The Vegetable Patch 2024/2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

The biggest problem is how much water they are all soaking up in the heat - I need to be away for 9 days so I am thinking about putting at least some indoors in the shade.

We are beans galore here now. Green French beans, runner beans, yellow French beans. I’m picking a horse trug bucket daily! Giving them to neighbours, put some outside in box for passer-by’s. Have frozen some for winter.

The tomatoes are just beginning to turn red. I think end next week it will tomato galore.

I got less panicky about transplants watching market gardening in Portugal. They would plant out a field of cabbages, and they’d lie there in the sun, flat against the soil, and nobody worried.

It has taken me a while to find my gardening mojo, but a few weeks ago it emerged and I did a load of gardening and planted a whole load of seeds just to see what will come up.

I'd already sown some crown Prince squash and have two small plants and one good sized one. They seem quite happy in the raised bed.

The radishes are coming up nicely so hopefully won't be eaten before we are ready to pick them.

The peas are sprouting. I'm not really imagining they will fruit, but was thinking of using them as pea shoots for salads.

My mum gave me some small plants, a bitter gourd, a green eggplant, and two cucumbers which are all happy in the greenhouse so might get something from them.
She also gave me a Pheasant berry 'lelcesteres' - does anyone know anything about them? Is it something to put in the ground or best left in a pot?

I also gained a cherry tomato plant from a lady having a clear out (just went to collect some pots) which has had a couple of tumbles, once in the back of the car and once when it got caught by the mower cable, but it seems ok. I just repotted it a bit deeper and chopped off the stems that were bent but not broken.

I had a pot of lettuce which weren't too happy in the greenhouse but sat it outside and they are really perking up. I have some rocket seedlings which I'll pot up in a larger pot today now it's not so blazing hot out.

Seeds which haven't done anything as of yet are some beans, onions and beetroots, plus some flowers (marigolds and cosmos I think).

The garden has really got me down the last few years, but the work me and dh have done this year has made me much more hopeful for next year.

Pheasant berry Leycesteria formosa. Usually grown as an ornamental, can be invasive. Too large for a pot.

Tomatoes are going well and so are leeks and onions... Have harvested one cabbage but the rest and broccoli have been decimated by caterpillars! I've picked a few plants and popped them in the greenhouse (now empty) with the culprits in hope that we can at least get an interesting science lesson with D's in - hoping they might make cocoons and hatch!

Wish me luck on an experiment ...

Today I used a dormant bed to sow broad beans and webbs lettuce
no idea what will happen

I've also planted out some random tiny leeks donated by a friend - only two months late
and will put late sowing fennel and pak choi in the polytunnel tomorrow

climbing and dwarf french beans have just gone mad - breakfast recipes needed

I put some leeks in a week or so ago, they were gifted to me by another plot holder, stuck them in and they are doing well. My first lot of leeks are ready to harvest.

I finally have had a courgette or two, plenty more on the plant so let the gluten commence!

I keep thinking the raspberries are done but then more seem to appear out of nowhere. I picked some beetroot as well the other evening.

Planning to sow some perpetual spinach in the space vacated by some of the potatoes. Need to look through my seed box and see if there's anything else I could chuck in too.

Roasted and pickled my beetroot yesterday evening and just had to share how beautiful it is

I'm after some advice if possible please, gardening experts. I am growing peas and runner beans in a smallish raised bed. Due to space I'm not going to have a huge crop, so I'm feeling extra protective.

I planted nasturtiums in the same bed and was planning on picking the leaves to try to make a version of watercress soup - they'd grown like mad so I had loads. However, about a week and a half ago I noticed the nasturtiums were being eaten by cabbage white caterpillars. I thought, hey ho, at least I'm supporting the ecosystem. More and more caterpillars appeared until I went to check yesterday and realised they had finished every last scrap of nasturtium leaf and had started on my peas and beans!

Anyway. I've moved what was left of the nasturtium stalks and flowers in a big mass to another part of the garden, complete with hundreds of caterpillars. I've also moved all the remaining caterpillars and taken them to the same spot. It's only about 30 feet away, but it's at the other side of a deep muddy ditch with a trickle of water in the bottom.

