What I Did Today Archive - 2010

[rustylady]

Sick baby now gone home with Mum, feeling much better. Managed to get to the lottie and did a bit of weeding, and some harvesting. Hoping I can spend more time there from now on. Also started pruning the Escallonia near the greenhouse.

[Two_Sheds]

- weeded in the rain for 6 hrs
- planted out a dozen calabrese
- sowed 3 rows of carrots amongst the calabrese
- pickled 10 jars of courgettes & French beans: my new fave, Rocquencourt, so yellow so prolific
- 6 jars of pickled carrots
- started marrow wine
- made pumpkin & marrow chutney: 18 jars of it
- racked all the homebrew: currently 7 gallons, but the berries are coming now so I need the room
- planted out 3 rows of leeks
- pulled up onions & sowed phacelia green manure
- took off a third of leaves off tomato plants in greenhouse: they've just gone silly
- took fuchsia & mint cuttings
- bought lots of seeds in Wilko (half price) and eBay

[wellie]

I potted on all 50 (ish) 3" pots of homegrown Basil seedlings into little troughs, 5 pots per trough, where they will have a little more 'root room' to grow on and flourish now in the conservatory.

Made a mental note that tomorrow I will have to evacuate everything from the conservatory, because the Cucumber has a very severe case of Red Spider Mate.
Bugger, with a Big B, if I'm allowed to say that openly, because now I'm going to have to move all of the Aubergine and Sweet Pepper plants that I'd 'potted on' and positioned in there yesterday as well. .....
Mmm. Life 'bites you on the bum sometimes', but you pick yourself up, dust yourself down, and sow some more seeds, just in cases!

So... I did harvest some very fine onions today, and racked them up in what I now call BC's Greenhouse (my cat is called BC, and she has now taken ownership of this new greenhouse to sleep in/guard my produce) and there these onions will dry, with the other onions/shallots/garlics.

I also managed to pot on a few propagated 'armpit' tomato cuttings, which are now doing extremely well.
To cut a long story short: Tomato sideshoot 'armpit' cuttings taken, rooted, potted on, potted up, grown on, and now producing tomatoes.
But only managed to put about 10 into builders' buckets today, in amongst everything else that I was doing, so, as they say.... Tomorrow's Another Day my friends.X
Thank you for listening.

[rustylady]

Rained most of the day, so no gardening. Went to town with youngest daughter - back to hers for dinner. Tidied up the bottom of her back gate so it now opens without scraping on the slabs (original work done by a man of course). Also broke up the redundant settee frame that has been sitting in the back garden for about a month (her partner has been promising to do it). Oops, perhaps this should have gone on the rant thread.

[Newbie]

Trimmed a few onions drying in the shed & took them to the kitchen for use, harvested betroot, courgettes, cucumber, french beans and a carrot. Sowed CCA lettuce, pak choi & more carrots in the veg beds. In the greenhouse i sowed French Marigolds (i know probably too late but thought i'd try it for a late supply), Basil x2, Chard and Lettuce. Also planted out some leftover leek seedlings in the flower bed as no room for them elsewhere - even if they don't grow to an edible size they're filling out the gaps between the flowers!

[salilah]

Harvested dinner veg - climbing french beans and purple dwarf FB plus a courgette (Romanesco)
Watered potatoes in bags (the rain didn't happen again) and fed with Epsom Salts as the leaves were very yellow (did this last year, seemed to work)
Sowed direct my first SFG bed - 32 squares, all different! Big experiment - I prefer to sow in modules because of slugs, but thought I'd give this a go...
Planted out last peas and last dwarf FB, sowed modules of endive and spinach
S

[frogga]

Harvested 2kg of runner beans, the last broad beans and around 1.3kg of mangetout.

Digging over the veg patch this evening in preperation for planting and sowing tomorrow.

[rustylady]

Managed to get to the lottie without the grandsons. Did lots of weeding (heck they've gone ballistic since we had rain). Pulled up miles of bindweed, loads of stinging nettles, and cut back next door's ruddy brambles which keep coming through onto my plot. All spread out to dry now, before disposing of in the incinerator. Arms stinging like heck now, and filthy dirty. However, on the plus side - harvested some more courgettes and planted out some very late Borlotti beans (they have two chances).

[Two_Sheds]

- spent 4 hours pulling up dandelions, horsetail & couch grass at school. Also
- planted pyracantha, euonymous & berberis for them
- dug a bucket full of dandelions out of my lawn, sprinkled grass seed in the gaps
- sowed alfalfa green manure in any gaps

[taff]

desultorily watered in the polytunnel, set a large bee free which was stuck in one of the pumpkin flowers, picked an enormous cucumber, the rats couldn't have seen it.

[DarkCrow]

Saw my pumpkins, did the weeding then beat seven bells outa my steerng cups on my Z750 trying to remove them! at least i got one out

[Jimmy Glasgow]

Went to the lottie this morning for a wee look.
Plenty of work needing done next week.
Time to harvest the 1st crop of the year considering the short time I've had the plot.
updated photies
Picasa Web Albums - james - Allotment

[Croila]

I've been away on a week's holiday and left my neighbour to do a bit of watering in my absence. I came back today and I'm convinced everything has grown ten times as fast as it has when I've been here! I've got loads of work to do tomorrow ... Staking broccoli, pinching out runner bean shoots, thinning carrots, ripping out oregano from my square foot box that I've decided I don't want any more, getting rid of bolted lettuce ... It's going to be a busy day! :-)

[Suky]

Planted out cabbage and some calabrese given to me by FionaH, covered it all with mesh to keep out the evil white butterflies. Removed mesh to let said evil butterfly out

[Two_Sheds]

- pulled up peas, kept the best for seed. Some are reshooting at the base
- sowed phacelia green manure in the gaps
- picked a thousand eggs & caterpillars off my PSBs: the wind has destroyed the netting
- sowed an optimistic row of dwarf borlotti beans
- pulled lots of carrots and sprinkled new seed in the gaps
- planted out last celeriac (I'm glad I held some back)
- dug up a huge self-sown parsnip, spuds & 1 beetroot
- pickled another 10 jars of courgette, carrot, onion, F.bean & chioggia
- made 5 jars of courgette chutney