Chit Chat
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Allotment/garden thread 2013
Allotment/garden thread 2013
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Replies: 941
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runner french broad or baked?
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All my Bluebells are in full flower now
 Lots of white ones this year. I dug all the bulbs up last year as i wanted to dig the border over with the contents of my compost heap. I wonder if that is why most have come up white this year ?  |
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Deltâ
17 May 13 12:42 Joined: 12 Mar 02 | Topic/replies: 24,860 | Blogger: Deltâ's blog runner french broad or baked Might as well plant baked - for all the success I will probably have! |
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wots this week/e's jobs then...
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Today, I have mostly been lashing down the bean poles.
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23 mph winds. 8 centigrade.
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terrible aint it Jack - I cant even be @rsed to go outside...
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Picked some radishes and rocket for sandwiches.
Content with the progress of the kohl rabi, but spring onions looking feeble at this stage. First flower bloomed this morning on the greenhouse tomatoes, peppers growing well, so feeling summery in there at least. Cold and very windy here in Zummerset, but at least we've had one or two showers - has been a very dry spring. Apple tree blossom looking far healthier than last year, when frost killed off so much of it. Ended up with no more than 100 apples last year, while the year before the same tree had yielded nearer 300. |
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screaming' my radish grow all top and no bottom - as in dont bulge out - thought they were meant to be easy - any ideas?
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Not necessarily easy, just that you're guaranteed to get something, even if it's "only" edible greenery, as you seem to have. That's why I like them - even when they fail, you can still proudly eat home-grown veg.
As to what's happened, I'd guess that with so many cool days this spring away from the south-east, they've probably reacted as though they were planted in the autumn and quickly done their productive growing, then "wintered" through a cold spell, and are now running to seed in what they think is the spring of their "second" year. |
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PS Have you spotted Richard Hughes near your plot? The man could stop a train right now, never mind a radish.
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PPS This might have something to do with it:
screaming from beneaththewaves 17 Apr 13 09:47 Joined: 30 Jan 05 | Topic/replies: 5,994 | Blogger: screaming from beneaththewaves's blog Planted my first seeds on Saturday. Seemed pointless before then with overnight temps constantly hovering around zero. Weeds weren't appearing, so crops weren't going to either. By planting relatively late, my radishes may have avoided the cold nights which could have forced your radishes to cut short their "productive" growth at the bottom and go into winter hibernation. As I said, what you're seeing now might be "second"-year growth to seed. |
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i reckon we are 3 weeks behind were we would normally be, that is in cheshire
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cheers screaming I'll try a batch 2..
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I'd endorse what the Dragon said - i was in Cheshire ( Warrington to be precise ) last week for an anniversary and the oldsters who like to garden were saying 3-4 weeks behind a normal year.
Here in Co.Durham at 500 feet, the first potato has shown itself - get in son! Still a long way to go but any appearance is welcome from the spuds. Apple tree and courgettes really struggling. Alpine strawberries are doing fabulous, as are raspberries, and dandelions ( i think they have been mentioned already ). |
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I'm doing bugger all but he wife has a hell of a lot of tree blossoms to hoover up after today
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Got the first lot of tomatoes out but the weather really isn't helping. One thing I found is that by watering them with urine while indoors really has boosted them.
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screaming from beneaththewaves 24 May 13 18:19
PS Have you spotted Richard Hughes near your plot? The man could stop a train right now, never mind a radish. Brilliant, Screaming! |
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Just been down. Half buried and Filled up the bath with soil and put soil mounding up to the rim. Gave everything a good watering. First early spuds defoup and running and the asparagus has gone from nothing to a foot or more high in a week, very thin spears, not for picking but always comforting to see. Onions and shallots showing too, a total of seven veges now showing. Hope to plant a load more this week as amoff work, suspect i better get busy weeding too as it is getting a bit messy now.
Runners, courgettes, spinach, chard, radish, lettuce and toms to all go in this week all being well. Also. Saw the biggest worm ever, then on closer inspection realised it was more like a v.small snake. Is that what they call a slow worm? |
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I think i killed it because i pulled it out to let it enjoy the sun, and so i didnt accidently chop it in half withthe digging, well it didnt move much so i watered it a bit withthe watering can, but think it had given up the ghost, perhaps a bird or cat will get it for sunday lunch.
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Rob, the thought of you pulling out a semi-snake worm to 'let it enjoy some sun' - and then watering it 'a bit' when it didn't move, is the stuff of Chit Chat genius!
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I feell very slightly guilty. I had to get it out as i would defo have chopped it up via digging but looking back i should have at least covered it up with mud to protect it and let it burrow down nto its new home, but i was just fascinated at seeing a snake and wanted to prolong the experience.
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Dylan. That is a slowworm. They're like gold dust, because they gorge themselves on slugs.
They're lizards, hence cold-blooded, so love to hide under metal, mostly corrugated iron in my experience. (The metal is heated by the sun and acts like a storage heater.) By happy coincidence slugs also tend to congregate under corrugated metal. Don't worry about chopping one, as they can shed their tail, so sometimes when the sodding cat catches them they can escape that way. |
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By the way, I don't think they burrow to "find a home" - only to hunt earthworms for food.
