Penellype's 2016 Garden Diary

[craftymarie]

I prefer a natural look with fences, just brown or wood stained. We have a pebble dash garage in the back garden which is white. The walls look lovely in the summer and it radiates warmth but it requires a lot of upkeep in painting it every few years to keep it looking good.

Brown may not be the most exciting colour but it is practical and will need less painting/staining. It does give a good backdrop for some lovely bright flowers and plants though. I like the idea of the vertical planting.

[Penellype]

I'm inclined to go for brown, probably dark brown rather than the orangey brown that a lot of people have. I have a while to decide as my back garden fences can't be painted until the tomatoes, apples etc have finished.

[Penellype]

Saturday



I was making good progress with the gravel until hail stopped play! Now it is all wet and impossible to sieve so I will have to wait until it dries out a bit.

[Penellype]

This weekend

At my friend's
Not that much to be getting on with here.
Trimmed some dodgy looking leaves off the greenhouse tomatoes
Rescued the Mountain Magic plant outdoors which is huge and had pulled all 3 of its stakes over. Found a broom handle and hammered it into the ground to tie the stakes to.
Harvested tomatoes, tomatoes, more tomatoes, peppers and cucumber.

At home
No prizes for guessing what I did here.
Spent all of Saturday morning sieving bits out of the gravel and made good progress until the heavens opened and we had torrential hail and thunder. By the time the "shower" had moved on the part of the drive I was working on was under a slushy mess, so that was the end of that. Everything was still wet through on Sunday so I left it to dry off.
Took the net off the perpetual strawberries as it isn't helping. Most of the fruit are rotting or being eaten by slugs before they ripen, those that do are hard and tasteless. I might abandon trying to grow perpetuals as I don't think I have enough sun in my garden at this time of year.
Harvested yet more tomatoes, lettuce, namenia, mizuna, carrots, the last of the runner beans, french beans, courgettes, leeks, apples, wild strawberries and a couple of perpetual strawberries (as above).

Today was a gorgeous sunny day and I managed to finish off the gravel. The last bit had been under the end of the hedge, and was basically a case of picking the odd bits of gravel out of the mud. It looks a lot better now.
Filled up the front of the bed with some soil from one of my raised beds. I needed to dig this bed up anyway as it had a few rogue raspberry runners in it, which I have now (hopefully) removed.
Went to my favourite garden centre for some stepping stones and plants and came back with a few alpines and some crysanthemums for a bit of late colour.

Monday evening:



I think its coming along nicely, although it definitely needs something with a bit more height. The little tree in the middle will eventually grow to about 4ft, but that's after 10 years!

[Penellype]

Tuesday (well, Wednesday morning, as the sun was shining at me on Tuesday evening)



I found these rather lovely three coloured heathers and couldn't resist them.

Wednesday



Here's a closer look:



I decided to keep my osteospermums in pots to grow a bit over winter as they are very small, so I decided on red, bronze and yellow wallflowers and pale blue pansies. I'm a bit stuck for winter hardy hanging plants, so this will do for now. Hopefully I can cover the fence with colour in the summer

I've also potted up 2 pots of bulbs - daffodils and tulips - which are currently in the garage as I find potted bulbs tend to disappear over winter if I keep them outside.

I must stop going to the garden centre now...

[craftymarie]

It's all looking very good I have those same black planters. They've got tomatoes and runner beans in right now but will look for ideas on filling them with flowers soon.

[Jungle Jane]

It looks lovely,lots of colour & interest,I like the tree stump stepping stones,no one will be having those away

[Penellype]

Thanks for the kind comments. At the moment all the pots have plants in pots inside, so if I want to I can change them around. The tree stump is an old cherry tree that died - I think it blends in quite well with the rockery. I'm trying to encourage a thyme plant to root in the middle of it - it had seeded itself in the drive, so a tree stump with soil should feel quite hospitable - I think!

[Penellype]

After all the excitement of the new fence it was back to normal this weekend.

At my friend's:
Harvested the remaining 3 buckets of Charlotte potatoes that got blight a few weeks ago. Astonishingly there were some really nice sized potatoes, although not huge numbers. Probably about 1/2 kg per bucket (I forgot to take my scales).
Plenty of weeding.
Harvested tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers (possibly the last, although there are some new little ones) and courgettes which are still producing some monsters despite having had mildew for months.

