What I did today 2018

[1Bee]

Watered. Weeded. Harvested potatoes, lettuce, strawbs, blueberries, courgette, peas, broad beans. Cut dahlias, zinnias (Yes, SP, I have zinnia flowers!!!) and armfuls of sweet peas. Re-weaved a bit of the willow den. Watered some more.

[Small pumpkin]

Bagged another 7 chilli varieties for seed saving ( hopefully)
Tied up tomatoes and removed side shoots.
Tied up sunflowers
A bit of weeding and tidying.
Pot up some of the mint cuttings that have rooted.

[Gillykat]

At work all day until 5pm so popped up to allotment 'just to water the plants' (as I said to hubby) as soon as I got home and came back.........2hrs 45 mins later It was SO relaxing pottering around and the only sound being the neighbour's pigeons cooing and chickens occasionally clucking away (God I really need some chickens ASAP!!!). Watered everything, deadheaded and tied up perennials which were flopping over.

Then, in greenhouse, decided nothing aimed, nothing gained so sowed some veg seeds

9 x Tromboncino
11 x French bean 'Cobra'
6 x Borlotto beans
6 x Runner beans 'Painted Lady'
11 x Runner bean 'Red Rum'
6 x Winter Squash 'uchiki kiri'
6 x butternut squash 'Hunter'
25 x Hurst Greenshaft
16 x Pea 'Nairobi'
10 x Soya bean 'Elena'

Day off tomorrow so going to dig a couple of beds and annihilate those pesky nettles once and for all!

[Ivanhoe]

Very busy day

Been in garden from 7.30 weeding first then quick tidy up then with my grandsons help we continued to build his rabbit hutch .
He soon list interest so had a wander about and he was amazed to find that the Broad Beans he help me sow indoors have now got beans on a couple of inches long .
Fed spuds tonight my Maris Pipers are now in full bloom and about 3/4 foot tall after been blown down by storm Hector a big thank you to all on here who gave me advise .
Nipped out 3 more runner bean tips they have pulled round as well so all said garden looking good with veg plot coming along nicely .
Thanks for help and advice from everyone it was very much appreciated .

[chillithyme]

watering, filling up water butt and talking too much to my neighbours proper jobs will have to wait for another day

[Jay-ell]

Last night the Compost fairy dropped off 5 bags of hedge trimmings to take down today.

Last year at this time I had 5 wilted little sets of leaves belonging to the Vine Leeks. Last Autumn 60 plants grew back. Today I lifted these as they've died back for summer and ended transplanting 60 big bulls and about 500 little ones to a new home under the vines.

Gave them a mulch with the trimmings and Watered them to settle the soil. The soil round there is rich, moist and full of life. Its been sheet mulched in Autumn with newspaper covered with hedge trimmings and grass cuttings.

Harvested the Red currants, got enough to fill a 1kg tub of Natural Greek Yoghurt (empty of course) off three cordoned bushes. To be honest I have shared the currants with the birds as it's not easy to net them where they are. It was nice of them to leave some for me

Dusted the beds in the jungle with powdered garlic then watered the powder in. I recon that if I dust all the beds twice a year for the next three years I'll have used up all my garlic powder. See, there's a reason for everything

Mulched the pumpkin, courgettes and cucumbers with more of the trimmings and gave it a good soak to settle the mulch in.

Harvested the Black currants. Took absolutely ages. Ended up with 2 Jacobs Cracker Selection boxes full of ripe currants. Left quite a few unripe ones on there - might harvest them later or leave them for the birds.

Water the rest of the beds.

Noticed that the Mouse garlic is still alive and has purplish balls of flowers.

It's dwarfed by the Babington Leeks whose flower heads are just starting to open up. The sand Leeks are in full bloom with the bulbul forming and the bees jumping back and forth between the small number of flowers they produce.

It looks as if the Kiwi hasn't set fruit, humph.

The Sweet potatoes are looking nice - hopefully I can start harvesting in a couple of weeks.

Just got home to find that the Compost fairy came when I was out.

[bramble]

Picked 8 pounds of gooseberries from one of my bushes.
Took me ages to undo the homemade cage I had made for them.
Fingers are sore from the thorns.
Spent ages topping and tailing them.
On hindsight they could have been left for another week but I hadn't the will to cover them all back up again.
Last year the birds got a lot of them so this year I wasn't taking any chances.
All gone into the freezer until the weather cools down and then a major jam session.

[Jay-ell]

Just spent the evening topping and tailing 15 pounds of black currants. Now to figure out what to do with them as I'm not a big jam/jelly eater and that's a lot of blackcurrant gin.

[1Bee]

Watered.
Watered.
Watered again.
*sob*

[chillithyme]

-watering
-planted up into large pots Chilli Apache, Pepper Cajun belle, placed outside in a sunny sheltered spot
-resowing of previously failed climbing and dwarf beans, second sowing of courgettes mixed and cucumber
-mulching roses with spent compost
-more watering

[Gillykat]

Watered.
Watered.
Watered again.
*sob*

Crazy, isn't it? Certainly not something you generally have to do manually in Cumbria!!! I'm the same here on the opposite side....very dry in Northumberland.

[1Bee]

It is bonkers, Gillykat. I've never known anything like it up here. I just can't keep the raised beds moist at all, and of course I've got nothing to mulch with, because the grass isn't growing!

[Bren In Pots]

Pulled up the lettuce that's gone to seed and sown land cress in it's place, then planted basil into GH border.

[chillithyme]

Planted two tomatoes, an aubergine and a sunflower outdoors
Direct sowing of beans
Planted into a large pot, tall dahlia plant
Brought out forgotten canna plants in pots from under a bush where I normally over winter them
Watering

[the big lebowski]

goosberry bushes

grapvine ,im starting to train it horizontaly

blackberry bushes another one in he background

finaly worked out how to post pics on here ,these are pics from about a week ago of my goosberrys just before i picked them (with my new weed membrain) 1 of my thornless blackberrys and my grapevine ,cheers

i had to make the photos smaller to get them on here so thats why you cant see all the goosberry bushes