Penellype's 2016 Garden Diary

[Penellype]

Most of this week has been dull and cold enough to make gardening rather unpleasant (at least when you are expecting summer!). I did manage to get a bit of weeding done and deadheaded the pulmonaria which was looking messy. Also removed the corn salad which was flowering and showing signs of mildew.

Apart from that I spent a bit of time planning the next moves as there are always unexpected things. One of these is the fuchsia berry plants which are rather bigger than I anticipated. For some reason I had got it into my head that they were about 18 inches high, but in fact they appear to grow to about 3ft with 18 inches being the spread... My idea of planting 3 in a 30 litre pot may not work as well as I thought. However, as the plants are currently about 4 inches high and growing very slowly, something is going to have to change dramatically if they are going to make 3ft this year. My inclination is to risk planting the 3 in a bucket, the objective being to see if I actually like the taste before allowing them to take over the garden!

Today was a bit warmer and much less windy so I put the begonias and some of the osteospermums into their pots on the fence. I also took the french beans that started life on the windowsill out of the growhouse and hung them on the back fence above the potatoes as they are rather long to go anywhere else. They are starting to produce new flowers. The 2 largest Sungold tomatoes were planted out in one of the plastic growhouses, which meant removing the shelf housing the flowers. The tray they are on has taken up temporary residence on top of an empty pot which is waiting for a courgette to grow large enough to put in it.

The courgette that was going to go in the empty pot has been planted in the cold frame instead. That meant moving the salad planter containing the spinach out of the cold frame and onto the path near the wormery, replacing the corn salad. The spinach has done really well and is still producing loads of leaves although they are getting smaller and the stalks are more stringy than they were. In contrast the red veined spinach that I planted in the other salad planter (now next to the one I just moved) is not very happy. These salad planters come with a plastic cover which is useful for covering small seedlings, but I think what has happened here is that when we had the sunny weather a week or 2 ago I left the top on (with the ventilation hole open) and the plants have got too hot. Spinach hates being hot and it shows.

Finally I moved the pot of runner beans out of the growhouse into its final position between the cold frame and the archway. I rigged up a support of canes and a string running over the cold frame so that the beans will climb along it and be easy to pick. I've been struggling to find room for the beans this year and didn't think it mattered as I can take them or leave them, but my Mum likes them and yesterday she told me she was not growing any herself this year. 3 plants are not going to be enough, so I hurriedly planted a few more seeds in the propagator, which hopefully will be ok growing in pots up the back of the archway like they did last year.

Things are taking shape, and I have been able to turn off one of the 2 grow light gardens now that most of the tomatoes have gone outside. There are just a few later sown ones which were replacements for failures to germinate, plus a couple of Shirley armpits and 2 melon plants under the taller grow lights upstairs now. The downstairs grow light garden (cooler) is still packed with peas, beans, broccoli and courgettes though.

[craftymarie]

I will be interested to know what the Fuchsia berries taste like. They are beautiful plants, keep meaning to get one just because of how pretty they look. Tasty berries would be a bonus.

[Penellype]

I will be interested to know what the Fuchsia berries taste like. They are beautiful plants, keep meaning to get one just because of how pretty they look. Tasty berries would be a bonus.

Taste is such an individual thing and so hard to describe. The description says its like a cross between a kiwi fruit and a fig, but I think the only real way is to taste some and find out. I like kiwi fruit as long as they are ripe, but I can take or leave figs, mainly because of the seeds. We shall see (I hope).

[Penellype]

Busy weekend with absolutely gorgeous weather, although slightly hot for my taste.

At my friend's:
Planted out the final lot of peas (Terrain) - these were supposed to be for both my friend and at home, but the germination was terrible (new seed) so I took the home grown ones to my friend's to plant them all together. She has a bigger mildew problem than I do and these are supposedly resistant.
Tidied up in the greenhouse, putting away the bubble wrap, fleece and plastic growhouse covers.
Rearranged the greenhouse, putting the 2 unharvested buckets of potatoes outside and moving the shelving about ready to plant out the next lot of tomatoes.
Removed the bolted beetroot and mizuna.
Fetched a barrow load of well rotted manure from the muck heap (a pleasant walk to the far end of the field) and spread it on the bed where the courgettes and outdoor tomatoes will go.
Harvested the first bucket of Charlotte potatoes as the foliage appeared to be dying back a bit. Small crop of new potatoes (0.6kg) so I planted the haulms back in the compost with lots of little ones still attached.
Harvested the first very small cucumber (Cucino) about 3 inches long and ate it for lunch.
Collected up a handful of slugs and put them near the nest of baby hedgehogs

