The 'What I Did Today' Archive - 2007

[clubroot]

tied in my out door cucumbers and toms a bit of weeding and then it started to rain for a change wish i could wear my shades oh joy

[Flummery]

Moaned about the rain. Got some glorious sunshine. Memo - must moan more often. Weeded, harvested broadies, frenchies, kohl rabi, courgette and Arran pilot - with a bit of salmon they were gorgeous! Weeded some of Ma & sister's garden. Must be mad!

[wellie]

Picked a shed-load of Blueberries. I've only got two blueberry bushes, but wow! can they produce. At least 4lb. of fruit off of them this morning alone...
And shed-loads last week 'an all!

I 'bit the bullet' at about 10am, and harvested my 'excuse' for a bed of onions. Botrytis and Bolting heavily springs to mind at this hour, but hey, you win some and you lose some. Next year will be entirely different, and if it isn't, I've had a practice run this year, so I'll be streets ahead of myself with knobs on next year! Result.

Trousers picked SugarSnap Peas this evening that had turned into Proper Peas because he's not been able to harvest them recently because of a few spits'n'spots of rain? (!)

The Grown Up Girls Greenhouse plants are suffering a little with Botrytis too, and so I made time this evening to thin out a little more of the tomato plant foliage below the ripening trusses for better air circulation. It's only 'minimising' the damage really, because what Mother Nature is 'throwing at us' right now, we have little control over, and I have today resigned myself to an optimistic pessimism. That way, I'm covering both my options, and won't be too disappointed with the results that I achieve.

Oh, and I nearly forgot! I cut a measured amount of opaque green tarpaulin today that Trousers remembered that we had in the garage, bought 6 metres of velcro and relocated my trusty Singer Sewing Machine.....
There's a Wellie Workshop moment coming up soon, and largely, that will be me putting together my 'Little Girls Room' for Lottie Lulu. My father would indeed be proud of me and my creative ingenuity if he were alive today (or more realistically, completely shocked!)

Thank you for listening,

[Farmer_Gyles]

fixed the shed door, moved my tools from greenhouse to shed
picked first 2 cherry tomatoes
ate my first raspberry
admired the veggies - stared at the mass of weeds still to be cleared ....

[Salina]

didn't post what I'd done each day so in the last few days I've.....

cut the grass (really long, it hasn't been cut for weeks due to bad weather! it's long enough to make hay with lol. I've only got 3 sections of our almost 1 acre garden done!)
done some weeding
harvested a few strawberries
harvested my first french bean
bought a fuchia type plant and 2 lavender plants
repotted above plants (they were all very pot bound)
pulled up a few radishes that don't seem to be growing.

[Hazel at the Hill]

Went to the Hill for an hour this evening and in between the showers (all right, during the showers too!):

• finished thinning lettuces and weeding in the misc bed. Memo to self: SOW SEEDS SPARINGLY!
• picked a casserole dish full of peas which are coming to an end and chopped the plants back by about half
• pulled a tennis ball sized turnip, sp onions, radish and a few carrots (bit carrot fly-ed )
• admired the flowers on the runner beans, the few white flowers showing on the barlotti beans and the Prize Pumpkin which is now the size of a small melon. Pinched the end of the plant off and pretended not to hear it scream.

Came home for saus with Hill potato, turnip and carrot. Yum!

[heebiejeebie]

Yesterday I picked a few peas, broad beans, one small courgette and a small cauli

One onion was bolting so I pulled it, noticed that of the 90 I planted less than two-thirds remained and of those, the couple I pulled just to see how they were doing were rotten. Hey-ho, at the weekend I'll dig up the lot and plant something else.

[Vegmonkey]

Unlucky heedie jeebie, as least everything else looks fab!

Today i did a little more landscaping of the garden, took a few more slabs up, and levelled some of the sand. It's gonna be a big summer project. On the veg front, i harvested some lettuce that had some curious white aphids on the roots (so i bagged and binned the roots), tied up the ever growing sunflowers, picked some chives and parsley for tea, and mused over whether the things in the cucurbit bed are pumpkins, squashes or courgettes!

[pigletwillie]

I gnipped onto the plot on my way home this morning to pick the good lady her lunch, Two types of lettuce, cherry tomatoes, scallies and a small cuecumber for a salad. As a bonus I had time to pick her a big bunch of flowers as well as raiding the razzers and gooseberries. The autumn bliss are starting to come on line now, just as the summer ones finish. As for the gooseberries, well there are still 4 bushes to pick.

