The Vegetable Patch 2024/2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

Next week is when I will start my veg (in a mini greenhouse inside the polytunnel with a heated propagator in the bottom)

My big bit of planning this year is pigeon netting as I lost so much to the increasing numbers of wood pigeons it was utterly depressing.

@Lakeyloo I must have bemoaned my lack of charlotte potatoes too much- as I have been kindly given two packs.
I have already planted some potatoes (acoustic) in a bed, but our allotment came with loads of old potato bags- approximately 40cm high, by 30cm- round cylindrical shape.
I am keen to plant my gifted potatoes as you describe! How many do I put in per bag please
By the way I know I have planted the acoustic a bit early but I am about to start a new job and fancied having respectable fingernails!

Now I am up to my bum in charlotte seed potatoes I went into home bargains and they have charlotte, maris piper and all sorts of other seed potatoes 5 for 99p

@Breadcat24 I did not need to know that. I'm already chitting more than I need (but you can never have too many, can you....).

@Breadcat24 2 or 3, although i have done 2 about a third up and another 2 about 2 thirds up but opposite sides of the bag if that makes sense, normally when i have a few too many for the amount of bags.
Mine are chitting away merrily as we speak.
Good luck with the new job !

I have been levelling paths between new beds, making the blackbird very happy.

@Lakeyloo
Thank you so much all planted now! Manicure planned

Today’s job as a day off gut and clear the greenhouse. Need to redo the floor and have the auto pots cleaned up and ones not filling so probably a new spongy thing needed.

Tomatoes, pimentos and aubergines planted and the propagator in the polytunnel switched on.
Early chard and spinach and loose head lettuce also sown to transplant out when its warmer.

Suddenly I feel human

I'm feeling very virtuous : about to go off on holiday and in the last week, I've managed to: sow chilli seeds and tomato seeds (now on the heated propagator), sown broad beans around the edge of the raised potato bed, sown broad beans in a block in what will be the legumes bed, sown sweet peas, ammi majus, bupleureum, cosmos (Dazzler and Purity), two types of sweet peppers and some more tomatoes.

I've got the ones not on the heated propagator in propagators (but not heated). They're all enclosed so shouldn't dry out although one of the propgators has a water mat and reservoir

They're all sitting in the south facing window in the dining room (beside the chitting potatoes) and I've left SIL (who will be popping in) to check on them and turn them occasionally after they start sprouting. I've left her a mini watering bottle just in case.

Yesterday I planted out strawberry plants that I grew on from last year's runners, garlic and direct sowed broad beans. A bit of weeding and cut back all my autumn fruiting raspberries. I'm delaying sowing indoor seeds a little longer because I only have a small propagator and then they have to move to an unheated greenhouse where I have lost seedlings to frost in the past. I don't plant out till the end of May anyway as we get late frosts so no real rush. It's all a bit of a balancing act.

I haven’t got any seeds planted yet other than tomato and chillies. I have bought a new poly tunnel as I couldn’t quite afford a greenhouse, I haven’t put it up yet so won’t be starting seeds until it’s sorted.

I have spent the last 2 days on the allotment tackling couch grass, I don’t think I will ever get rid of it, I’ve pulled up so many roots but it will likely come back. I have bindweed to tackle next.

I have also started sectioning my plot into beds and creating paths in hope to get a delivery of woodchip in the coming weeks, I’m hoping this will make my life easier and make my plot look tidy. Today my plot neighbour moaned about the path between our plots blending in with my plot (due to the couch grass), I’m not really sure what I can do as I don’t want to use weed killer (which was his suggestion).

I had the same issue with the grass path blending into my plot. I'm hoping to create a wooden border to attempt to get some control over it. Or at attempt to make it look a little neater.

Upside down carpet is the classic for weed suppressing at allotments.

Go to the dump and ask if they have any fabric / hessian backed you can have.
Cut it to shape with a stanley knife and hold it down with tent pegs.

Weed free non slip paths

NOT foam backed.
Old rugs cut into strips work as well

check about carpet first in your contract. Its banned at ours, as committee didnt want chemicals/man made fibers leaching into the soil.

Please do not use carpet on an allotment.

It is the absolute pits when the next person comes along and has to pick a million bits out of the soil for the next 10 years.

Fabric backed rugs on paths ?
I use it in my own veg garden and its fine.

Absolutely agree about anything synthetic / plastic backed
but old hessian backed wool is effectively the same as putting wool pellets on the paths.

Banned on our allotments as well.

Not just for leaching but also when it gets overgrown on a plot when evicting and they don’t know it’s there and it buggers the machine up when tilling it. Also cost to get the council to remove it when we do know it’s there as it all has to be a quoted job.

It’s banned on ours as well. I have got a section on my plot where someone put down black membrane and covered it in flints, which then got overgrown with grass all long before my time and it is absolutely impossible to clear. I have given up and left it as a No Mow May type area.

I also have problems with grass invasion from the paths. I kept a central grassy path across my middle for years, but last year did board the edges, cover it in cardboard and a deep layer of woodchip, I have refilled it with wood chip this year, it definitely helps. I realised at the end of the season before last that I had lost about 18” at each end of the plot to grass invasion and dug it all out, but winter fell before I could remove it all and I left it in heaps which rooted again and took me ages to sort out last spring. I am not going to let it get that bad again.

What are your rules on corks ?
Every single cork gets put into my polytunnel on the path
non slip, non rot, cats will not walk on them
Would they work on general paths as they are like pebbles if they get into a bed
but because they stay loos, are fab at weed suppressing

I don’t want to use carpets or membrane. I’m happy to temporarily cover with plastic sheeting if I need too but I think the plan will be to put down wood chip over cardboard.

Cardboard is indeed good.
Businesses pay to have it taken away - save them money by diverting it

I can heartily recommend corks as polytunnel paths though

tomatos (yellow pearshape, principe bourgese and a nameless f1 cherry tomato) and cucumbers sowed.
and sorted the troughs on the balcony.
found many many snails hidden under/around them which I fed to the birds.

If you have any joinery workshops near you they also pay to have their wood shavings taken away.

Project dead hedge has begun. Judging by what we have completed today, I think we have enough material to do just about the whole length required, although perhaps not full height.