At home:
Moved the potatoes out of the 2nd plastic growhouse and planted out 2 more Sungold tomatoes. Also planted 3 Ferline and 3 Mountain Magic under the cloches near the hotbin.
Planted 2 more courgette plants in the cold frame.
Removed bolted spinach (Red Vein) from its trough near the cold frame and replaced it with the leeks and beetroot that are waiting for their planters to become vacant.
Shuffled more plants round to make room for germinating beans under the growlights.
Harvested the first peas (Meteor) - the ones planted in the bucket near the growhouse sown on 14th January are no further forward than the row near the fence which was sown on 2nd February. Both have their first pods ready now. Douce Provence sown on 3rd March will be ready very soon too. Just shows that sowing earlier does not always give an earlier crop.

Some photos I took yesterday:



Last year's Snackbite Orange pepper plant, cut off about an inch above the compost when it finished fruiting last autumn and left on the landing windowsill over winter. Fruit is turning orange.



Balconi red and yellow tomatoes sown in February on the east facing spare room windowsill.



Shirley tomatoes sown in mid January and growing on the sitting room windowsill ready to eat and leaning somewhat alarmingly!

[Penellype]

Today was my last chance to beat the weather as I am not able to garden tomorrow and the rain moves in on Friday, after which we are currently not forecast a dry day for the next fortnight at least.

Biggest job was putting up the fruit cage net, which always takes me a couple of hours. It involves removing everything except the 2 blueberry plants from inside the frame, then easing the net over the blueberries without knocking off the fruit, while attaching the top of the net to the bars with clips that will release if the wind is too strong. I use these clips rather than pulling the net over the frame, as last time I did that with insect netting the joints of the frame broke when we had a gale.

Having got the net up and mended a few holes around the seams, I put back the Honeoye and Elsanta strawberries (but not the everbearers as these still need insects to pollinate them) and the carrots and salads under the shelving. Hopefully this will keep out the wasps which tend to eat the blueberries, carrot flies and butterflies as well as the blackbirds which would not leave me any fruit at all if I didn't net it. I prefer the insect mesh where I can use it because the birds don't get tangled up in it.

That done, I planted up my dwarf french beans in the chiligrow and put it near the back door, giving me room for another net cover for the brassica seedlings (brokali, broccoli, calabrese and kohlrabi). Experience from last year tells me that the veggiemesh that I used to cover the fruit cage is not fine enough to keep out flea beetles, so I am using finer mesh for this. The seedlings are sitting on a self watering tray with copper tape round it in the shade in an attempt to grow the wretched things without half of them dying on me.

Next urgent item was to sort out the bucket of Lady C potatoes near the garage. This looked perfectly healthy when I moved it out of its plastic growhouse to make room for the tomatoes, but today just one of the stems had wilted, and I was alarmed to see that the bottom of it had gone black and mushy looking. I hadn't intended to harvest any potatoes just now as I still have some Charlotte from the weekend, but this seemed to need immediate attention. The most likely culprit is Blackleg, a bacterial infection which usually arrives on an infected seed potato and causes the plant and any potatoes to rot. It can spread to other plants and remain in the soil on infected material over winter. Although the leaf symptoms are described as yellowing and curled, not green but wilted like mine were, I was not taking any chances. I carefully removed the wilted stem, putting it straight into the hotbin (at 60C) and then harvested all the potatoes in that bucket. There were some reasonable sized ones and a total of 0.75kg which is not bad for new potatoes. I will eat these first so that they don't have a chance to rot in storage - the Charlotte will keep a few more days.

Moved the peas out of the grow light garden into the growhouse. I would have left these a couple more days, but one of the bulbs has gone (I must order a new one) so I thought they would be better outside, leaving the beans under the remaining bulb.