[Flummery]

Dental hygienist this morning so just before lunch had a quick cut of the grass. Intended to cut the very hairy hedge alongside our house but got rained off before finishing. Had to stop part way along as one very daft little ginger blackbird chick sat in the hedge and stared at us. Mum must have said 'don't move!' so he didn't.
Rain stopped - dashed out to clear overgrowth under front hedge. Just got stuck in and rain started again. Looks like it's clearing up but meanwhile I'm gently steaming.
Managed to get french beans and mangetout for tea before heavens opened. Will probably get seriously muddy retrieving a boiling of spuddocks!

[Mrs Dobby]

Got to spend about 4 productive hours or so on the plot yesterday (dodging rain after doing other more mundane things that needed to be done first), and managed to get another bumper harvest!

The greenhouse gave us 20 ripe cherry toms, another cucumber and 8 more green peppers (most of which have now been processed and frozen), and from outside we got another 9 courgettes from the 6 plants, about another 1lb of rasps and 2lb of blackcurrants, another 6lb of rhubarb, more spring onions and radishes, another 3lb of broad beans and another 3 1/2lb of mange tout!

Had a good look at the sweetcorn,. which is now producing cobs, and the squashes and pumpkins, which have a few fruits set, and placed some wood underneath the forming fruit to keep them off the ground as they grow!

We also pulled a few carrots and a single enormous parsnip for tea, only to find that theyd been tunnelled by carrot fly, (tho we did manage to get some edible bits from them) so it looks like most of the first sowing of carrots (which were companion planted with the overwintering onions - doesnt look like that worked for us this year) and the parsnips (planted alongside some very nice mint, in the hopes the mint would mask their smell) we've had growing for a while may be useless, but we'll leave them where they are and see what happens!

Because of the carrot fly we're going to build a second 'Fort Tesco's' on a couple of beds on plot 2 and plant them with carrots and parsnips in the hopes that the 4' high perspex walls will protect them from the attentions of the carrot fly and perhaps give us some crops, even if their size is reduced by being planted late!

[Farmer_Gyles]

yesterday - strimmed and cut grass, some weeding, potting on etc
today - pulled 2 lettuce, 2 rocket, picked 4 pea pods and about 5 pounds of plums - gave the whole lot to a friend and my mother (i've got plenty more!) - potted on some more peppers etc

[Hazel at the Hill]

Been up to the Hill for a couple of hours tonight and:

• picked the last of the first batch of peas - a 20' row that's been producing for about 5 weeks
• pulled down the incredibly inadequate framework which the peas were supposed to climb up
• did a little weeding
• side shooted the tomatoes and noticed 3 green ones - hurrah!
• picked lettuce, sp onions, radish and beetroot for tomorrow
• got really told off by Mrs Robin, so went and helped show her particularly stupid fledgling out from under some netting drapes on the berry bushes on the plot next door but two

[Sebbster]

Harvested a huge amount of broad beans which will be podded, blanched and frozen. Also harvest the rest of my early pots, lots of calabrese, beetroot and carrots.

Pulled a couple of main crop carrots (Autumn King) to see how they were doing as was pleasantly surpurised. Pretty large already and given how stony my ground is am very happy.

Kale is being eaten by slugs and forgot to pellet so will do at the weekend. Runners still struggling and although I have pods, really not as many as I would expect. I probably didn't prepare the ground well enough, we live and learn.

Main crop pots are just now starting to dye down so am going to furtle around one and see what I have at the weekend.

Swede's not doing very well and again my faul, far too weedy where I planted them they need some help.

Sprouts forming well and going to get a lovely crop from them.

Onions falling over which is good, not entirely sure where I'm going to dry them as outside really isn't an option. The shed I suppose but I dont have any wire so need to sort something out.

Savoy's growing well but also getting nibbled, I still have them under fleece so it will be slugs, again will sort this out at the weekend.

Back to work now

[Farmer_Gyles]

strimmed weeds and brambles around the veggie patch - lots of weeds....
pricked out and potted on lettuce / swede / celery (loads more not quite ready)
planted out 1 lettuce
reorganised in the greenhouse to get all the pots and plugs together and emptied all the compost from failed plugs and pots etc into the compost bin

had a read of the new fruit and veg book mother bought me - still got a lot to learn

ate first cherry tomato, second raspberry
found first 2 ridge cucumbers (only about 1.5 inches long)