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Are you saying it might have been ok not in the mud and on the top? So i might not have killed it, it would rest my mind if so.
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I would not be able to cope with the guilt/uncertainty, would be down there now digging the entire plot up until finding it safe and well.
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just been to the local garden centre, 1 bay tree £99.99. The wife got 2 from Morrisons last week exactly the same height for £20.
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No reason why you should have killed it. They're lizards. They're pretty well motionless until they spot something to eat. If the sun was out, it would have been warming itself up on the surface. If you're cold-blooded, conserving energy and basking in warm sunshine is the way to go.
By the way, did you put a layer of stones or broken pots in the bottom of your tub for drainage? Unless you do, you could end up with a bathful of mud, which won't do the roots of any plants any good at all. It's also worth mixing a generous amount of compost into these tubs, as that helps to combat waterlogging. To be honest, the Belfast sink in which my rocket is thriving is about 95% recycled compost and 5% perlite. That way I can give the crop all the water it needs. |
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By the way, did you put a layer of stones or broken pots in the bottom of your tub for drainage? Unless you do, you could end up with a bathful of mud, which won't do the roots of any plants any good at all.
Oh dear. Oh well i shallnt dwell on it just yet, Got loads of outdoor tomatoes in today, a whole raised bed full... Thanks largely to my dad who even raised them from seed at his olace... They are all well over a foot high already.. He did all the hard work for me. Weeded over the beds and have prepared the fourth one ready for planting more later in the week. The greenhouse is now safely secured to the side of the shed and now usable. Shall endeavour to take hotos and post them up next time i visit, i am quite proud of it all tbh. |
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Kale, sweetcorn, broccoli,sprouting brocolli, cucumber and swede in today. More than twenty veg in to date not including my flatmates efforts to be. The big two i want are courgette and runner beans and they are still in the pipeline. Put a very vague net over the asparagus to at least deter birds. Also put nets over the two brassica raised beds. Not an easy job and our efforts were far from perfect, i wuld be very interested to hear other peoples' theories on best way to approach it. I used canes and basic netting from b and q. I think the main problem is the way of setting up the canes.
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The standard allotment method seems to be old plastic bottles on canes holding up netting.
I made a small cage for the strawberries with some old 2 x 1 lath and some chicken wire - both of which I had behind the shed. |
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rob_' the netting will keep the birds off the brassicas but you really need a tighter woven fleece type cover on them or else the butterflies get in lay their eggs and you get hundreds of caterpillars munching per head - also the cabbage root fly need deterring via this method or else eats away at cabbage roots destroying the plant - its all a game really....
gl |
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The netting i put over the brassicas was pretty tight, think it will stop butterflies. The stuff iput over the asparagus was just wrong, i think it is actually meant for placing vertically to allow peas, beans etc to grow up it, not for keeping pests out at all.
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Rob, please don't think I'm being patronizing, but I really appreciate your honesty on this thread. Most of us keep making mistakes and hopefully working out where we've gone wrong. It's much of the interest of growing things for me. Just most of us omit that part of the story when handing out advice and it can be a bit disheartening for newcomers.
Back in the 1970s Germaine Greer used to write a column in Private Eye under the pseudonym Rose Blight, called The Revolting Garden. Every fortnight she'd chronicle the relentless setbacks in trying to grow even the simplest items in her backyard in London. The columns were very funny and, in their way, they were a much more encouraging read than the smug and unrealistic instructions handed out in most gardening columns. Some of the columns got collected into a paperback, which is now on offer at an entirely reasonable £90 on Amazon  http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revolting-Garden-Rose-Blight/dp/0233971793 Oddly enough the book is still popular in Germany in translation, where they love the humour http://www.schoeffling.de/buecher/germaine-greer-rose-blight/heckengefl%C3%BCster |
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On the theme of disasters, the hazel sticks that I put up and covered in fine-ish netting didn't work. I couldn't get the sticks far enough in the ground to be very stable - and combined with the very strong winds and the net acting as sails meant I had to abandon the idea. I think the pea plants that i put in are goners. The stems seem quite stiff and I think have been broken by the rain, the wind, watering and or just being planted badly.
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my peas look poor too Jack - I dont think the pod will be going pop - I put it down to being too cold..
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I grew some carrots last year in a cat litter tray (a new one) put compost in and the put the seeds in (free in the Daily Mail) but after several months, well past the time they should have been ready they wereless than an inch long. Where did I go wrong please?
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kept them watered of course.
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surely the tray wouldnt have enough depth for a carrot to grow anyways...
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 Have you got a pet leopard or, even better, a tiger? One of those might use a litter tray as deep as a carrot. Re the cold: This spring is on track to be the coldest for more than 50 years, provisional Met Office figures suggest. This month has seen lower than average temperatures and it has been wetter than usual, forecasters said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22718944 Weather seems to go in a cycle of 30 years of rising temps and 30 years of falling temps. It looks like the period when we could chuck anything in the ground in Feb or March and get away with it is over again for a few decades. On the plus side I'm hopeful of a bonanza crop from my apple tree. Late blossom thanks to the cold March and April has meant huge amounts and no frost damage. There shouldn't be any problem with pollination either, as all of the local trees left it late to blossom, so there are far more candidates for pollination than normal. |