The final job for today was at my friend's, collecting another barrow of that nice well rotted manure from the muck heap. I filled the 2nd gro-bed with it and will try growing some of the tomatoes in it, which should save me a few quid on compost. I would have done this at the weekend but its a long walk to the muckheap in the rain so I was glad to get it fetched today.

[Penellype]

This weekend was always going to be hit and miss with a dreadful weather forecast.

At my friend's:
Planted out most of the rest of the tomatoes in the greenhouse, using a gro-bed and a quadgrow vegetable planter.
Potted up the melon plants into 10 litre pots with capillary matting wicks dangling into a Hozelock grow bag waterer.
Potted up the 2nd cucumber (Cucino) into an 11 litre pot and put it next to its friend at the back of the greenhouse. Harvested a 4 inch cucumber from the bigger plant.
Removed a huge number of slugs from the lettuces, where they were lined up in teams having eating competitions.
Did some weeding including removing a fair amount of couch grass from the path.

At home:
Emptied out the water from all the drip trays which were full, and removed the one at the back of the carrot cage as it is very hard to get in there to keep emptying it.
Finished harvesting the spinach (Amazon) which started off in the cold frame. This has been fantastic but was now bolting. Cooked and froze it.
Added BFB to the compost in the saladgrow where the spinach had been and planted out the leeks.
Moved the wild strawberries onto the top of the compost bin as they were getting a bit tall for the shelf under the other strawberries. Trying to decide if I have room for a pole garden for these, or whether to leave them where they are, which is rather in the way.
Harvested peas, turnips, carrots, PSB, brokali and salads. The brokali has been amazing - its supposed to flower between December and March, but is still going, although the fowers are now very small and the stems are getting tough.
Potted up 3 of the fuchsia berry plants into a 30 litre bucket. No idea if this will be big enough, but i haven't room for anything else. Was about to pot up the other 2 into their quadgrow pots when deluge stopped play
Emptied the water out of the drip trays and some of the self watering pots again as they were flooded again.

This is crazy - I spent all last week lugging water round the garden as everything was dry and thirsty, and now I can't empty it out fast enough and everything is drowning. The "shower" we had this afternoon/evening behaved very strangely. I was watching it on the radar (Weather Radar - Live UK Rainfall Radar - 5 Minute Updates - Netweather.tv) and it started off north of me in Easingwold, moved slightly east, then trundled south down the A19 to York. At that point it stopped and made its way west to Wetherby before turning round and heading back to York. Weird.

Full Smith period warnings for yesterday, today and forecast for tomorrow.

[KevinM67]

Fantastic inspiration as always P.

You're a grafter - fair play to you !!!

[Penellype]

A sort of dry morning saw me skiving off work somewhat to get more done while I could.

My early morning inspection showed that the bucket of sarpo potatoes that I thought could live in the corner between the raised beds has grown about 6 inches over night and is about to block the path. Found a solution in that one of the buckets of Charlotte that got frosted really isn't doing at all well. Decided to swop them round. This meant undoing the mesh fence I have across the raised beds to stop the foliage flopping over - easier said than done, but I managed.
Emptied the drip trays again and decided to remove them (apart from the blueberries, which don't mind drowning) until the deluges stop as this is getting ridiculous.
Harvested the last 2 turnips and moved their trough out of the way so that the cabbages can use their net. Found a large and quite spectacular caterpillar - dark green (almost black) with 4 very bright white stripes along its length. It was about the size of a large white caterpillar and not at all hairy and I can find nothing like it on the internet. Threw it onto the weed patch behind the neighbour's garage.
Moved the 2 youngest buckets of carrots into the space in the carrot cage created by moving the cabbages.
Harvested some salad for lunch. Was not amused to find a bug on one of the mispoona leaves from the fruit cage which felt very much like a case of deja vu from last year when all the brassicas in there got covered in flea beetle. Luckily before I decided to squash it I had a closer look, and found it was a ladybird larva. Put it carefully onto the strawberries, where it is likely to find plenty of aphids to eat.

It has now started raining again.

[Penellype]

Nipping out between showers has enabled me to get a bit more done, and thankfully it has been a little drier here today, with no Smith period for the first time for 4 days.

