The Vegetable Patch 2024/2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

I’ve come to the conclusion it likes quite a depth of soil, and is quite greedy.

I used to grow beetroot in balcony boxes with mixed results.

good thing is that you can use the whole plant, root and leaves.

I buy jars of them

I’m growing white beetroot in 30cm sq containers, one in each corner. Seems to work quite well and gives us greens and roots for over the winter.

Any helpful ideas for badgers attacking sweetcorn plants on the allotment?

Managed some weeding at the allotment. Think my leeks have a bit of rust so need to sort that out. Picked a courgette and a marrow (first courgette to get away from me this year), sweetcorn, beetroot, a couple of very small onions and more raspberries.

My crookneck squash seems to have taken off all of a sudden and I've got quite a few set, hoping at least a couple make it to maturity.

At long last after many (too many to count) years on the waiting list,we have an allotment! yay!

Its a medium site, totally covered in weeds, but seems to be good soil. There's a few brambles and a couple of rhubarb crowns but nothing else.

Our neighbours look like they have good yields of cabbages, courgettes,tomatoes, leeks, fruits- I can see a pear tree that's looking good, and our adjoining plot has a very healthy lavender bed,rhubarb, corn,

On ours there's a strawberry patch with about 7 plants with some green leaves, once i cleared the weeds, next door a raised bed had 3 parnips growing,which had been strangled by thistles , the rest of the plot is a sea of weeds- we'll have to clear that before we start planting.

We're hoping to put some winter onions,garlic and lettuce in this autumn, maybe plant some green manure on the rest once the weeds are cleared, to add some benefit next year.

Probably going to put some colourful bedding plants in to fill the raised bed just to lift the spirits as we walk in...

Any advice, tips, or warnings would be much appreciated!

Its worth trying a few of everything, to see what suits the soil and to check what pests and diseases you've got.
I would say 'look at what your neighbours grow' but mine swear you can't grow pumpkins this far north and mine are doing just fine.

@guffaux We took on an overgrown allotment in June this year so only speaking from limited experience but here goes-

1. Do not just do the clearing and getting rid of rubbish and other grunt work- when you clear a bed plant something! That is the fun bit and gives you encouragement when stuff grows. Don't be tempted to get everything perfect before you plant.
2. Set realistic targets if it is a big allotment maybe plan to clear half of it this year, or set up 3 beds
3. Do not listen to people who say it is too late to get anything this year- (from seed it would be) but garden centres around me (yorkshire) are selling seedlings and plug plants of radishes, carrots, kale, cabbage, broccoli, leeks, kolrabi, pak choi ... loads. Also you could plant seed potatoes like charlotte for Christmas and they grow quick
4. See if your allotment site has a whatsapp group and join it- people offer seedlings, they can advise on green waste removal, they might organize the council to pick up rubbish like plastics. Anyway can be good for a chat. If no whats app go round and meet your neighbours.
5. If you have not got one, things like polytunnels are going on sale now on amazon and ebay. It will extend your growing season and if you have no other shelter give you somewhere to go if it rains!
6. Try to get a shed- someone gave us one but there were a few on ebay. It means you do not have to drag tools there all the time
7. Battery powered tools are brilliant- at least a good strimmer with a metal blade (look out for hedgehogs) and a hedge trimmer
8. Places like B+Q and Homebase are discounting and selling off fruit bushes like currants and gooseberries at the moment for a couple of quid. Also Autumn raspberries
9. Beware of badgers digging it all up!

Good luck

@guffaux Also fruit trees will be coming into shops like supermarkets, home bargains garden centres etc soon!

Thanks- @Breadcat24 - We are in the north too- We've cleared and prepped one area ,and are going to put two types of onions and garlic in, the two raised beds are also cleared- one has about 5 strawberry plants in which I've left, nothing on them so not sure if now they can see daylight anything will happen, or if they'll come to life in the spring. I intend to sow some winter leaves for the other bed- Ive got some corn salad ,radishes and some spinach, along with some bedding plants for colour and cheer.

The other two thirds will be going under cardboard for the winter, once cleared .

I've got my eye on a pear tree and a plum-maybe two plums-they're my favourite.

We've met a few 'neighbours'-one has already given me a few courgettes and tomatoes which were lush, I'm going to make him a courgette and lemon cake as a thankyou.

