What I did today 2018

[Chestnut]

Dug up some spuds, and some ‘spent’ pea plants, planted out 3 cabbages and 6 pumpkins, tied in some tomatoes, watered, picked courgettes, and enjoyed late evening sun on the bench

[bramble]

Watered everythi g in the greenhouse.
Put all the plants back inside after leaving them out overnight to get soaking from the rain.
Deadheadex the Sweet peas and the dahlias.l
Picked all the gooseberries from my second bush.
Dr died it didn't really fit in where I had planted it so cut it down and binned it.
Spent a good hour doing top and tail with the said gooseberries.
Went to the church for a neighbours removal for burial tomorrow.
Had granddaughter for the day do entertained her as well.
A productive day but I am ready for an early night.
Stsy safe all.

[1Bee]

Misc days:-

Watered. Cursed.

Tied up sunflowers. Watered.

Dug up the last of the charlottes, a lovely load.

Planted out some module grown swedes, because it's worth a try. Watered. Cursed mildly.

Cut down the first crop of broad beans and took the last pods off.

Weeded margins and had a bit of a dock/nettle attack.

Fed everything with comfrey feed.

Smugly admired my onions. Watered (except the onions). Cursed immoderately. Gloated over runners and french beans starting to form.

Harvested:- strawberries, blueberries, blackcurrants, potatoes, lettuce, mizuna, mustard, onions, broad beans, peas, courgettes, carrots.

Cut:- sweet peas, dahlias, zinnias, cosmos, sunflowers.

[muck lover]

I haven't posted for a while but have been busy in the garden.
Mostly lugging water. Still am hardly making an impact on the soil. We had one lovely day of a nice soft steady drizzle for most of the day. Two inches down into the soil its still dry as dust, and theres no more rain coming.
Anyway I have bought some seed potatoes to plant for second cropping. Being a mean person, I m trying to make my own growing medium. I spent a while yesterday sieving leafmould - and then spreading it out on sheets in the sun to allow most of the woodlice to leave. I intend to mix it with old potting compost, seaweed, BFB, and maybe some chicken manure and plant into some big pots. And Ill plant the rest around the garden - more watering.

[muck lover]

I've sown some spinach, pac choy and more carrots. I'm pegging out strawberry runners for next year and thinking hard about ordering some more everbearing strawberries for the polytunnel beds. The june bearing varieties will go into pots and troughs which can be brought into polytunnel for cropping but which wont hog precious space all year, but I think everbearers deserve a permanent space. I am debating with myself about which variety to buy and any recommendations would be gratefully accepted.
I have made the difficult decision to stop growing asparagus in the polytunnel as it wasn't justifying the space required although I did intercrop it a bit. however after three years I am getting small harvests and still buying asparagus. I intend to harvest it literally to death this year and plant something else in the bed. It really goes against the grain to kill plants...….

[Jay-ell]

Compost Fairy dropped off a builders bag of hedge trimmings so I spent a bit of time shredding all that.

Took down the shreddings, some spanners and a blow torch. Going to work on getting hot compost one way or another.

The shreddings went straight into the compost bin. Need to work on a bin to turn it into so started on the pig pen. There's a few rusted in bolts so used the blow torch to heat the nuts up to try and loosen them. Managed to get two off, a third is still resisting so I'll have another go ext time I'm down.

Sort of put the shoots from to vines into their places.

As my onions have fallen over and quite a few had bolted I lifted most of them today. The bolted ones will be chopped and frozen and the rest are hanging in the shed to dry.

Lifted the red potato onions as well. Best place for onions is full sun, rich crumb soil, free draining soil. These were under the tree, full shade, clay soil not really cultivated, full of weeds and crammed close together as it was the last spot in the garden. Small bulbs but the goal was to get enough seed onions for next year and its definitely done that with some bulbs splitting into 8 new bulbs.

Next is the shallots and unknown onions. Ran out of space to dry onions for the moment.

I had a couple of pots of neglected, forgotten onions - Welsh and Perutil plus unknown lablesess pot - that have been sitting in a corner of the plot. Planted them out into the beds--nice healthy roots and starting to regrow so they hard to kill, minimal water this year and almost none for a month until last week.

The saga of the 2016 Leeks continues - emptying some of the pots of dead Leeks a d they've formed more lovely bulbs which were harvested a d replanted - guess I'll still be eating 2016 Leeks in 2019

[Small pumpkin]

A bit of strimming. A bit of chilli pollinating. Harvesting stuff. Tidying the tunnel.

Before


After


Doesn't look much different does it. I removed quite a few side shoots


I've decided I'm not very good at growing tomatoes.

