The 'What I Did Today' Archive - 2007

[mad_djg]

Today I was mainly harvesting :



Runner Beans, French Beans, Carrots, Beetroot, Pak Choi, Parsley, Spring Onion, 1 courgette (weighing in at 2.7 kg!), 1 tomato, Kohl Rabi, Sweetcorn. Phew

Also racked off the french bean wine as fermentation has finished.
Made up some beetroot relish
Picked all the tomatos at home as they'd all succumbed to blight

[Hazel at the Hill]

When I was at the Hill toady I weeded the roots & misc beds and picked a ANOTHER bloody big bag of runner beans.

Came home - had an exciting text from Wellie (but won't spoil her big moment!) - and stringed and salted the beans into a big (but cheap!) plastic container with a big bag of salt bought for the purpose. Container half full - expect to do another string/salt session early next week. No idea if this will work.

Also picked a few nice looking carrots for tea.

[scarey55]

Hazel, that's not fair
I'm stiff with excitement now. Can't wait to hear Wellie and Trousers' news.
Picked 2lbs of blackberries today and froze ready for jam/wine later in the year and scared55 planned the new potager area. Made ratatouille with my millions (it seems like that) courgettes and 1 of the 3 aubergines (so proud )
Sweetcorn looks better now it's a bit bigger - thought it wasn't pollinated properly but these later pickings look much better so perhaps I was just being impatient before.
Anyway, that's my news.

[scared55]

... and I got Mr Rotavator working again after months of refusal!

[pigletwillie]

No text for us Hazel so we missed out on all of the excitement. On the plots today was the tiresome task of removing blight infected tomatoes from the tunnels lightened by the nice task of harvesting tea and lots of soft fruit. This evening is being spent potting on agapanthus seedlings and striking lots of gooseberry cuttings.

[Hazel at the Hill]

Picked another bloody big bag of runner beans, and one of French beans.
Freezer is full, have run out of friends and am now continuing with salting beans experiment.

Pulled up some finger sized parsnip thinnings which I will be enjoying for my tea. With beans.

Gave everything a good feed of blood, fish and bone and watered everything in sight. Accordingly, expect heavy rainfall this evening north of Birmingham.

[wellie]

I returned home from dog-sitting a new dog. Mmm. Anyway, it was near to home, and it gave me the chance to enter The Aylburton Show, down the road on Saturday morning, where I did 'rather well actually' with a Display Hamper of Vegetables.

I always love getting home. I simply adore my home, a hugely important part of my life, alongside Trousers and my black cat. And so EVERYTHING needed a good TLC when I got back, and I think I may well have a second cucumber to add to the one cut the other day for 'A Pair of Cucumbers' category in The Virtual Show?
AND my main news, is that I have today taken a photo of my 10 Other Berries, for the Virtual Show, that makes me larf every time I look at it? I'm dead sure it's going to make you all larf too.... and I'll be keeping an eye out for the last entry date - as I cannot let that pass me by for the entries I have planned?
Thank you for listening.

[momol]

Today, I sown more seeds of rapini,several types of oriental veggies, water cress, small white radish, spring onions & another 4 types of mustard ( several pots of each ). I am hoping to be able to claim the bed where the courgettes and squashes are growing for the autumn- winter veggies growing bed in a month time.

Momol

[Farmer_Gyles]

had a busy few days so not got on here

saturday - picked 2 ridge cucumbers, 10 cherry toms, another pound of runners, pound of french beans, bag full of radishes, 2 lettuces
gave all except the french beans to my mother

sunday - picked another 16 cherry toms, binned the cucumber plants in the greenhouse (not producing any more), binned one pepper (not producing), pinched out all tomato plants again, trimmed few leaves off tomatoes to tidy them up a bit - also picked the one strawberry i had only to find something happily munching away inside through a hole in the bottom

had pie and mash and home grown french beans with gravy
kids said the beans were lovely!

[pigletwillie]

Twas home from work and out with the glysophate to knock down some couch, dock and thistle on our new half plot and a bit of spot weeding on the other 3. Unfortunately bed now beckons as two more 12 hours shifts still to go.

[Winged one]

I bought preserving jars on Friday (thought they were just nice jars, but they have an inner lid with a presssure button and require the use of a pressure cooker - which I don't have!). Made vanilla sugar in 2, and will see if I can get around the pressure cooker issue to make some kind of preserves with the other 2.

