STW – Garderners and allotment users – Friday chat

How are thing going, what have you got in your seed pots, what is growing, what are your plans this year?

Any new tips to keep the slugs off my peas, the carrot fly off my carrots?

Someone on the allotment mentioned that carrot flies don’t like flying high, so if I planted my carrots in a old bath would this keep the buggers off?

Any other weird tips going for this time of year would be great.

Would be nice to see some pics too

Come on lets have a nice friendly Friday chat..

My first peas to pop, earlier last month.

Well – I’ll be building fruit nets this weekend – otherwise we’ll lose our gooseberries, raspberries and black currants to the fat pigeons. Hopefully we’ll be getting some blueberries too.

That aside – our onions, potatoes and garlic are all doing well. We’ll be planting out carrots, a variety of beans & peas, courgettes and cut-and-come-again greens later in the year. Not entirely sure what else yet – last year we wasted time with pumpkin, sweetcorn and kale that we won’t be repeating this year.

yep got to get my ‘tatties in this weekend.
Then plant on my Broccoli seedlings and sow carrots (I’m trying them in a tub this year), beetroot and beans.

woffle last year was a bad year for squash – even my butternut squash didn’t perform. So it might be persevering with the pumpkins.

chillies, aubergines, spinach, coriander, loads of salad leaves and herbs growing at the mo in seed trays/pots

got landscaper coming next week to build raised beds in the front garden then we’re off properly 🙂

gonna look like this soon:

Carrot fly can’t get much above a couple of foot, so highish sides on your raised beds should keep them down a bit. They’re attracted to the smell of crushed seedlings when you thin them out, so either plant carefully so you don’t need to thin out or dig them out rather than pinching.

A mixture of crushed garlic, water & a little washing up liquid sprayed on tasty stuff helps keep pests away.

Water in the morning, not in the evening to help keep slugs down.

No pics sadly, but going well so far – tatties are coming up, as is beetroot, broccoli, onions, shallots, garlic, peas and carrots – all from seed sown straight in so happy days 🙂

Now that’s a proper front garden you going to have there MW.

I managed to get hold of some scaffolding planks this year for £3 each! Made up some raised beds, sold some too 😉

Planting wise, I have my tatties coming through, onions are looking good, not much else in at the moment apart from peas. My carrots are going in the bath this weekend 😉

Water in the morning, not in the evening to help keep slugs down.

Nice tip woody, lets keep them coming…

Got my tom plants coming on nicely on windowsill along with various herbs.

Looking to get a tub to put carrots in along with salad leaves.

Excellent thread….I will eneavour to take some pics in a bit….

But in the mean time….
we have several healthy looking tomato plants that will soon be going into grow bags.
Onions are doing well too in the propogator
Basil finally seems to be growing a bit (I think it needs to warm up a bit.
Parsley and coriander are starting to come up
Lettuce are a bit thin on the ground – only 4 or 5 sprouts so far. Bit disappointing.
Radishes are going mental – need to thin them out soon.
Spring onions are doing OK
Carrots are also going a bit potty in terms of quantity. Will have to thin out soon, but not sure ther is space!
Parsnips beginning to rear their ugly heads (erm, shoots)
Potatoes – leaves just started poking out…..

All systems go. Have one row left and can’t decide whether to plany Sprouts or leave for thinning out purposes…..!
It’s the first year we have done this so we have started small. It all seems to be going well though, so I can see that next yr (over the winter) I will be required to vastly increase the veg patch proportion of the garden!!

Oooou, I will contribute next week when my greenhouse arrives and i get planting.

mrmichaelwright – Fire the man who made that graphic.

Looks like MMW might have done the sketch himself – Google Sketchup? Liking the “Venn Diagram” beds though – what’s going to go in the little square? 🙂

I’ve finally managed to put our greenhouse up, three years after dismantaling the thing and carting it over from some-one elses garden. (with their permission, obviously!)
We’ve got tomatoes, courgettes, radishes, and capsicums on the go in it, as well as other seedlings ready to plant out in the raised beds.

I don’t know if we’ll be growing potatoes this year ‘cos we had problems with badgers digging them up last summer, and we had to harvest them early.

We’ll be planting maize again though ‘cos homegrown sweet corn is wicked!

We’ve had to cut down our two plum tress ‘cos they got silver-leaf disease 🙁 We’ve planted a couple of apple trees in their place. The raspberry and blueberry beds are looking good. We had an almost constant supply of raspberries last year, they just kept on growing.

