What I did today - 2016

[Florence Fennel]

Watered almost everything this evening. Strawberries are rubbish again, so this year instead of TLC, I'm going to leave them be and see what happens. The red celery is going strong, but it's ready for transplanting and I have nowhere for it to go at present. Oh well.

[Containergardener]

Didn't get done as much as I'd have liked. Struggled with hayfever today.
Sorted brassica area(needed more room) , I hate netting and can't be bothered with brassica . First time growing and I don't think worth the work. I'd rather have more tomatoes in a mini GH in same space or cucs..or both
Fed potatoes, runners etc
Trimmed edges while OH battled the grass, so much rain it's grown loads. Back always twice the height as front .
Tied in sweet peas, still no flowers.

[Jonny.D]

A lot of weeding. Topped some of the taller tomato plants and noticed these guys

[Containergardener]

^^^^theyre whoppers

[vixylix]

Funny looking tomatoes though

[Jay-ell]

Picked a couple of pots of strawberries and Pineberries. Some have rotted, some had need slugged and there's a lot still to ripen but I picked enough today that they have actually made it off the plot.

The problem with growing these underneath gooseberries is that you have to fight through the gooseberry thorns to get to the berries - but it's worth it.

Tied up the gooseberries to the canes and pinched out the side shoots - a few lovely looking berries on them.

The grapes I planted the other day look OK - pruned off some of the excess vines to leave a main stem hoping that these will grow nice and strong.

Tied off the kiwi along the top wire.

Mowed the pond. There was a massive clump of grass and creeping buttercup taking up half the pond. Pulled it out and left by the side for anything to crawl out. Out jumped a frog back into the pond. Stood there watching the pond -hard to count but at least three frogs in there smaller than the two I saw the other day so five frogs in the garden.

Pulled up some of the garlic as the leaves were dieing back. Small but happy with the harvest. Overwintered onions have mostly fallen over but are still green.

Standing in the sea of white flowers of the tall peas is a single solitary purple flowered pea - it's in the Serpette Guilloteau section. All the pea varieties I have are white flowered so I expect it was a stray seed in the packet - any ideas on the variety?



My sweetcorn has decided to start growing. Runner Beans have tiny little beans forming. Peas have pods on them. Picked a round courgette and a zucchini. Pumpkins look as if they may have a couple of fruit set. Dwarf beans are growing nicely.

Had a fight with the rhubarb - managed to get a few stems but I think we'll call it a draw. The leaves on the thing are massive.

Weeded, watered, hoed.

Got back home and found that the garden fairy had been and left an electric propagator and a big bag of BFB.

[veggiechicken]

Bijou Mangetout pea flowers look like that ^^^

If the pods are flat and as large as your hand - ish, that's what they'll be

Piccie of flower at http://www.growfruitandveg.co.uk/gra...ml#post1244876

[Jay-ell]

Bijou Mangetout pea flowers look like that ^^^

If the pods are flat and as large as your hand - ish, that's what they'll be

Thanks. I've just been reading reading up on pea genetics and it seems that the purple colour is a dominant gene which means that for a pea to be white flowered it has to inherit the white flower gene from both its parents but to be purple flowered it only needs one purple gene.

This means that if this is from a Serpette Guilloteau cross pollinated by a purple flowered pea then it will have one purple and one white flowering gene. If I save the seed then about 75% will be purple flowered and 25% white flowered.

If I removed the white flowering plants before they have a chance to pollinate others then the next year approximately 1 in 9 or 11% of the pea plants will still be white but half of the purple peas will have inherited purple from both parents.

Do the same next year and only around 6% would be white but about 57% of the purple flowered peas would have both parents as purple.

Next year and its 4% white with 64% of the remaining peas having purple parents and so on - eventually getting to 99.99% of the population with both genes being for purple flowers.

Although peas can self pollinate it still works as the resulting pea can inherit a different set of genes from the plant for each parent slot.

All I have to do now is not eat the peas from the purple flowers, remember which ones they were and plant them separately, seed save them for several years, meticulously pulling up white flowered peas before the flowers open.

Step 1 is going to be the hardest.

[veggiechicken]

I'm glad I went to bed before you replied, Jay-ell.
Where did you get the seeds? Was it Real Seeds? I have Serpette & Bijou from them but I haven't tried growing Serpette yet. What about Boddington? Is that white or purple flowered?

[Dorothy rouse]

Planted out sprouts.

Planted out some more dwarf beans, amathyst, and also more dwarf Borlotti.

Have a couple of beds that will be clear in a couple of days, need to get more crops in, any suggestions?

[bario1]

This morning I composted a load of stuff - both freshly pulled weeds, and a pile of spent brassicas that I never got round to chopping up... I can now see the bed that I'm supposed to be digging over tomorrow! Turned the two daleks that I'd topped up, adding some shredded cardboard, coffee grounds and a couple of watering cans of water as they were looking a bit dry.
Planted out some spring onions that had got to about 8" high in a little tray - never done spring onions before, but I just broke them into three clumps and planted them like that. If they grow on well I'll be chuffed, as we use a lot of spring onions but I'd heard they were difficult to grow. Ive got a second tray already germinated in the cold frame, might set another one off tomorrow!
Planted out three marigolds in gaps in one of my raised beds.
Watered all the baskets (strawbs and toms) in the polytunnel.

[ESBkevin]

A little time with the hoe, sideshoot the tomatos and twist them up the strings. Water and feed Tomatoes, cougettes, runner beans (I'm using some home brew nettle tea, comfry tea and 'water passed by the management' mixed as my feed for the outdoor toms on the plot). Water lots of other things which might appreciate it. Everything is pretty well mulched and we are expection rain on Saturday.
Nets of the poor showing of peas and picked whats there, nets off for the last time on the strawberries and picked whats there, dug another hulm of first early Spuds and a single (first) runner bean. Some raspberries and spinnach picked too. An enjoyable couple of hours all told.

[Jay-ell]

I'm glad I went to bed before you replied, Jay-ell.
Where did you get the seeds? Was it Real Seeds? I have Serpette & Bijou from them but I haven't tried growing Serpette yet. What about Boddington? Is that white or purple flowered?

I have Boddington soup pea, Lord Leicester and Champion of England as well as Serpette from Realseeds - every plant is white flowered apart from this single specimen.

Of course my previous post was a simplified version. Other traits such as plant height, pod colour, hardiness would also have to be selected.

If you like I can show the logic maps I used to map out the possible genome pairs. Each trait multiplies the possible combinations by 16. Selection of 3 traits would give 4096 possible gnomes to be inherited.

[Deano's "Diggin It"]

Started "Hacking Back" the little flower borders at the bottom of the plot, tidied n weeded three of the smaller beds, got my 12 sweet corn plants in, 2 corguettes as I know once these are in they will "Blister" away and produce in no time!

Tidied the greenhouse,

Then just Guarged on Raspberries picked fresh from the canes!

"Happy Day's"

[Containergardener]

Like the sound of boddingtons, me dad used to drink that

Washed all dogs bedding and spare room bedding ..dog related
Potted on some calendulas (porcupine)
Planted out some echium, calendula, cosmos, chrysanths
Potted up some sp onion white Lisbon , some cos lettuce and little gems
Ran outta time..relatives arrived
Dog walked
Shop for milk , pimms and wine