And I also spent a while taking out growing tips and side shoots on the tomato plants in the flower beds at home (we spread our compost there in the spring, and if the weather stays any way ok, we should have an unexpected bonus from that in the next few weeks). I also cleared the dead pea plants from the tub, but there are a couple still showing some signs of life so I left those. Toddler got 4 pods of peas for her tea. We had a small handful of french beans with Saturday's dinner, also from the garden - but the bean plants are also coming to an end. Maybe one more small harvest.

Went to lottie yesterday, and got rained on. Managed to weed and stake the 3 sets of peas (2 old and 1 new sowing). OH hadn't gone near them last week, so there was a good handful to be picked, and most of the mangetout were proper peas too. (Don't have a lot this year, was picking off 4 small plants).

Also picked a few more onions - there were a few red ones which had been missed and a couple of yellow ones that were losing their leaves. All that's left now is the second half of the yellow ones, to be harvested next week (when the first lot should have fully dried at home). I also took the flowering heads off the garlic, and will harvest them next week too.

Did some more weeding, and changed the netting over the new peas (the lettuces didn't germinate, and the peas are getting taller, so reconfigured and using taller sticks). Pulled all but 1 of the brocolli plants as they have finished (will get a few small sprigs off the last one next week). 1 cabbage was rotten, so that is now on the compost, but there are 3 more looking good for the next couple of weeks to come. Pulled half of the remaining lettuce and another handful spring onions. And very large clump of parsley.

And also harvested my first ever cauliflower!! Well, harvested 2 actually, but the 2nd was gone over and inedible so on the compost at home. But we had a yummy cauli cheese last night. There is another which will be good either mid-week or next weekend, and another couple of tiny ones coming too.

Spent the rest of yesterday in the kitchen. Made 2 shepherd;s pies for the freezer (and a couple of tubs of mashed potato for the toddler's teas). Chopped and froze a decent tub of parsley. Made the roast chicken dinner with cauli cheese and our own broccoli. And got the salad cleaned for the first half of the working week.

Today, I will be harvesting most of the cherry toms from the hanging basket, as the squashed tom linguine is finally on the menu tonight (cauli cheese as an option meant we abandoned toms last night for roasties!).

Oh yeah, and nearly creid when I saw, not the abandoned plot to one side of me (I can cope with that, but might ask about getting it next year), but the abandoned plot on the other side of me. Cos they had done the digging, and planting. But now that everything is ready (and gone beyond) harvesting, they haven't been there for weeks so it is all going to waste.

Would one be justified in taking, not all, but a few things in such a case? Leaving a note for the holders? Courgettes (which were eaten on me), sweetcorn (which I never got to plant), maincrop spuds (again, never did), chard, peas, - all sorts of stuff and I feel pain looking at it all.

[pigletwillie]

Yesterday I torched the blighted tomatoes and whilst said conflagration was, well conflagrating, I added to the pile lots of new bramble growth which has openened up ground cultivated in the spring but difficult to work since due to all of the rain.

Whilst trimming some of our gooseberry bushes, it was most welcomingly apparent that as well as cutting material from the prunings I had no less than 6 lower branches that had layered themselves through the mulch and just needed lifting and cutting free from the parent to give ready rooted plants.

On the way home I purchesed from our local hardware shop radar onion sets at �1 a lb and from the nursery 6 bags of John Innes compost for potting up this years cuttings and next years seed sowing.

[Sebbster]

Watered my plot which was very dry, did some more weeding and harvested more. My main crop potatoes have so much slug damage I only got 1 meal from 1 haulm, may as well dig the rest up - I was hoping to leave them to swell some more first but cant now.

Dug a couple of rows that had been neglected and thoroughly covered in weeds, in readiness for my spring cabbage and Chard.

[bubblewrap]

Cleared ground & laid base ready for my second hand greenhouse.
Next job strip out glass & move from next door's lottie(about 20')
Then put glass back & buy replacement glass. for panes( broken or missing.)

[momol]

Picked my 3 and only quince ( vranja ) and made them into marmalade this afternoon. Managed to harvest several korean squashes ( they are getting smaller due to too cold and too dark, I think) and set them in the freezer, cleaned up the water cress pots and preparing it for new water cress seedlings, harvested some rapini for the first time and eat them at lunch ( yummy), harvested all the amaranth baby for dinner, moved in : 2 pots of salsola, 2 pots of ijskrout, 2 pots of chillies ( they are now at the window sill ), fertilized some of the brassicas, removing the cucumber vines, remove 1 of the courgette bush into the compost bin ( end of it's productions time ), weeded some small area and has to stop, it was very cold and misty morning.

Momol