For reasons best known to herself my GF has started a new compost heap against the side of my wooden shed. Grrrr, I’ll have to nip that one in the bud ‘cos a couple of my precious bikes live on just the other side of the wall.

So concludes my exciting gardening news for the moment 😉

yeah i knocked that up myself, the hand drawn plans i did are far superior.

the little square has gone actually in favour of a ‘notched’ corner on one bed for the overlap. we were going to put Peas on a pyramid trellis in there but it will look a bit messy/be expensive as all the sleepers would need to be cut

back garden is looking great as well, this photo was taken last year and everything is looking a lot more established now, including the green algae on the decking 🙁

Nice bit of shore there 😉

yup. I can ride out of my garage, over the specially constructed bike wash area (top left), down the decking path, under the pergola and into the living room then out the front door without touching dirt

Should have also mentioned that we have a rather out of control pear tree that seems to yield quite well. Thing is, we don’t eat enough of them and they mostly go to waste.
Should try this yr to pick more and give them to neighbours and stuff.
Or how hard is it to make pear cider?? Hmmmm.

Planted all my spuds now.
Our kitchen looks like a garden centre at the moment. Butternut squashes are looking very promising, courgettes are putting out some new shoots but a bit gangly still. Tomatoes seem a bit weedy but hopefully they can all spend this weekend out in the sunshine. Big pile of growbags ready for when they are bigger.

We sowed basil, spring onions and rocket into tubs last week but no action yet. We’ve got four (count ’em!) figs on our fig tree/bush this year – hopefully our first year we’ll have fruit off it. Repotted the blueberry bush last weekend after reading they need ericaceous compost.

IIRC, Marigolds are good planted with carrots as then the carrot fly can’t smell the carrots.

We’ve found the best slug/snail solution is to go out around dusk (especially if it’s been raining) with a carrier bag and just harvest all the little buggers. Then you either dump them somewhere else (that neighbour you hate?) or jump on them and lob the carnage in the bin. Neighbours will think you’re mad looking in bushes with a torch but it’s helped our bedding plants massively the last couple of years.

put the pears out the front with a charity honesty box (locked)

We’ve got a mini-greenhouse full of beetroot and radish seedlings waiting to go out at the moment, with a couple of spare runner been seedlings just coming out on the lower trays. There’s also a tray of rocket that’s sprouting too.

Outside our spuds are now coming through properly and the transplanted runner beans are about six inches tall and getting bigger by the day. We’ve also got onions up in another bed and broad beans coming up in a third. Both of those beds have lettuces between the rows.

The only problem we have is the rhubarb coming out again. I thought the chickens had killed it, so we put their run over onto that bed. Now it’s come back and is sprouting again, so I might have to move it to another bed.

We’re also waiting to see if our allotment association has been able to get that 4 acre plot they wanted, then it’s time to buy a lot of horse poo and sand.

Spuds went in on Wed.

Have been harvesting/thinning some lovely early lettuce (over wintered), My lamb’s lettuce has already grown big and gone to flower, I dug it all up, and I have about four days worth of monster salads to look forward to.

Garlic (last Autumn) and onions (last Autumn also) both looking good. My carrots (also over wintered since October) are nearly big enough to eat.

I only planted my tomatoes last weekend but they are growing up now on the windowsill.

– And at long last, herbs! The Lovage and Fennel is finally big enough to pull great clumps off. Yum.

as the beds won’t be ready for a couple of weeks, what should we be planting in trays (in the propagator) to plant out early mayish?

i’m thinking courgettes, peas, some salad leaves. anything else?

If your importing soil or using the ‘natural’ soil that came with the house i’d seriously consider getting a CLEA review of the chemicals in the soil before you grow anything to eat…

I love growing veg and talking bout it!

Broad beans doing nicely. Have planted spinach, no sign yet. Currently germinating my tom seeds in propogator, no sign yet. Have planted out garlic that I bought in the garden centre….. not sure how that’s doing. Does anyone know if the clove with the shoots on it should be slightly above soil height? Mine aren’t.

