The Vegetable Patch 2024/2025

[MereDintofPandiculation]

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

@CurlyWurly1991 I have essentially repurposed the house as a tomato factory 😄 I germinate the tomatoes in January on the floor in the ensuite as it's the warmest spot and effectively has underfloor heating. When they show, I bring them into the glass roofed kitchen extension which also has underfloor heating and stays toasty warm. If they get leggy I just repot them deeper. They seem to like it. I let the side shoots get to a few inches and then snap them off and root then in jars of water. That gives me a whole second crop that comes on line as the first ones are dying of exhaustion. You can never have too many tomatoes 😁

Horrendous rain today. Tried to move pots of veg into a drier spot and now one of my new courgette big leaves is broken at the stem :(. Hope the rest of it will be okay, they've only got three leaves each!

Hope everything isn't overly sodden - not ideal!

I’ve just realised the birds have been eating the white slug pellets I put down. I couldn’t figure out why they were disappearing overnight . The penny dropped when I say the pellets under the brassica nets were still there. I went and bought some blue pellets, hoping they won’t identify those as food.

@MontyDonsBlueScarf what tomato varieties are you growing ? I’m doing Costolutto fiorentino, noire de Crimee, Stupice and Sweet aperitif.

Latah for the very early crop (though the plants haven't done well this year)
Gardener's Ecstacy which is new to me, lots of early cherry tomatoes but in my opinion not a lot of flavour, I won't bother with these again.
Ferline and Crimson Crush for good size, tasty, blight resistance, Ferline in particular is very sturdy and grows like a little tree. Not sure which I prefer as I normally grow one or the other so thought I'd try both together this year
San Marzano Redorta, huge plum, excellent for cooking but because of its size it takes a lot longer than the others.

That's it, I think I deserve a prize for restraint as I have at least a dozen other varieties of seeds.

I tried Coustuluto Fiorentino a couple of years ago and felt it didn't match its write up, but maybe it was just me. I'll be interested to hear what you think of it. I haven't tried the others.

I planted out the leeks today during a gap in the rain. I normally grow them on in soft fruit punnets from the supermarket, but I ran out and instead used some 1kg yoghurt pots with holes in the bottom. The ones in the yoghurt pots were half as big again as the ones in the punnets. I'm a big fan of Lidl Greek yoghurt so I'll definitely be using these again.

That’s interesting. I’m a big fan of ferline but was under the impression it had been withdrawn- can’t find the seeds anywhere. Tried crimson crush a couple of years ago , found them very bland but they were grafted plants and I believe they are often less flavourful. I’m in London and I don’t have a greenhouse, not sure I could do san Marzano ( sound very Italian and sun loving !). Stupice did well for me last year.
I did Costolutto a couple of years ago as a bit of an afterthought in a pot in my backyard, somewhat neglected and pot bound it delivered very tasty tomatoes. Maybe the underwatering contributed to that.

I've got tomatoes too, though nothing super exciting. Sungold as they were nice last year, some rosella cherry toms (blackish?) and then a Tigrella a friend gave me but I wouldn't have chosen. Only my second year growing tomatoes, so let's see how it goes.

I'm going away Wed-Sun next week - would you just give a good water before you go or try to set up a watering system? Most of my veg is in pots. I do have clay stakes so hoping it might be enough to stick some wine bottles of water into them.

I'd check the night before as depending on where you live, it might be rainy anyway.

I'd not worry too much unless you are in an area that is very, very dry. I havent watered any pots this year.

If you can, put trays under the pots and fill with water.
we are going away for 5 days and I will do this with my tomatoes and cucumbers. Luckily all my bits outside will be fine, at the moment we don’t seem to get many dry days so all the things on my allotment only get watered the day they are planted, they then take their chances.

I’ve just been to the community garden where we have a patch, after heavy rain all-day yesterday. Previously healthy pepper nibbled to the ground, smaller tom plants too. Larger tom plants clearly crawled over but largely intact. Chilli fine - there was one slug in the cloche though. I wonder if that’s because slugs don’t like chillies, or the protective effect of the bottle/cloche.

Argh.

Ate my first pod of peas last night 🎉 Delish!

Today's task is to get my bigger tomatoes into their final pots. Then my chillis can go in the pots the tomatoes have vacated and remain on the windowsill a bit longer.

Had a good few hours at the allotment earlier in the week before the rain. Main bed completely weeded and round the pond sorted too.

Hopefully get up there again today if it stays dry. I need to strim the grass under the fruit trees. Excited to see that it looks like we might get a pear or two this year. Didn't get a single one set last year.

Today's task is to get my bigger tomatoes into their final pots. Then my chillis can go in the pots the tomatoes have vacated and remain on the windowsill a bit longer. Oh, I understand! Do the long overdue job of emptying last year’s purple sprouting to clear the pots for the tomatoes, to clear the pots for the lettuces, to clear the pots for the seedlings, to clear the pots for pricking out from the seedtrays, to sow the swiss chard for next spring. My job list for the morning merely said ‘sow swiss chard”.

@tizwozliz I have two pear trees. I never get pears off both in the same year. When I was a child, we had piles of apple boxes to the ceiling. I can’t remember ever seeing a pear on either of the pear trees. Either it’s in the genes, or she didn’t have the skill for pear trees and was unable to pass it to me.

