What I Did Today Archive 2009

[bubblewrap]

Put out some of my leeks (200) still have 100+ left to do.

[bobleponge]

Collected 15 sheets of wriggly tin for raised beds, and a great big beam for my garage door replacement job. Also had a square composter thrown in. (All free).
Finally finished extending the asparagus bed.
Measured out a new bed, ready for shops opening tomorrow (yes, yet another bank holiday here) to get more discs for my angle grinder. Then need to get it all put up and soil etc in, to get my 2 Waltham b'nut squashes and my blue banana b'nut squash in.

[Meschuee]

Put slug pellets round the courgettes and pumpkin as they're being munched. Watered the young things. Potted two more pattie-pan squash and put them in the greenhouse. Weeded on a Sunny but breezy day.

Penny

[taff]

Cut grass, mulched the beans with it in the vain hope it may stop the cats using ti as a toilet bed.
Went to GC and bough a tray of marigolds and some geraniums, this year, i will keep them alive over winter, honest...
Removed all sweetcorn loo rolls from tray and put them outside for a bit as the ants are tenacious little buggers.

[selfraising]

Planted another aubergine in it's final pot. Planted butternut squash cutie in a wheelbarrow. Then went round watering containers.

[butter fingers]

planted out about 30 leeks, out of about 200. plus french beans all in to allotment plot.then a bit of watering then home to indian from the takeaway about 30 seconds away.ate it outside which has a fine view of the carpark and screeching cat fights.
still with a bottlle of cobra curry was delicious.

[bubblewrap]

Collected 15 sheets of wriggly tin for raised beds.

Heard about the dumb blond who thought wriggly tin was corrugated iron.

[BumbleB]

Sowed more lettuce, spring onion, radish and rocket. Moved celery plants out of the GH and into hardening off shelves in preparation of being planted before my holiday. Watered and fed hanging baskets with tumbling toms in as they are flowering. Everything needed a water tonight as yet again a warm sunny day.

Oh, and started a blog - please take a look :-)

[wellie]

Okay..... I'm 'knee-deep' in Gooseberries on the plants in my new Kitchen Garden, and I've been doing some reading of books - which I simply love to do, because the great thing about gardening, is that in your lifetime, you will never ever 'know it all'? Fab.

And the thornless Pax(?) variety was the easiest to tackle today, so I spread its lax branches out, and thinned the fruits out, so that there was about 3" between fruits, to allow those fruits to grow on and bulk out to maximum size for using.

The immature fruit that I picked, weighed in at 650g when Topped'n'Tailed, just from the one bush, so I'm going to make something exclusively from that, in order to assess it's taste and pectin quality.
That sounds very posh - but I know for a fact that ONE of the varieties is HUGELY pectin-rich, that would set a jam solid like concrete. And I've got designs on making a pectin-rich syrup from those fruits, (or whatever it's called) for my other preserves that are very low in pectin (like Cape Gooseberries or Kiwi etc.)
Every day is just SO exciting right now, that I'm having trouble sleeping?!
Thank you for listening....X

[Snadger]

Today I planted up six Shirley F1 tomatoes into buckets and six yellow pear tomatoes likewise. Starting to run out of buckets! Planted out one fully grown Tuscan kale that i'd grown in a bucket as an architectural garden plant!

9 eggs today!

[Meschuee]

Got the hoe out and did some weeding, particularly in between the raised beds. Planted out lettuce grown from seed and put a fourth pattie-pan squash seedling into a pot (from the propagator) and into the greenhouse. Watered what needed it and planted out a sunflower, grown from seed.

Managed to sit on some of the broad bean plants while weeding and hope they recover.

Penny

[Two_Sheds]

- dug out some tough old roots from a patch that got Roundupped last year. guess what? the roots are shooting again. Nettles, couch and bindweed.
- picked 2 Little Gems that are about to bolt (one had the stalk chewed through by baby earwigs anyway
- potted on 20+ lavender, hollyhocks
- planted out more bedding - that's cleared a little space in the greenhouses
- washed out the cell trays like a good girl
- sowed 4 trays of brassicas
- started hardening off sweetcorn and French beans
- put tomatoes in their own blowaway greenhouse - 2 of them are fruiting now
- sowed some more carrots, as the first sowings have now germinated well
- weeded out lots and lots of poppies, fat hen, nettles. Boy, I hate nettles
- nearly chopped finger off by putting it between mower blades. Muppet.

[sewer rat]

Planted out 700 Brussels Sprouts - mix of Diablo and Maximus varieties.
Planted out 80 Courgettes in their tyre protectors - mix of Defender and Ambassador
Planted out remaining 25 cukes in polytunnel - variety Passandra
Planted out 54 Primo Cabbages that I missed first time around!

Today we had rain, sun, rain, hail, sun, rain, hail, sun - in that order - of course every time the hail came on I was away at the far end of my 5 acres planting sprouts, so got absolutely soaked.

First toms forming on my tumbling tom plants, first flowers open and fruits forming on my chillies.

[Snadger]

Potted on to final quarters 6 X Tigerella tomatoes. Planted out a potted Toscana De Nero which is 3 foot high! Dobbies bulbs were 99p so I got 25 nearly black (dark purple) gladioli corms which were originally £ 4.99 for 99p! Polanted 5 of them in a little clump and will plant the rest tomorrow. Also noticed they had 3 X 60Lire bags of compost for a tenner so shall probably return tomorrow and invest!
9 eggs today.....when are these chooks going to have a rest? Lovely sunny evening with no one at llotments so stopped until 8pm just pottering about and weeding!

[Meschuee]

I planted French climbing beans, "Blue Lake", watered everything as it's been sunny and dry for days. Cycled to the garden centre and bought a long hose to use in the veg garden, saving carrying of cans up and down the garden path. Potted up another pattie-pan squash and see there's another growing.

Put some of the "Blue Lake" beans into the heated propagator.

Penny