At home:
Spent most of the time dodging the showers, which seemed to be totally random, not coinciding with either the radar pictures or the clouds. Several times I went out in bright sunshine under what appeared to be blue sky, and got quite wet!
Finished off the first pot of carrots and moved the pot out of the fruit cage. Replaced it with a pot of Nantes Frubund ready for harvest.
Moved the pot of swedes into the space in the carrot cage vacated by the carrots as the foliage was pressing against its net. Not hopeful that these are going to cope well with being transplanted, then grown in almost total shade, then crammed under a small net, but we shall see. I've not grown swedes before, but the ones at my friend's (grown in the sun) are much bigger.
Took the net off the Buddy strawberries as all the fruit was rotting before it ripened. I think I will ditch the idea of everbearers - my garden simply doesn't get enough sun in the autumn to ripen them. Moved the plants to the hedge path for now to give the spinach underneath some more light.
Cut down the Sungold tomato in the quadgrow planter as it had finished fruiting. Strangely this has not been happy here, producing less fruit than the plants grown in the soil, which are still fruiting. The quadgrow fruit is bigger, but tends to rot easily, and I won't be growing Sungold in it again. (The Shirley, Mountain Magic, Balconi and Belle that I am growing in quadgrows at home and in my friend's greenhouse are doing well.)
Also cut down the Shirley that was growing in the growhouse. This is now almost completely in the shade and Shirley doesn't appreciate that. The green fruit were brought indoors to ripen.
In contrast, Balconi red and yellow are continuing to ripen slowly with the absolute minimum of sunshine.
Emptied another skipful of compost out of the bottom of the hotbin in anticipation of large amounts of tomato and bean waste shortly. This is being stored in the garage to plant potatoes in next spring.
Mowed the lawns, probably for the last time this year.
Harvested carrots, lettuce, mizuna, namenia, lots of tomatoes, the odd french bean, some calabrese sideshoots, a few wild strawberries, apples and a couple of late blueberries.
Noticed some pods are forming on the late sown Terrain peas.

[Penellype]

Trying to garden this week has been extremely difficult. The weather forecasters have promised dry days, and we have had showers, drizzle, rain and a deluge. The lawn is very squidgy and at one point the path was under water. Apparently that was the dry bit and it i s now going to get wetter!

The outdoor tomatoes, with the exception of the Ferline plant next to the hotbin and the 2 Mountain Magic in the quadgrow veg planter on the hedge path, are looking very much worse for wear. I keep thinking the Sungold are about to get blight, but they are battling on, although the leaves look a dreadful colour. I still keep picking a handful of fruit a day. The Mountain Magic and the one other Ferline near the hotbin also look dreadful, but are still producing plenty of fruit. The balconi are nearly finished, although having been producing a steady stream of tomatoes since May, they are entitled to be tired. Interestingly I have had one definite case of blight, the plant in the quadgrow near the carrot cage. Variety - Mountain Magic. The fruit off this plant have been mostly rotting before they ripen for a while now. There is something about this planter that the big tomato plants don't like, although the Totem (bush) did well in it in the same position last year.

The main challenge at the moment is storing compost. I have an ordinary plastic compost bin in the corner between the garages, which normally takes the contents of buckets and other planters as things are harvested. However, the neighbour has booked some builders to mend the gutter on her garage, which has been broken for some time. This runs the length of my raised beds and requires access to the back garden. I don't fancy builders trying to manoeuvre ladders through my crowded garage and between my carrot cage and growhouse, and it would be much better to give them access between the 2 garages. But that means emptying the compost bin. Currently I am shoveling it into buckets and storing them in the garage, hoping it will all fit. I don't know when the men are coming, which doesn't help.

A related but separate problem is that I get the rain water for my blueberries from the broken gutter, catching it in a bucket and storing in a dustbin in the garage. I don't have room for a water butt near any of my downpipes so I am storing as much as I can in water carriers in the hope that it will tide me over if we get a drought. Storing the water carriers is tricky as my garage is already rather full...

On the plus side, the window cleaner came yesterday, and completely unprompted, commented on how nice my new fence looked

[Penellype]

This weekend.

At my friend's:
Removed 2 tomato plants in the greenhouse as they had grey mould on the stems and had wilted.
Removed one of the 2 cucumber plants as it appeared to have died. The other still has some baby cucumbers on it.
Removed most of the shading from the greenhouse roof. The one part that remains is stuck behind some of the tomato plants.
Put up a solar powered light in the greenhouse ready for the dark evenings.
Weeding.
Harvested tomatoes, peppers and courgettes.
Sunday morning was very wet, which suited me fine as I had offered to help paint some of the stables, which thankfully meant keeping dry and not feeling that I was neglecting the garden.

