The 'What I Did Today' Archive - 2007

[shirlthegirl43]

Madmax was a total wonder and found a garden path under the bramble patch!! He also cleared loads of junk and made me believe that I can have a veg patch (I was getting a bit disillusioned). I cut back loads of brambles and took a large quantity of ivy out of the tree at the corner of the garden. Found bits of garden that we haven't seen for years and found the back wall in one place!! Feels like a real triumph. Next stage is to dig out more bramble and nettle roots, rake everything level (removing glass and nails) and get some seeds sown!

[clubroot]

talking about melons mine has given up the ghost and died ? pulled my onions as they have got some kind of rust? left them to dry did a bit off weeding










i drink to forget but never forget to drink who me hic

[Flummery]

I lifted my onions today - they had fallen over some time ago but were never going to dry out! They are in the shed for the moment. I dug over the patch and will put some more brassicas in and cover it with the strawberry frame - strawbs now mostly finished. Found a lost courgette this morning -how do they get so big when you're not looking? Discovered that the climbing french beans with the purple flowers also have deep purple pods - dramatic or what?

[pigletwillie]

Like the Flum, most of my onions came up today as I cant see them drying out with all the rain we keep having. I will pop in to the plots tommorow to lift the rest from plot 2. Mine are spread all over the workshop to dry them out.

A late sowing of peas went in, where one bed of onions were and a raft of lettuce plantlets, fennel and carrots in the other.

[zazen999]

I Chopped off all the courgette and cuc foliage that had gone white and musty due to the rain; a spot of weeding and pulled a few yellow carrots. Unbelieveably, even though i only sowed them in march, most were a decent size and one was 5 inches long and with a hefty girth on it. Very pleased with myself, esp as they were all sown in pots and replanted after we moved here [so replanted the second week in May]. AND NO CARROT FLY - companion planted with coriander and onions; but i think it is the coriander that had sorted the little blighters off this year; haven't had one thus far. For info, every time the coriander gets above the height of the carrot i break it off, or we pick an onion, i break the leaves into little tiny pieces and sprinkle them onto the patch where the new carrots are growing - carrot fly fairy dust.

So that will be Carrot and coriander soup tomorrow, and Happiness soup [one of Nigella's best recipes] on Saturday with all the small, medium and large courgettes [need to get them all off for the next batch to start growing].

[greenlung]

Likewise, lifted some carrots - no sign of the dreaded fly. I seem to have companion planted with a load of love-lies-bleeding, the red tails of which are starting to look good against carrot tops.

Dug all but the last of my onions - got some gurt bigguns - and a few more spuds, then left to dry in the sun, before tomorrow's floods. Snipped an artichoke head and sweet peas for a friend who visited the plot. Hunted down the slugs which have been munching the beans and threaten the late strawberries. Picked a few rocket, spinach and cabbage leaves.

Did some weeding and tidying, used some bits of thick clear plastic sheets which I found in a skip, to give the tomatoes some protection. Scrounged a few raspberries from an abandoned plot.

[Hazel at the Hill]

Converted a make shift cold frame into a brassica cage for vertically challanged brassica then planted out 18 caulflower which have metaphorically had their legs crossed in pots at home......

A few red cabbage will join the caulis later on.

Picked a big lettuce and some radish for next door neighbours and a beetroot for juicing tomorrow morning.

[Flummery]

Titivated the old onion bed and planted a few swedes from modules. When Himself gets home I'll enlist his help to put the strawb frame over the bed then put the rest of my broccoli in there, well slug-proofed and netted. I also planted out my modules of beetroot (second lot). Then grasped the nettle and tackled a VERY overgrown border in the front garden. Got 3 huge bags of roots and foliage out - I like it when I can see where I've been.
Came in to prepare my entry for world's oddest lunch competition- 2 types of french bean and broad beans, to be served and enhanced with a bit of butter. Came to talk to you while they gently simmer for a few minutes.

[pigletwillie]

The last onions have been lifted, the tunnels watered, tomato's picked, razzers and blueberries picked and now at home in my socks drying out my clothes in front of a roaring fire as it hammered it down whilst picking the fruit.

[bubblewrap]

Stayed in kept dry. Went to Belgium/France on wednesday on a fag & wine run a good day out but very tiring(500 miles round trip)

[shirlthegirl43]

Finally put my Swift sweetcorn into buckets. Sowed some spring cabbage, kale, kohl rabi and rainbow chard in modules - hopefully we will have another bed dug by the time they are ready to plant out.

[sewer rat]

Strimmed down my maincrop peas, variety Onward, which were, being most generous, bl**dy awful. Will rotovate in to the soil and use the ground for my ever increasing lettuce production.
Freed my savoy and winter cabbages from their weed cover camouflage.

[zazen999]

Had to call out a man with a chainsaw to emergency fell an old apple tree which wasn't looking too good when we came here [at 30 degrees to the horizon], but had started to fall over last week with the wet ground and was moving so precariously that when the chainsaw man saw it, he actually ran to his truck, got his saw, half ran back [he had a cannister of fuel in the other hand] and chopped it down there and then. Now have a poppy and cosmos section of the garden which is now covered in huge branches, apples, leaves etc. The poppies had only just come out as well, we only moved here mid-april and sowed it in May - shame but it had to come down.
Earlier i had picked more carrots, a couple of purple ones in there as well as yellow and a couple of orange; some coriander, a few onions and made the soup. Lovely it was.
Now looking forward with fear at the job in hand of sorting out the remains of the tree. And i was going to fit some solar lights on the decking this weekend, never mind - that will have to wait.

Anyone want any bits of apple tree? Or pickings of hundreds of apples - pm me!

[willowstar]

dug up most of the last of my new potatoes...Lady Christl...I have never grown pots before so have nothing to compare them to, but I really really enjoyed the flavour and the joy of digging them up over the last month or so. Anyway, I needed the ground to plant out my leeks which I bought from a local auction...40 little plants for £1. I potted out the leeks, and cooked the tatties and made a red cabbage stew to use up two lovely pointy red cabbages I bought reduced in Tesco. We also had a reasonable portion each of french beans from my patch: cobra, cherokee trail of tears and minidor dwarf yellow. lovely.

[Madasafish]

Picked rasps this morning (3 kg, 12kg so far this year).
Rained this pm, so modified one quail run to include a shelter separate from house and open at one end. Some of the wood was wet so upended in garage when finished and left to dry overnight before treating wood.

Turkey eggs appear to be pipping and rocking back and forward in home made incubator (1 day early?!) so hastily made brooder from 2 huge (19inch monitor ) cardboard boxes from loft above garage. Had to move lots of pallet wood to move loft ladder so I could get boxes down through loft hole !!!!!!

Earlier I moved 18 goji plants under cover of cold frame as they are just permanently wet and this is not really advised (I believe).

Looked at lawn. Too wet to cut.

One turkey cheeping occasionally in egg.

Time for liquid refreshment :-)