What have you done in the garden today? Part 7

[Jimmyneutronsforehead]

Continuation thread from MereDint's previous threads.

Found a photo from when it happened. I always wear gloves now when handling hairy stemmed plants.

Yikes - fortunately the arm rash calmed down overnight! I didn't take my usual antihistamine yesterday which probably didn't help.

'Heavenly Blue' thankfully I have no colour scheme.

I always forget to cover myself around the hairy plants and end up with welts all over my hands and arms. I'm old enough to have learnt, you'd think!

This is the first time I've had 12 tomato plants all be successful, but it's so frustrating how slowing the fruits ripen in succession. I need enough of the plum tomatoes to be ripe at the same time to make sauce, but they are ripening separately. Goodness knows if I will ever actually cook with them or if the first will have gone over before the rest are finally ripe.

The beefsteak are wonderful. We're having Caprese salad twice a week at the moment.

What do experienced tomato growers do? pick and put in the fridge to slow them down when they get red?

Toms are my bête noir so this is a novel experience for me - I usually get blight before they ripen and end up turning all the green tomatoes into chutney.

I'm all right with hairy plants, but hyacinth bulbs bring me out in a rash.

We just bung them in the freezer until we've got enough to make sauce with.

That's if they even make it inside. Tomatoes are my favourite garden snack.

I just leave toms on the vine until more are ripe. They're fine for a good while. I never put them in the fridge, I feel they lose their flavour.

Got home yesterday and pulled off a lovely tub of beans from the bean plants. Dreaming of going back to that garden centre. We've planned a trip for in September when we go back to see the Filey kite festival.

Outside our caravan we've got some flags that Haven provided for us, so they're a bit shoddily laid, and had weeds growing through them, so we pulled the weeds out and scraped as much of the roots out as we can, and then my mum decided to sprinkle the contents of her chamomile teabags in them, and we just tamped them down with a few cupfulls of compost.

A few caravans down from ours, they've got an outside tap. Now I want an outside tap, but I don't think we are allowed to fit one ourselves, and I don't think it's something Haven would do for us either, so I've resigned myself to jealousy. I dream of having some lovely potted plants out front, but realistically they would dry out because they wouldn't get as much water as they need and we're not allowed a water butt that I can automate from.

Finally got into the garden again after a period of ill health. It needs a lot of tidying up now,so been hauling out dead stuff and cutting back creeping stuff,while leaving enough shelter and cover for bugs and beasties to overwinter. Moved a few plants around and marked out an area for my new herb bed for next year. Very excited about that. Picked sage,nettle,plantain and rosemary for drying,and started a bucket of nettle compost tea.

I'm glad you're feeling better Hedjwitch.

I've been out assessing what needs to be done, and trying to budget the energy to do it.

Sadly DDog has taken a turn for the worse thiis past week, so I imagine that my energy might be being focused elsewhere for a short while.

Still, I am planning my garden.

I really want a herb patch, we've got a little terracotta plant pot at the minute that has been fruitful for the past few years, but decimated by the mint that they planted in it at the garden centre now.

I am a bit upset that I only got 2 cherry tomatoes this year. I think I'm going to go back to growing rapunzels. I loathed that I had to spend £6 for 6 seeds (and one of the packets only had 5 in it) but they all germinated, and they gave me the most beautiful long trusses. Not quite as long as the picture online made out, but long enough that we had to give trusses away because we just couldn't keep up with them.

I also want to try growing some larger tomatoes, but stick with indeterminates.

I am determined that next year will be the year I can successfully grow a cucumber, 8th times the charm surely.

I'm kicking myself. After a few days of being under the weather and DH watering my bonsai trees for me, I've gone out there today and discovered that he's been missing some of them. One of my favourites has shrivelled up leaves and looks like it has died of thirst. Damn and blast.

LTB.

Kidding. Slightly.

I went to the garden centre yesterday and despite telling myself, no more plants, I bought a blue lobelia, a tall one and a penstemon, Garnet, one I've had before but lost a while ago.

I've put both into a planter and will leave them over winter in there and plant them out into the garden next year.

I also bought a little tray of six spring onions which I've potted on into a large tub. I never had much success with them last year from seed so fingers crossed I will actually get onions with these already growing ones.

Here's hoping!