Its all so exciting!

for winter look for bare root fruit bushes.

@guffaux while strawberries do produce some fruit on old plants they tend to produce most on new runners- these are little satellite plants on long stems from the main plant- you pin them down and they root.
So for your strawberries sorry but you are unlikely to get any fruit this year and for the minimal cost of them probably would do better to plant fresh plants next year.
Hope you get your plums!
By the way ignore any nutjob that tells you to put carpet on your allotment- it leaches nasties and is a bitch to remove

I would say it’s probably 2nd year strawberries that do the best but after 3 years it’s getting time to replace them. A three year old plant of mine produced over 100 strawberries last year.

One of mine has just produced two strawberries but anything later I wouldnt have though stood a chance

Sorry to just jump in, I don’t post very often but do lurk. I’m replacing my strawberries this year, they are a mix but all are several years old now, They cropped well this year but the patch has become a sprawling mess of crowded plants, bindweed and couch grass, so I am going to get rid of the lot. I have a second lot of plants at home which don’t crop much because it’s too shady where they are but I am going to pin down runners from them ready to go into my allotment once it has been cleared and fed.

That is another reason for clearing, it has clearly become nutrient deficient as a lot of things have been weak and poor croppers this year. So I want to mulch it with manure over winter. I had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes probably due to using tomato feed on those, and my raspberries are just starting what looks like being a huge crop (I did thin out, clear of grass and manure them, they are autumn fruiting).

My potatoes went down to blight, I found them like it about 10 days ago and removed all the foliage, I plan to dig them up at the weekend. The plants looked big and healthy till blight struck so hopefully there will be plenty down there.

I bought some raspberry canes today from the reduced section at the garden centre, after buying I thought “will they be any good?”, what do I do with them? Obviously they are this years canes and should have been planted early in the year? The canes look dead but there’s greenery around the bottom of them. Do I just plant them, or just plant the new plants growing off them?

Just plant them. If the canes actually are dead, you can cut them out at the base. But be very confident that they’re dead before you do this. Are they summer or autumn raspberries, do you know? If summer, they’ll fruit on this year’s canes, but if this year’s canes are actually dead, then they’ll produce new canes next year which will fruit the year after.

All this is assuming the “greenery” is actually raspberry greenery

Re strawberries, I have an old metal planter with some in, have been for years. I don't fed them, and I'm not sure the soil is anything much, but every year they produce the most delicious strawberries! One issue is the edge of the planter is folded under so sometimes the fruits go underneath and then grow there so I can't get them out! I leave those for the slugs and snails.
I'd love to repot them but worried I may ruin them.

This mornings harvest. Still loads of courgettes to come. That's probably the last rhubarb I will cut.

Photo!

Does your rhubarb continue to produce year after year? The usual advice is to stop cutting after the end of June a) to build up the plants for next year b) the build up of oxalic acid in the stems becomes too great, which is mot good for the joints, especially if you have arthritis.

Barry the badly behaved badger has now dug up a courgette plant the little so and so

I have 3 rhubarb crowns. One is really early and is long gone. The other 2 really only come into their full growth in late June. That's the 3rd cut since I came back from holiday mid-July. They are 5 years old now.

Thank you, they are summer raspberries, defiantly raspberry greenery at the bottom. I will check if the canes are actually dead. I don’t have much luck with raspberries on my plot, I planted some long canes early this year and they didn’t survive, same happened last year 😭.

Hi, any tips how to prevent blight and mildew in veg plants in pots?
Thanks
I picked more tomatoes and courgettes today but my plants aren’t looking good.

@PennyWorth my big discovery this year is that cutting off tomato leaves is really successful as a way of controlling disease. When growing tomatoes in the greenhouse this is a very important aspect because it also prevents mildew and whitefly from spreading to other plants in the enclosed space of the greenhouse,

I started cutting off the tomato plant leaves from the bottom up, gradually as the plants grew in height from around May onwards, and it really has prevented all forms of pest and disease. It opens up the plant, gives it good air circulation and puts the strength into height and yield of tomatoes. I also find feeding vegetable plants makes a more robust plant which enables it to fight off disease naturally without the need for any pesticide sprays.