What I Did Today Archive - 2010

[steve71]

sitting here seriously considering just digging up the wasteland beside my house and planting some spuds, strawberries - anything that is edible!!!!
not sure what the council might think but i dont see the point in all these weeds and stuff, could and should be made into allotments!!!

*gets down from soapbox!*

[rustylady]

Bottled first lot of elderflower fizz, added a bit more sugar to second batch and left to ferment in DJ for a bit longer. Bottled red wine (cheaty kit from Brewshop). Started another batch of ginger beer. Printed labels, as GB looks much like elderfizz.

[kentvegplot]

Too tired to update this last night, but yesterday I started the day by sitting my Module A RHS Advanced cert......tough but fair, I think.

After a quick lunch, I gathered most of my first earlies (pathetic crop) because I needed the space. My leeks failed this year, so I bought plants - they arrived yesterday and I'm going away tomorrow so they had to go in.

Cleared the potatoes and the straw (I use a no-dig method) then refeshed the bed with some chicken manure pellets and a bag of farmyard manure. Planted all 80 leeks and watered them in really well (there is still no rain on the horizon).

Picked first courgettes to have with dinner.

Planted out yet more rooted cuttings etc into my new courtyard garden which is mainly bare earth - watered and mulched heavily.

Feed and side-shooted tomatoes, fed brassica bed with seaweed feed, cleared all the rubbish in the garden so it looks tidy for holiday.

Looked for cat who hadn't come in for dinner, to discover her asleep on the 'burning' pile beside the compost heap :-)

[rustylady]

Yesterday harvested the first lot of redcurrants, a pound and a half, more to do today.

[Furigan]

Yesterday harvested some tiny broadbeans, some broccoli - the plants were advertised as early sprouting but they have sprouted now... Harvested some Rhubarb and bright lights chard. Ate all of the above with dinner

[susieq100]

Yesterday, got up early and went to plot before it got too hot. Weeding - harvested some more of my overwintering onions - some of them are monsters and I haven't watered them at all. Planted some more peas and dwarf french beans for a late crop (I hope). Picked last of the strawberries and first of the raspberries. Tied up the potimarron squash which I am trying to train over an arch - they seem to be growing at about a foot a week. Then back later with OH to harvest peas ... I watered ... still no rain, whilst he picked. Later we sat shelling peas and watching football. I have 3 pounds of shelled peas to steam lightly before freezing! Also courgettes to process for freezing. After reading the 'glut' thread I am going to make a load of soup base with toms, onions and courgettes and freeze that too.

[Newbie]

Potted the last few pumpkins & a cucumber into large pots - think i've got a bit carried away with my pumpkins and squash again this year as i have 14 in total! Whilst doing that i discovered that a couple of bees were making a network of tunnels lined with leaves in an unopened bag of manure i had laying beside the greenhouse!
WHilst i was doing that OH & his mate were making my a frame for my brassica bed. I asked for something simple, around chest height that can be covered with netting. Well - he's been to Wickes for timber & screws and they've been at it all day and its still not finished! All i wanted was a simple little frame - men and their toys

[wellie]

* Meant to cut off a manky leaf from the Cucumber plant in a bucket in my conservatory so that I could aim the water/liquid feed easier, and managed to NOT cut off the manky leaf, but the actual main stem of the plant. Not only do I feel like a prize plonker in my own space, but I'm 'gutted' as well, and have lost some top banana Cukes.
(Wellie has just put herself on 'The Naughty Step' until some kind person relieves her?)

* I potted on loads of brassica seedlings that are waiting in the wings to replace other productives that have been harvested already in the kitchen garden, so that I don't have to water them in their tiny pots daily, and it then buys me a little window of time between now and when I can actually weed, clear their intended new site, and finally plant them out. To be honest with you, one should ALWAYS do that if you anticipate a delay in planting, because you cause yourself so much extra work watering when you don't need to?

* Squished 'a shed load' of greenfly and blackfly, and hung up a birdy-nut-feeder in my Draughty Dutch Greenhouse to encourage all of the birdy-babies to start foraging and feeding in there, rather than me feeding them still all of the time. Thankfully, we've got a hungry family of Flycatchers back in the garden now, babies 'clicking away' to be fed (isn't nature just amazingly fascinating?!).

And I've spent some quality time getting rid of some unwanted Ivy from the garden.
It's not a garden practice that I'm used to per se, but I'm finding it THAT therapeutic, that I'm making a point of doing it every day, and numerous times a day now..... as there's this beautiful little late-born lamb in the field behind the kitchen garden, who has been bottle-fed, so is still tolerant of a human hand, and the cutiest of cute, having just discovered for herself the joys of eating ivy through the fence. And thankfully, she's not got proper teeth yet, bless her cotton sox, so she is perfectly happy to eat the ivy that I give her from the palm of my hands.

