The Vegetable Patch 2024/2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Come and share your triumphs and failures in your vegetable plot or allotment.

Those aren’t stalks, they’re leaves. They’re what are doing the work of creating food that is stored in the onion bulb and makes it large. So don’t trim them

Oh thank you!

What do you enjoy eating? That should drive what you plant. Although if it’s shady leaf crops will do better than things which are dependent on flowering. So lettuce, spinach, chard, kale for example

The soil looks multicoloured. Are the dark brown bits where you have scattered a bag of compost across it?

it looks as if the soil would appreciate a mulch this winter. You can buy various things, but the cheapest is to make your own compost. Or suggest to someone with a larger garden that you’ll give them your grass, prunings, veg peelings and annual weeds in exchange for a couple of bags of compost in the winter. You need to mulch about 10cm deep every year for the first 3 or so, and afterwards every couple of years. It will help with water retention and soil texture.

@MereDintofPandiculation thanks! We eat most veg but wonder if I’ve left it too late for planting most things- a quick trip to a couple of garden centres today had only peppers and chillies plant wise. No beans or peas or tomatoes or courgettes or beetroot (the only veg I hate but DH loves the stuff).
But love lettuce and spinach so I can sow those direct.

my tomatos have started to set fruit.

my black one (nightshade) is seriously black. looking forward to tasting them.

beetroot also works as a salad crop. so both you and dh can get something out of them

Does it still taste beetrooty? Of more like chard?

tastes like 'leafy salad' not earthy like the root.

You can sow beetroot direct. Kohl rabi? Radishes. All the Japanese veg that need to be grown as the days are shortening again.

Have a look at Chiltern and Real Seeds for inspiration

Can I join in I'm a new allotment holder who hasn't had a garden even for years, limited budget so trying to do everything from seeds and started late. Why are my cabbages so leggy, came up from seed easily but just not putting up proper leaves and the stems are so long and thin they can't seem to support the tiny leaves they have.

Welcome @BaronessEllarawrosaurus

We're on our second year with our allotment but was growing stuff at home previously. I don't tend to grow brassicas so can't help with your question.

11 degrees here at midday, no wonder nothing is growing

@BaronessEllarawrosaurus - we’re struggling with cabbage too; they just can’t seem to get going but as @tizwozliz says it’s so cold so no wonder.

our courgettes and pumpkins are really trying in spite of the cold, slugs etc, even have flowers but they’re definitely not romping like last year.

let’s hope things improve soon!

I have just harvested my first new potatoes of the year. Not many (grown in a bag) but they'll be enough to have with our fishcakes for dinner tonight.

All courgettes and squash are now outside, I've sown some more dwarf french beans so now it'll be mainly keeping everything fed and watered. The only thing left in my mini greenhouse are the chillis, everything else is outside.

Tomatoes are flowering nicely, there are some little apples on the tree and I can see two courgettes starting to appear so I'm hopeful I'll get a reasonable crop this year. My rhubarb has been a bit of a disaster though and it's growth is really stunted. It's been in the ground a few years and I mulched it in winter so I don't know what's up with it, whether it's the long wet winter of perhaps I picked it too heavily last year.

Our rhubarb has two growth spurts each year, one early on then it flops over in May and then starts again in June. It’s looking awful right now but will be fine in a few weeks (at least that’s the usual pattern).

I grow cabbages and they all seem to start out like this (all the brassicas do, ime).

I start from seed indoors and then put on into a 9cm pot and then plant out. Each time I do, I bury them just a little bit deeper so the stem point upright naturally. I don't honestly know if that helps - but I do it anyway - because once they get in the ground and start growing away, they righten up anyway.

If yours are in the ground now, just water them frequently and gently so as not to wash them away - once the warmer weather kicks in, they should get going!

Mine are still in the house in seed trays, I have spent time today potting them up into bigger pots and deeper to see if it helps, I had been trying to hold on for the 2nd leaves to actually handle them but they are falling over so I started anyway.

Mine are still in the house in seed trays

Then I'd get them potted on and get them outside now - the colder temps and greater sunlight will help keep leggyness to a minimum. Or get them in the ground with some form of protection - even a collar made from a plastic bottle with some tights over the top, or cling film with holes poked in it, or netting. Just to keep slugs and snails off them just while they get a bit more robust.

I started mine earlier in the year, but if started now (and no reason why they shouldn't be), I'd be getting them outside within a couple of weeks of germinating.

When you pot them on, you can bury them a bit deeper

I managed to grow some japanese daikon radish, they grow really big. I was dead excited to taste them, being told their texture was that of a crisp apple, and had a lovely and mild, funky taste. Well, funky is right, definitely. Like a fart on a fork 😖 💨💨 Reminiscent of the wet, warm, murdered cabbage of yester-year. Can't say I'm too keen..
Hope the Italian yard long beans don't disappoint. Lol.
Had a test dig of the Charlotte potatoes the other day though, and oh my god, they're to die for. Well, not literally, but you know what I mean 😏

I have everything outside now and it'll be survival of the fittest! We are in the SW though. My radishes have all bolted... supposedly the easiest to grow that even children can manage them and I always end up with nothing - perhaps they need more thinning?

Are your radishes in raised beds @Pebble21uk ?

I always find they bolt if not in the ground. If you leave them to seed, the pods are quite nice imo. I think I might prefer them to the radish

@Pebble21uk I don’t have much luck with them in pots (despite all the recommendations that they’re good for pots). In the ground, no problem once I started planting the seeds individually, 1 inch apart.

They need space, and they need not to be panicked into thinking there may be a water shortage.

Ah, okay... yes they are in pots... I shall put a few in the ground around other things! Thanks!