Am I a bad person? Will they survive? Will they creep back and eat all my runner bean and pea leaves?

I'd better not say what I do to my cabbage while eggs and caterpillars, but if you are a bad person for relocating yours then I am a monster who should be rejected by society. Ahem.

@DougAndTheSlugs I'll be keeping my you company

as kids one of our chores was to collect the caterpillars of the cabbages and to feed them to neighbour's chickens.

took years to get over egg & brokkoli aversion

I pick the whole leaves off and give them to the chickens, who love a caterpillar-covered bit of brassica as an afternoon snack.

Oak leaf lettuce, rocket, peas and borlotti beans are my runaway successes this year. The broadbeans and french beans were sadly all eaten by slugs so I did late sowings of borlottis to replace them

My fourth lot of cucumber seedling finally survived the snail and slug onslaught and are producing beautifully, but the outside ones and all the courgette plants were destroyed. No courgette glut for me this year!

I cut slugs in half at night
I throw caterpillars to where the birds will find them
its called prioritsing the thing you want to grow
without chemicals

Picked courgettes, raspberries, a leek and a sweetcorn today. Sweetcorn mainly because i spotted that some have been nibbled down to husks as I was leaving so grabbed the only other one I could see that was a decent size. Also picked some apples but that was mainly to take some weight off the branches, no idea if they're any good or not.

Apples - wrap each one in newspaper and layer into boxes or ideally mushroom trays. Check every few weeks. They will slowly ripen and last MONTHS

I used to go out with the salt cellar for the slugs at night.

Yesterday, I moved almost all my veg plants indoors as I am away for 9 days. I left the french beans on their canes, and the tomato using the support outside and soaked them well, adding a couple of water balls. And my dwarf french beans are at the more shaded and less windy end of the balcony. Hopefully they will survive.

There are 3 courgettes, basil, spring onions and 2 lavenders in my laundry basket and large bucket - all well watered with an extra inch in the bucket, but indoors with less sun and no wind. And there is 1 courgette and 4 tomatoes (tall ones!) in my bath which were soaked well and have been left with the shower on a slow drip to keep the towel under them damp. I am more worried about them between water needs and lack of light in that room but that was rhetorical only option.

Forecast for 3 days including yesterday was hot and sunny - so they might have been ok the rest of the time but already half dead by then, if I'd left them out.

So I may get a load of tomatoes and a few more courgettes and beans when I get back - or I could be done for the season. We'll see (but they certainly did their main job - give me something other than office work to do and green things are calming as well!).

Fed and watered plants. Picked tomatoes, a cucumber, two patty pans and a crookneck.

Discovered some of my cobs are ready!!!! It is peculiar that side by side plants have quite different maturity of their cobs, though. On some the silk is all dark brown and stiff, others still a bit green. Some are fat to bursting, others still getting there.

I closely examined the nasturtiums and sent a great many cabbage white caterpillars to a farm.

I don’t think Large White and Small White butterflies are endangered. If you want to feel better about it, get them at egg stage. Doesn’t feel quite so personal

Does anybody have any guidance about saving seed please? I have a lot of 'Real Seeds' heritage varieties so know it's possible with these, but never tried it before! I'm hoping to save seed from mange tout, French green beans and pumpkin. Are there any big do's and don'ts?? Thanks

To be clear, "I sent cabbage white eggs and caterpillars to a farm" is an expression to avoid saying I remove the leaves they are on and squash them underfoot, with feeling. If just eggs I swipe them off the leaf.

It is an expression, that is all. I have no fear for the cabbage white population but I am aware that some people will not kill any insect, feel guilt at simply removing them from their plants, and don't want to hear about me hunting them down and destroying them.

@Pebble21uk real seeds have seed saving instructions on their website. If you are saving beans, squash and a few other things you have to be careful about cross pollination - you will end up with something strange

Ah okay thanks... though quite fancy seeing what mutant veg I might get!!!