Sorry, I was having so much fun, I clean forgot I was on a gardening forum there for a moment! and let me tell you, whilst Trousers was chilling out on a garden lounger, I was potting on nearly fifty Tomato 'armpit cuttings' (which means 50 free tomato plants kiddy-winkies.... YO!..... High Five!) Mmm... I know, but why just grow a few when you could grow lots more for other people to enjoy as well?

[selfraising]

Sown little gem lettuce, turnips, carrot Autumn king and more beetroot and spring onion. Dug up onionis and garlic which are now drying in the shed. Also dug up loads of carrots, some of which i have blanched and frozen. Keeping all fingers crossed that it will rain tonight as forecast as I didn't water the garden tonight!

[Two_Sheds]

- sowed a short row of Ambassador peas
- acquired a sixth dalek (eBay, £2 delivered)
- fed beans & squash with comfrey tea, & topped up the pots with more leaves
- found first ripe tomato & scoffed it
- gave away lots of verbena bonariensis seedlings
- composted the poppies which are over now, saved one plant for seed
- collected seed from nemophila, grasses, nigella & muscari
- dug up spuds to plant parsley
- pulled up weeds to plant butternut (Hawk)
- pulled loads of carrots & sowed more into the gaps
- started another gallon of Shirl's fruit teabag wine (Rosehip)

[rustylady]

Weeded, picked raspberries, loganberries, courgettes, cobra french beans, broad beans. Started a brew of fruit teabag wine.

[Topcat36]

Yesterday before the heavy rain came, potted up my last 3 pumpkins have 5 of the buggers dont even like them , kids wanted to grow them. Pulled up my S williams and californian poppies to make way for some new plants for the borders. Potted up my mums, went slug hunting , none in the raised beds Fed tomato plants and general feed for tubs and baskets .

[NewbieGardenerRow]

Harvested and cut back my broadies, checked my runner beans which have been hammered by the rain and have lost some flowers, pulled up my botch job garlic and plaited the stems and hung them up to dry them out. They have some very small bulbs but still smell lovely.
Cut back some kind of climbing thing that blocks out too much light in my veggie patch if I allow it to climb up over the archway.
Fed my cucs and propped all the potato foliage as it is all hanging out of the bags.
About 5 days ago I emptied 2 potato bags and replanted them with carrots and pak choi and already I have seedlings. I also re sowed my CCA and that too is showing signs of life already. Its all good. My garden seems to like this rain apart from my bean flowers.
Potted up my freebie Top Hat blueberry in some ericaceous compost in a big tub.

[sewer rat]

Put up vine eyes and more wires along the top of the south facing wall in the walled garden reclamation project and then proceeded to get cut to ribbons by a very old and very heavy Rambling Rector rose which had pulled out the old wires under the weight of flowers - the rose is about 12ft high and it's spread is about 20 yards and it is dripping, and I mean dripping with flowers.
Dug out 2ft x 2ft x 2 ft holes in the rose bed, filled with compost and planted three new roses - the theory being that this will give the roots time to establish and help prevent rose soil sickness disease - we'll see
Weeded baby dockens, nettles and willowherb from two long flower beds, cut off spent spikes of Red Hot Pokers, humped a load of sycamore logs from the middle section to the gate, dug up some Charlotte tatties for the farmhouse, and all this in torrential rain -boy was I glad to finish work today !

[wellie]

Took delivery of a much-needed Eazyzap fly zapper machine for the kitchen, which killed its first fly within a minute of being plugged in. Hurrah! And one got a free pinny thrown in, which Trousers had had them embroider for me as a surprise.
Unfortunately, the biggest surprise was that one of them had managed to spell my name wrong....., but you know what? I don't care.
Thank you Trousers, no sweetheart, I'm sure it must of been their fault....

Found a Courgette Teabread recipe in amongst all of my library of cookbooks, which I shall mostly be making a lot of in the next week me thinks?

Pinched out the growing tips of all of my Sweet Basil seedlings to encourage them to bush out a bit, and'll use the tips in a sauce/risotto or something for Trousers's tummy over the next few days, wearing my wrongly embroidered pinny, obviously......!

Finally 'bit the bullet', and splashed out on a Lidl Fruit Preserving/JamMaking/Sterilising thingybob, having Ummed'n'Arred over it for a month, what with fabulous testimony from my friend Gloria, who has almost worn hers' out in the last month, with excellent results.

Thank you for listening.