Removed the Red Vein spinach from the saladgrow, which has never recovered from getting too hot when I forgot to remove its cover, some of the plants dying and the others bolting. Moved the saladgrow to the path near the hedge where I will sow it with autumn salads - but not until I have cut the leylandii hedge first!
Found room for the displaced chives balanced on one of the buckets that is currently empty, waiting for the broccoli to grow.
Sowed some runner beans to replace ones destroyed by slugs in my friend's garden and some more lettuces.
Planted the latest lot of peas. These have had to go in front of the Douce Provence, which makes those very hard to harvest, but they are not doing well anyway and I think I can probably get at most of them. About half have already been eaten.
Harvested the bucket of Charlotte potatoes that suffered worst from getting frosted. I was not expecting much from these but they provided 0.55kg of reasonably sized new potatoes.
Took the plastic cloches off the Ferline and Mountain Magic tomatoes as they were getting big and needed staking. Put up a line of stakes and attached the tomato plants. Noticed one of the Sungold ones under the bigger plastic growhouses has a flower open.
Mowed the front lawn, which was really rather too wet but starting to resemble a field.
Harvested my first orange pepper from one of the plants I overwintered. It was small and contained no seeds, which was a bit odd. There are 2 more fruit turning orange.
Found a ripe wild strawberry, which I ate.

Not such great news on the pets and diseases front. The strawberries are rotting even before they start to think of turning red, and one of the courgettes I planted in the cold frame is showing signs of mildew. It hasn't even thought about flowering yet.
My apple tree, to which I painstakingly applied a disgustingly sticky glue ring earlier in the year to deter ants, has new shoots covered in aphids and the ants are farming them just like last year. So much for the glue! The clematis is also covered in aphids and some of the shoots have died.
The rain (which I am categorizing as a pest) has knocked quite a few of the unripe blueberries off the bushes.

[Penellype]

I do love an experiment.

2 weeks ago I noticed the foliage on one of the buckets of Charlotte potatoes at my friend's house was turning yellow. These were planted in mid March and had been grown in the greenhouse until mid May when they were put outside. I harvested the bucket (3 seed potatoes) and got 0.6kg of edible sized potatoes. This was disappointing and there were a lot of little ones still attached to the haulms so I replanted these in the bucket. They wilted and died down almost immediately, unlike some of the Lady C that I harvested early and replanted, which have carried on growing.

Today I dug up the Charlotte bucket, expecting a few pea sized potatoes. There were actually 0.25kg of small but edible new potatoes including some nearly the size of a small egg. Not exactly a spectacular success, but after only 2 weeks I don't think that's a bad result, and I'm looking forward to seeing how the previously harvested Lady C perform - they were harvested on 7th and 28th May and the tops have survived and are still green.

[Penellype]

Not a bad weekend.

At my friend's:
Harvested the replanted Charlotte potatoes (see above) and a bucket of Lady C for 1.2kg potatoes.
War on slugs. Removed as many as I could find.
Planted out the remaining courgette plant with a copper ring round to deter slugs.
Planted out the red runner beans with copper rings round to deter slugs. More have been sown to replace the ravaged white ones - I don't think the plants can produce beans when they have no leaves left.
Planted out the spring onions in the hotbed
Planted the french beans in the bucket that the Lady C potatoes came out of - this has copper tape round it. Staked the plants carefully (even though they are dwarf) so that the leaves are not touching anything that a slug might use as a bridge.
Dug up the stumps of the celeriac plants that the slugs have eaten. Luckily I still had the pot that I sowed the seeds in, and although they were very crowded the plants have grown ok. Separated them carefully and planted them out then mulched them with Strulch, which is supposed to deter slugs. This will be an excellent test of that claim!
The greenhouse shelves are now looking rather more empty although I have just brought in a pot of strawberries that are starting to ripen. The earlier ones have almost finished and are showing signs of spider mite infestation, despite being misted with water from time to time. Strange that I have to try to avoid the outdoor ones getting wet, but I have to wet the indoor ones... I'm sure I can fill up the shelves again pretty soon
Harvested a couple of cucumbers
More weeding, especially the path, trying to get rid of the grass that grows under the boards edging the veg garden and harbours slugs.