Mr MW, try tomatoes. I always do really well with them, apart from when it rains all summer 👿 They seems v easy to grow. Courgettes….. I just can’t do them. Failure every time. I do grow everything in pots though maybe that’s why.

tomatoes go in the back garden when we grow them but we have a habit of killing them.

hippy – only thing the soil that came with the house is good for is making pots/mud pies.

the back garden looked like the somme when we built the decking in the rain. hence paying someone to do the front, its not an experience i wish to repeat!

MrMW….might do a honesty box with the pears….have thought about it in previous yrs, then never got round to it.

As for getting stuff into seed trays, our basil is doing OK, as are the onions.
I think the radishes would have been better in a seed tray to start with, as perhaps would the lettuce we stuck straight in the ground.

Great idea, hope we can keep this going regularly.

Belatedly dug over one of my beds and mixed in loads of leafmold before digging holes, filling with our compost and sowing pumpkin and squash seeds yesterday.

Also prepared two more beds for sowing courgettes, beets, carrots and spinach when I get back from my hols.

Onions and garlic coming up nicely, overwintered ones quite big, newer ones peeping up good already after just a month.

we grow basil indoors, it does well in the kitchen. not a big fan of radishes but the wife is so may get some of them down, a bit of research shows we can put Peas, some Cabbages, salad leaves and courgettes in seed trays ready for transplanting so we are off to the garden centre in a mo.

Mr MW – how about some sweetcorn? Something like Minor/Minipop for baby corn.

how tall do they get, being the front garden we want to avoid anything too tall as it’ll interrupt our snooping on the street.

Ah – 1.5-2m depending on how much sun & water they get.

The question is then if your importing soil – where is it coming from and whats in it?

If you saw half the soil validation test failures i do on imported soil i would be very careful about where my topsoil was coming from.

one_happy_hippy – How much does it cost to test your soil, what sort of kit/tests should you be doing?

Sorry, I don’t have a clue when it comes to soil 😉

I managed to get a allotment last year after waiting nearly 2 years and know there has been a variety of soils from a number of sources been used on my plot.

There were three different piles of soil given to me from neighbouring plots who had some delivered.

Love the sharing/giving/helping attitude you get from other allotment holders, such a refreshing change in these modern days 😉

One last question, my local council tip do soil reconditioner for £1 per ton if you can collect!

Worth using or avoid?

Cheers

Great thread.

The fruit’s looking promising this year – apples, loganberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, strawberries, blueberries & raspberries. I’ve got the 1st & 2nd early spuds in the ground, and the winter little gem and rocket is still going well. Garlic has come up nicely, but onion seedlings are looking week.

Just finished the forced rhubarb which was delicious.

as to raised beds – have a lookie here for ready cut kits…
http://www.harrodhorticultural.com

Currently I’m torn between raised beds and new disk brakes

Ok, we’ve got garlic which seems to be going ok. Few lettuces under paccy bottle cloches. Spuds growing in sacks. My mushrooms seem to have given up the ghost. Not much happening on the chili front but my two rhubarbs plants are coming along nicely. I think the toms are just about to start and we’ve got a load of seeds for carrots and all sorts o’ stuff to go in SOON!

It’s my first year so not entirely sure whats going on, I’ve got potato’s in and just coming through, butternut squash no sign of yet, carrots and parsnips and rubharb. And in the green house, purple sproting brocoli, courgettes, french beans, basil, leeks, onions, toms, beetroot, and I’m looking to put sweetcorn in.
I want to put in some perenials like asparagus and globe artichokes as well, its a big plot so thought go for it, i can always honesty box some of it,

Onions [growing]

Early Spuds just poking through.

Beetroot and Carrotts just gone in.

Tomatoes plants about 2 inches tall in the green house.

Eating rhubarb.

—
Other Stuff:

Strawberry plants looking good.
Raspberries and Blackberries plant looking good.

Apple and Pear trees blooming.

Minature woodland and nature reserve … just mental as always.

Anyone in West Yorks? Maybe we could organise a geeky allotment ride, link them together in a big loop stylee! 🙂

Tatties in (Mimis and Swifts). Seedlings coming on: carrots, peas, broad beans, broccoli, sweet peppers, aubergines, hot peppers, rocket, sweetcorn, toms, and shallots (not seedlings, obv! 🙂 ). I’ll probably do a couple of lines of beetroots with the kids on Sunday.

Edit: forgot the melons and courgettes.

All veg in containers this year; flower beds and herb garden doing well.

270L of compost delivered today and we’re ready for planting on 🙂

http://landshare.channel4.com/ is an interesting idea.