Or maybe they just flower too early

I had more pearlets set than ever this year, huzzah!
But most have dropped this past 2 week. Boo.
There are still a good few up there, but it's not exactly bounteous. Mine is 2 varieties grafted into one tree, and they rarely both fruit, but this year they seem to have done...

I started researching perennial salad plants and now want to go and order them all, but I'm going away for a few days so MUSTN'T. I get too into the idea and want to act on everything right now.

In reality I should calm down, write a list of what to order later (seeds or plants) and do some weeding instead in the meantime.

I have 5x toms, 2x courgette, 1xcucamelon (testing it), 3x cape gooseberry this year as my main sort of annual veg/fruit crop (will try to overwinter the cape gooseberry this time) and they're all set up in pots now and reasonably well established. I don't fancy doing lettuce for some reason, but I do like the idea of perennial food growing in the garden (as hopefully easier to manage long-term). I've got some red sorrel, herb fennel and salad burnet already.

did some actual jobs on the allotment yesterday having just got keys and bought new padlocks to secure the sheds and door.
cleaned greenhouse - was filthy mainly inside.
daughter cleared out one of the sheds - so many cobwebs!!
staked and netted an enormous redcurrant bush that the birds were working on. Hopefully we get to keep some of the redcurrants.
away for a week now so I thought I would sow sweetcorn and beans at home indoors so at least they are started. Planning to cover just one area at the allotment with cardboard layers and compost and do the ‘three sisters’ this year. Everything else is just about trying to get a crop from what is already there.
I did find an old dalek compost bin on the plot which is full of good compost which is great. Will put that into the greenhouse and plant out the toms in there. Still a bit small for that and only repotted deeply last week. I have four of those plus millions of tiny ones at home that are probably never going to fruit now. I usually do so many more but just haven’t had the light/warmth conditions right this year.
glad to see some sunshine this morning and it’s warmer again.

Hello... please can I join you? I've grown veg on and off in the garden for a few years but I'm really trying to 'do a proper job' this year. The last two years I've cultivated seedlings and then either illness or family crisis has meant I've had to abandon everything. I'm hoping for third year lucky!

We have 2 or 3 raised beds and the rest is in containers. Most is planted out now but I'm waiting for the third leaf to appear on my pumpkin (according to instructions on packet) before I transplant it! It's the only pumpkin seed I have (from Real Seeds) so looking after it with kid gloves! I've never managed to get a pumpkin on the plant before so any tips for healthy pumpkins gratefully received.

I'm really trying not to spend this year, so using either old seed or harvested seed, using home made compost or horse manure collected free from where my partner has a volunteering role and I do have some slug pellets from previous years. I've spent £6 on seedlings and going to see how much I can grow from a £6 outlay! We are lucky in that we have a pretty large garden, with apple, pear and plum trees... but unfortunately a lot of it isn't suitable for growing.

@Pebble21uk Why isn’t it suitable for growing?

Morning all.
We have sunshine this morning for the first time in about 2 weeks. I finally got my peas in yesterday, and the courgettes may go in this morning. I have 2 leaf cucumber and chard popping up, but there is no sign of the beetroot.

I have a question about apple trees. We only have one, ds grew it from an apple pip. It had blossom for the first time this year. Is there any chance we will get apples? What should I look for?

@Pebble21uk I helped my pumpkins along last year by picking the male flowers when a female one bloomed and squishing them together - poor flower, forced procreation! I did get 3 lovely ones in time for Halloween though!

My tomato plants and cucumber plants have some flowers and fruits on them, strawberries are ripening. I e transplanted some carrots I started off indoors and am just waiting for my celery seedlings to get a bit bigger before putting them out as the last lot all got eaten

My cabbage is very holey but hoping it might yet surprise me!

Well hypothetically it would be, but the previous owner of the house was a plant pathologist (no I'd never heard of one either!) so we inherited a very mature garden full of plants - some quite rare. So it would mean removing some!

It's also on a steep slope which can make things difficult... but I have appropriated the bottom section for produce. Some years I wish I had more of the garden for food growing and other years I don't even fill what I already have!

My french beans have all been chomped and my broad beans, although lovely big plants, are now absolutely thick with blackfly. There are lots of ladybirds on them as well so I'm trying not panic too much, but it looks awful!

Potatoes are looking good - I have Swift, Rocket, Casablanca, Pink Fir, Maris and Charlotte in and all seem to be doing pretty well. Plus some Pablo beetroot which has seen a bit of slug action but not too bad.

Fruit-wise it's just strawbs, raspberry canes, a couple of dwarf apples and two rhubarb plants. It's my first year allotmenteering so everything is new and I don't have a clue what I'm doing, but (apart from the slugs and the couch grass and the bindweed) I love it!

Hey all, doing some potted tomatoes this year and some pepper. Don't have anywhere to grow anything in the ground just yet.

We're clearing a large sunny patch in our garden which is overgrown with brambles at the moment but right next to it perhaps 1 meter away is a huge horse chestnut tree. I was hoping to make a veg patch in that area with raised beds but I've just read that horse chestnuts are allelopathic and obstruct others growth.

Does anyone have any advice on this? Is I make raised beds perhaps 6 inches of the ground is that still too risky? I'm at a bit of a loss as the rest of the garden is shaded or concreted.