[bramble]

Doing the best I can under the circumstances.
We are restricted for the past two weeks with water usage so I am finding myself moving stuff around the garden and into the shade.
Deadheading the Sweet peas and dahlias which are beginning to show the lack of water.
I am taking the bottom leaves from my tomatoes and peppers to give them the best chance of ripening.
No seeds have been sown as the garden is too dry to plant anything out.
The strawberries and raspberries have finished fruiting and are looking pretty miserable.
Still watering in the greenhouse with any water we use indoors.
It's certainly a different year with the lack of rain.

[bario1]

Pulled up all the giant flowering pak choi, spinach, and the last of the broad beans, and composted the lot. Raked over the new empty areas and removed the bulk of the weeds. Lifted the onions and Spring onions and raked those areas over too. I now have a lot of bare space in the beds and nothing to plant in it.
Pulled some of the slimy blanket weed from my pond, and topped it up with the hose.
Weeded just about everywhere, mainly pulling willow herb and docks out, as well as any larger clumps of grass.
Watered.

[Jay-ell]

Took down a couple of bags of hedge trimmings from th compost fairy - this lack of rain means that he hasn't any grass clippings to bring me and I need to remulch the plot so I'm going to have to get a straw bale.

Planted out the leeks - 81 should hopefully do once you add in all the others perennials. Pulled up the last of the alliums, this time the shallots which are drying in the greenhouse.

My pumpkin plants are romping away - taking over the section they're in but no flowers yet. I guess it's down to what I fed them - spag bol, lasagne, bread, cakes - too many carbs.

Harvested the first courgettes. Five of them, nice. Got a couple of cucumbers forming as well by the looks of it.

It started to rain as I was leaving the plot.

It stopped raining once I was out of the gate.

0.5mm of rain.

[Jay-ell]

Just a nice quiet day today. Had Mr Postie bring a box of herbs to plant out. Another Mr Postie dropped off a tree (note - it was in a box, he wasn't climbing it).

Got a bale of straw to mulch the plot with as grass mowings are hard to come by these days.

Filled the car up with horse ****

Emptied the car of horse ****

Cleared a patch of paving stones, barbed wire, chicken wire and nettles to build a compost bin.

Carted the corrugated iron sheeting from the New Territories to the Heart of Darkness in the Jungle and built a compost bin.

Decided to put off carting the 12 bags of manure from the New Territories into the Heart of Darkness until tomorrow.

Picked raspberries. That's it - I'm going to cut down the canes tomorrow, full up with raspberries and I don't want to see another one until the next batch is ready in a few weeks

p.s. also sprinkled garlic dust around the plot. Not as good as fairy dust but I can't find ground fairies anywhere.

[Jay-ell]

Took a straw bale down to the plot to do some mulching.

I had some spuds that have grown eyes so I decided to take them down the plot to see if they'll grow.

Hauled halve of the bags of compost to the new manure bay at the back of the jungle. Gone need another couple of loads to fill it up.

Used one of the bags to fill 3 tree buckets for the spuds - 2 spuds per bucket. Topped them off with some straw to keep the moisture in and the flies out.

Filled a 270 liter bag with raspberries.

This time, though, it's the old canes I just cut out that I filled it with. Spent a fair bit of time cutting out the canes that fruited in summer.

Spooked a few other plot holders who seem to be under the impression that my raspberries are talking to them.

Noticed that my autumn raspberries are forming fruit - a couple are even starting to colour so it don't look like I'm going to get much of a raspberry break (I'm sure they weren't there yesterday).

Watered a couple of the beds that needed it most.

Remulched the autumn potato bed and the sweet corn.

[Baldy]

Filled 10 2 litre pop bottles and various 2 and 4 pint milk containers with precious H2O. Found a strong aldi carboard box to put them in. Put them in the box. Drove to the allotment (only 5 minutes walk away but couldn't carry that lot). Pottered around for an 3/4 of an hour (work day so could only do lunchtime). Bit of a chat with one of the old boys.
Came home.
Spotted Aldi carboard box with a mulitude of filled water containers on the driveway.

Doh!

[Small pumpkin]

Another day of juggling chillies in and out of the dehydrator ( ready for the next batch of chilli powder).
Lots of Strimming and harvesting ( most of it for the shop ).
Afternoon out on the boat. Got my first fish hook in my finger............ Ouch! Expletive expletive expletive!

[bikermike]

yesterday - watered the plot in the morning and picked blackberries, picked a couple of tomatoes in the evening and watered the garden and greenhouse.

Today - very little, will water the garden in the evening
Tomorrow - will water the allotment in the morning, and take the cardboard off the bed I have just dug. Hoping the promised rain arrives (ideally after I have been at the plot in my suit...)