At home
Emptied the compost out of the compost bin in case the builder arrives at short notice to mend the gutter.
Took the nets off the salad brassicas as the snails were using them as a ladder, and I think the butterflies have gone to bed now.
Removed the 2 balconi yellow tomatoes which appeared to be getting blight - the red ones seem ok at the moment although they have nearly finished fruiting.
Removed the cucumber from the growhouse as it had just about died.
Repositioned the fuchsia berry plants in the quadgrow to take them back off the path a bit.
Deadheading and weeding.
Harvested loads of tomatoes, lettuce, mizuna, namenia, leeks, carrots, a courgette, kohlrabi, wild strawberries and the last 2 apples.
Repotted the little juniper tree into a 3 litre pot.
Ordered 20 2 litre pots to pot up some strawberry plants into so I can put them on self watering trays next year.
Went to the garden centre and came back with some lettuce seeds (Warpath) so had to sow some indoors even though they say March to July on the packet! Also sowed some caliente mustard in one of the spare buckets as the slugs are eating the plants that have germinated near the hotbin. If it grows ok there I will pull it, chop it up and dig it into the soil near the hotbin - at least that's the plan!

[Penellype]

Another week spent dodging showers when the forecast implied mostly dry weather.

Priority was clearing the raised beds along the garage wall as the builder may arrive at any time to do next door's gutter. Took the net off the calabrese and moved 2 of the 3 buckets into the cold frame having removed a courgette plant that had finished fruiting. Moved the 2 large broccoli plants onto the lower raised bed which is not against the neighbour's garage wall. The remaining calabrese can be moved to the cold frame when the last courgette has finished, or can be put on the lawn while the builders work. There is still a bucket containing 1 kohlrabi, which can also go on the lawn, and the gooseberry and blackcurrant bushes. I don't want to move these until I have to - the blackcurrant is permanently moving to a space which is currently obscured by tomatoes and I'd rather only move it once. The gooseberry still has leaves and I'm hoping it drops them soon as then I can be sure of no sawflies when I remove the net cover (which appears to have successfully kept the little beggars out this year).

Got rid of the french beans which had lost all their leaves and didn't look at all well. Decided to sow some oriental salads to replace them in the chiligrow, which is still outside the back door. Sowed early mizuna, mispoona and komatsuna, all of which are fairly hardy. I may need to remove the water tray from underneath if a hard frost is forecast. I've never tried growing anything outside the back door over winter - its completely shaded by next door's house, but then the back garden is in complete shade too now, and the brick wall should provide a little extra warmth.

The 2 litre pots arrived and I potted up some of the malwina strawberry plants.

Harvested more tomatoes, peppers, courgettes, carrots, calabrese, leeks (bolting), mizuna, namenia, basil microleaves, wild strawberries and the first pod of very late peas (Terrain).

[Penellype]

Finally had to say goodbye to the Sungold tomato plants due to blight. They were ok yesterday but when I looked today there were black spots all up the stem of one of the plants (I forgot to take a photo). I cut down all 4 and brought in a tray of unripe fruit, some of which I hope will ripen:



I also cut down one of the Mountain Magic which seems to also have blight - the other 2 are looking worse for wear:



But the ones in the quadgrow planter on the hedge path are not so bad:



And I cut down the Ferline that was looking sick - I think this was fusarium wilt rather than blight. The final Ferline near the hotbin still looks quite happy:



However, at my friend's I had to cut down the Ferline this morning as it definitely had blight. The mountain Magic looks much healthier than mine, but does have some black spots on the stems. My friend's outdoor Shirleys and other miscellaneous varieties are mostly completely dead from blight.

So, not quite sure what to make of this as a blight experiment - possibly a dead heat between Sungold and Mountain Magic with Ferline as the winner at home, but Mountain Magic the winner over Ferline at my friend's.

[Nicos]

Some of those Sungold look like they already have blight?
Personally I'd not let them ripen, but use those with no blemishes now.
The flavour will be affected if it gets a hold.

[Penellype]

The photo makes the dark green bits look brown, but they are actually ok at the moment, although some of them have been slightly nibbled by slugs. I will be checking them all very carefully over the next few days. I haven't anything to use green tomatoes in really, as i don't much care for chutney, so I will wait and see what happens. I already have 7 punnets of nearly ripe sungold that were picked earlier