bed. Looks like the rest should be ready to come out this weekend. Just need to decide what to put in that bed

Hello all 

@bookbook dare I say it but I see an aubergine growing

Hoping for some sunshine and heat to encourage my bell peppers to flower. They've been in the bud stage forever now and are showing no sign of moving. Everything else is doing fabulously (minus the broad beans which were annihilated by aphids. Managed two pods from 10 plants).

Plenty of tomatoes (first beginning to ripen), strawberries, and the runner beans have now flowered. Curly kale is in, peas, carrots and Calabrese too, potatoes, garlic and onions are out.

I spot my first cucumbers too and my courgette plant which has had 9 lives so far has just shown it's first courgette insert happy dance. Moral of the story: never give up

I sowed pumpkin really late so that's just starting to bud and my squash plants (which have also survived many slug attacks) are budding now too. Only time will tell if I'll get anything from them and whether it'll have time to ripen if I do.

Thanks for the new thread @bookbook

We had courgette and mange tout from the garden with our steak tonight - yum! Definitely going to need to pick peas this weekend.

I have no tomatoes yet either @tizwozliz - gigantic bushes with lots of flowers but no sign of any fruit yet!

@notsogreenthumb my sweet peppers have been in the bud stage for ages too but in the last couple of days a few white flowers have appeared! I had one bell pepper that managed to flower weeks ago before all the rain and that's now a huge misshapen thing

Ooh interesting you say that @PoseyFlump, I just went out and spotted the first flower! And there I thought it had frozen in time

@Pottedpalm Autumn and summer raspberries are the same species, but they’ve selected for later flowering plants, and encouraged the later fruiting by a different pruning regime. So I wonder if there’s a possibility that you’ve pruned as if for a summer fruiting plant?

Picking strawberries, loganberries, Tay berries, courgettes, broad beans, mangetout and sugar snap peas, and, of course, salad stuff. Runners and french beans in flower. First cucumbers forming. Tomatoes walnut sized and green.

yay!! notsogreenthumb

More picking stuff today , while trying to keep up with weeding - due rain here tomorrow , so picked the gooseberries ( first I have had from this plant - it got stripped by birds last year , had mildew the year before ) as well as spinach leaves and 2 more courgettes .
Greenhouse stuff is motoring - the first (cherry) tomatoes are nearly ready , and am getting to the point of over abundance of cucumbers
.
Lots of peppers set too - a bit crowded , so have to decide whether to thin them out .
I don't know if anyone remembers , but I was going to chuck an aubergine out that didn't get going . I was a bit busy , left it on the side , and it decided to live , and now has flowers :)

[quote MereDintofPandiculation]@Pottedpalm Autumn and summer raspberries are the same species, but they’ve selected for later flowering plants, and encouraged the later fruiting by a different pruning regime. So I wonder if there’s a possibility that you’ve pruned as if for a summer fruiting plant?[/quote]
Ah, that is possible. If I prune at the right time for ‘Autumn’ varieties this year, will they revert to being autumn flowering?

@Pottedpalm in theory,yes. Remember though that I’ve never grown autumn raspberries!

Thank you; I was given a few plants and now have about ten large pots along a wall. The roots grow through into the soil but it does limit the ‘offshoots?’ a bit. I don’t know the variety but they are delicious.

If they're autumn raspberries, they tend to clump rather than send out new roots so are easier to control.

I think Gardening Which? did a experiment one year which suggested that by not cutting down all of of an autumn fruiting cane in preparation for the new season, as you're supposed to do, you got a bigger overall harvest: some from fruits on "last" year's wood and the remainder on this year's new wood. But the harvest on just this year's wood was smaller than an equivalent harvest on a plant that had been fully cut back.

So it depends on what you're wanting to achieve and what other raspberry plants you have: if you have summer fruiting canes, you're getting fruit from them early in the season and you might want to get a larger crop of raspberries later in the season, in which case cut the autumn fruiting canes back either at the end of the season or early in the new year. If you don't have summer fruiting canes, don't cut back your autumn canes and enjoy an early harvest before cutting back those fruited canes and enjoying a second flush from the new canes that will have grown up this year.

Coming to the end of the strawberries now and all the blackcurrants ripened at once. We had enough strawberries to make a batch of strawberry wine (25 litres bubbling away nicely) as well as strawberry vodka. Going to try blackcurrant vodka next.

Outdoor tomatoes are just starting to set but look good and sturdy. Tomatoes in the tunnel are more spindly and effete!

First tomatoes starting to ripen . Outdoor tomatoes only now starting to set.

Evening all
Had a busy couple of days yesterday picking more fruit, today weeding and picking veg and flowers. I picked my first cherry tomatoes today from the greenhouse 😊

Amazing harvests @bookbook and @GnomeDePlume.

Does anyone know when to pick jalapeños? I'm not sure when I'm meant to

Courgettes and new potatoes for tea, french beans and mange tout for the freezer stash. Still a few strawberries too

Pulled the last of the garlic to dry and cleared the bed, need to decide what's going to go into it and how to protect it from my new 'helper'.

I suspect the squirrel has eaten the mange tout I'd succession sown, so will try and sow some more with added cayenne pepper this time.

@notsogreenthumb no idea on the jalepeños but interested to find out. This is the first year I've grown them. My biggest fruit is still quite small.

Have never grown chillies, so cannot help there.
Been very busy, just running to the plot the last couple of days to pick stuff. The courgettes are really getting going 😊

Lovely photos.

Strawberries have been fantastic, picked first few cucumbers and realise I have too many courgette plants! Tomatoes are still green and no chillis yet on my plants. Green beans are great, will plant more next year.

After 4 showings of peas, I have one pea currently growing up the netting. No idea what happened to the others I planted out!

1.8kg of raspberries from the garden converted into jam....

After 4 showings of peas, I have one pea currently growing up the netting. No idea what happened to the others I planted out! Mice?

Evening all!
jealous of the raspberries prettybird- mine are new this year. So a very small crop.
Peas- if they didn’t come up, then definitely mice, but if they disappeared after germinating , it is more likely to be pigeons- they tend to strip them.
Did an early trip to pick redcurrants this morning ( when will it end!) and back this afternoon to cut the grass, and pick sweetpeas, and another courgette 😃