@Jimmyneutronsforehead thanks. Haul that mint out and put it in a seperate container or it will take over your entire herb planter. The roots really need to be contained. I love growing and using herbs and medicinal plants. Today I have strained the chickweed oil made earlier this year, and started a yarrow oil. Both of these will be used in skin salves. I also made lemon balm tea which I have frozen in ice cubes ready to pop into hot water or to add to teas such as chamomile or mint. Also got the apple cider vinegar underway.

I cheat with spring onions, and just replant the heads of the ones I buy from the shop, and keep chopping away at them until they're completely spent.

Jimmyneutronsforehead: I did see this being done on Facebook, I haven't tried it myself but I have some shop bought spring onions in the fridge so I will give it a go next time I make a salad, I'll keep the root ends and pot a couple up. :-)

I use chives as spring onions, partly to thin them out from where they have self-seeded across my entire garden.

What's your issue with cucumbers, @Jimmyneutronsforehead ? I grow a lot of them because we eat loads of the things as well as doing a year's supply of pickles, so if I can help at all, let me know.

They want a hell of a lot of water to be prolific, which was a bit of a stumbling block before I installed the irrigation system for the inside cukes. The outside ones I leave to their own devices except in a drought. (This is because I am staggeringly lazy)

I can get them to germinate, and I have tried in small cells, big cells, starter pots, bigger pots, but they just never survive transplanting.

I've also tried direct sowing but they either don't germinate or the slugs get them.

I don't know if I'm doing it too early either. I usually sow everything in the week after mothers day and again after Easter, and I never plant out until after the first week in May, but I still can't get them to survive.

Pumpkins and courgettes though, I either get none, or get too many, and I sow those at a similar time.

Cucumbers are the thing we eat the most of so I really really want to get it right because we can never have too many cucumbers in our house.

Hmm, that's odd. Are you keeping the transplanted seedlings in the same place as before they were moved up a pot size?

Generally I do 2 seeds in a 9cm pot usually, and split them into their own 13.5cm pots when they have two lots of true leaves. They still live on the windowsill in trays (which are watered from the base) until much bigger.

I like the varieties that don't get much beyond 15-20cm, I find them more reliable and robust.

Yes, they all live on a table in our conservatory, they just get moved up a tray. I do bottom water once they've initially germinated, and surface water until germination.

My seedling mix is usually 2 thirds sieved compost and 1/3 coco coir.

They usually cope with being up-potted but it's just as soon as I get them in the ground they turn yellow and crisp up.

Cucumbers are fussy buggers. Too hot, too cold,.too wet, too dry - never happy. I think some of them die of sheer malice rathe than anything toive done or not done. I always calculate on losing half at each stage.

Maybe I just need to sow 50 and plan to have 10 left by the time I've done.

Has anyone ever grown birds house gourds? I'm hoping to give them a try next year, but it is just a fun grow.

I visited some friends today who live in a lovely village nearby and they have the most perfect garden. It's pretty big, wide rather than deep with a lovely old walled garden at the back. It looks the typical English country garden and I'm almost sorry I went round there as I now have serious garden envy. 😆

In my own not quite so magnificent but smaller, lovely garden, I've watered some of the pots and will do the rest a bit later. The lawn is rather untidy but I'm going to leave that till Monday as from Tuesday, rain is in the forecast. Hooray!

I went out there, tidied up the main veg bed, mulched the tomatoes, filled the pond. I’ve found this summer so challenging. My borders are dead, my pond has given up my veg garden is mainly dry and crispy but occasionally green but eaten . There is comfrey everywhere, I’m usually good at using it but I hate being hot so mainly I’ve stayed in. Sigh.we have got brilliant tomatoes tho and courgettes.

Today I went and emptied as many hollyhock seed heads as I could into a bag to prevent self seeding.

By doing so, clumsily, I feel like I've actually aided the hollyhocks to self seed. For about as many as I got in the bag, twice as many scattered all around.

Little 4'11 me tried to pull the long stems towards me, and basically trebucheted hundreds of potential future problems all over.

I did try picking them off by hand but they're very prickly when they're dry and crispy so now I've got to find some tweezers to remove the plant fibres stuck in my thumb.

After that I'm going to cheer myself up with some tiramisu.