At home:
Sprayed the whole back garden with nemaslug (2nd time this year)
Sprayed the clematis and apple tree with a solution of SMC (mixture of plant oils) which is supposed to kill aphids. Doesn't seem to have had much effect.
Planted out the peas (Hurst GS) and sowed some Meteor
Potted up the runner beans and put the pots near the archway for them to climb up.
Potted up the biggest courgette plant in its final pot.
Potted up the cucumber into a 10 litre pot and made a support out of a piece of mesh for it to climb up - this is staying in the growhouse this year (I've grown them outside in previous years but my plans aren't quite working out in that direction this time!).
Potted up a spare calabrese plant into a bucket and put it in the carrot cage, displacing a pot of Marion carrots which are nearly ready to harvest. These were moved to the fruit cage, replacing the pot of salads which has been eaten.
Planted the beetroot in the pot that had housed the salads.
Sowed florence fennel
Pruned the white currant bush
Dug the compost out of the bottom of the hotbin and mulched the tomatoes with it (the Shirleys loved this last year).
Mowed the lawn.
Harvested loads of peas (Meteor and a few Douce Provence). The Douce Provence are very disappointing, having produced few pods and mostly very small ones. I've not grown this variety before, but Meteor have performed much better as an early variety.

I may have forgotten some things!

[Penellype]

The good news is that although I am still removing the odd green strawberry with brown patches on (definitely botrytis), I have managed to eat 3 ripe fruit today:



2x Elsanta (top) and Honeoye. The Honeoye was nice enough (not had it before) but the Elsanta definitely had better flavour.

[craftymarie]

Lovely, Penellype. I picked my first Elsanta strawberry today and it was really plump and had bags of flavour. I am also growing Toscana strawberries which are far more prolific but not quite as tasty.

I read that over watering can dilute the flavour so, since I am growing mine undercover, I am being careful not to water too much. Been giving them organic seaweed tomato feed once a week since they starting setting fruit.

[Penellype]

Busy day yesterday trying to make the most of things being dry before it rained.

Pruned back the wiegela bush as it was overhanging the path.
Pruned some of the dead bits off the clematis, which is suffering from clematis wilt.
Mowed the rear lawn and trimmed the edges.
Took the covers off the Sungold tomatoes as they were being blown about a bit and in danger of damaging the plants. Took out the stakes and repositioned then as some of them were loose.
Harvested a bucket of Lady C potatoes which were showing signs of blackleg. 0.9 kg of decent sized potatoes plus 2 which were rotten and mushy (possibly because of the blackleg - the rot was white). Unfortunately another bucket is going the same way so I will have to harvest that one tomorrow. This is becoming frustrating - I have Lady C in my quadgrow veg planter and the idea was to harvest those first so I could use the pots again, and of course the plants in there are the healthiest! The buckets were intended to be left to grow bigger potatoes.
Planted a courgette plant where the potatoes were, under the wiegela bush.
Took the other decent sized courgette plant to my friend's to stop me squeezing it in somewhere I shouldn't. I still have one small one in the growhouse...
Brought 2 of the Balconi tomatoes downstairs and put them in the growhouse after re-staking them. The red one has no more fruit for now but does have flowers, the yellow one has loads of fruit but was leaning alarmingly and in danger of falling off the windowsill. One of each are staying upstairs for now - these are intended to go in the quadgrow veg planter if I ever manage to get to the potatoes!
Covered the shelf frames under the strawberries with insect mesh ready to protect the broccoli when it gets big enough to plant out, and put the buckets it is going in underneath ready (and out of the way). The nets have to open so that I can get at things so I had to be creative with clips to make sure there are no bits I can trip over.
Put up the bird netting over the perpetual strawberries as some are turning red (hence the need to deal with the insect mesh underneath).
Harvested peas, indoor tomatoes, 2 more strawberries and the first outdoor french bean from the (very tatty looking) plants that were sown in March and have already cropped once indoors. These are hung on the fence and are producing several more beans.
Debated cutting the hedge but decided it would have to wait until I can harvest the potatoes in the quadgrow, as once I lift the pots off the base there is no chance of getting the capillary matting strips back through the holes. The foliage is too big and too floppy.

[Penellype]

This little fella is either lost, looking for somewhere to pupate, or stuffed from eating too many aphids.



His friends and relations are busy cleaning up the clematis: