Time out?

[Holly]

Hello grapes, I hope you're all well.

As the sun is tentatively poking out from between the April clouds, here at GYO towers, we're beginning to think of the summer holidays!

How do you manage taking time away from the vegetable plot? Do you have some trusted friends and neighbours who keep an eye on things if you get some time to go away?
Do you arrange holidays and trips for a different time of year to make sure the summer months are as productive as possible?
Have you had some particularly good/bad experiences entrusting the plot to others?


Your comments may be edited and printed in the July issue of GYO

[VirginVegGrower]

We tend to go away in the colder parts of the year which helps enormously with our growing schedule but it has more to do with the fact that price hikes during school holiday dictate when we go. Time to put tents on to allotments me thinks and dig that instead of the sand kids!

[Aberdeenplotter]

As someone who is gardening for a living, I simply can't afford to take holidays in the summer season. Up here, the work tails off dramatically at the end of August and that is the earliest I can spring myself free. I then combine an outing to the National Vegetable Society's annual championships with a trip to see parts of the Uk I haven't seen before. This time heading to LLangollen in wales and afterwards into the Lake District.

I just returned from a trip to Bruges, 4 nights away and sweated the whole time as to whether my babies in the greenhouse would survive without water until I got back. I lost one pepper plant and everything else survived. Couldn't do that now that the warmer days are here though. That would mean calling in a few favours.

[pauco]

Lucky to have a very good friend who lives a few doors away from us. He looks after the veg, his wife looks after the garden & flowers. We do the same when they go away, + their cat moves in with us lol.

paul.

[Alison]

I don't want to go away during the school holidays as there are kids everywhere and it costs more but try to manage my plot /sowings etc around when I'm planning on going away. I can get a friend to water in emergencies but I prefer not to put on people and it's easier to plan when you're going to be away and work things accordingly. I don't grow much in pots which certainly helps and have rigged up autowatering systems off water butts in both the polytunnel and greenhouse which cope well with a couple of week's absence.

[Glutton4...]

We have a week-long break every July, which is a bit of a headache for me, plant-wise. I use an automatic timer for the essentials, home-made drip irrigation (bags and bottles) for others, and fingers crossed for the rest! In recent years it hasn't been that dry, so nothing has suffered too much.

[solway cropper]

Holidays, what are they?

We have a static caravan on a small site behind a country pub which is our retreat whenever we feel the need to get away. It's only an hours drive away so that means it's in regular use from March to November. With a large greenhouse and dozens of containers I have to water twice a day in hot weather so I tend to use the 'van more in Spring and autumn.

[JamesM]

I'd be really interested for any advice here particularly on watering in pots- we're going away mid-August for a week and the nearest person to water my pots is the gf's mum who's 30mins drive away so could only reasonably ask her to nip over once to water. I simply can't afford expensive irrigation systems, all i can think of is move what i can into the bath for the week! Other than that limit the watering where possible in the weeks leading up to going so the veg doesn't become over reliant on regular watering

[Queen bee]

You can move big pots and windowboxes into the shade, water heavily and mulch with grassclippings or similar.
smaller pots can sit on a piece of capillary matting on a table with one end of the matting sitting in a large bucket full of water. Soak everything well before you go.
qb

[binley100]

My lottie will be entrusted to my dad or my lottie neighbour and the stuff at home will be in the tender care of my youngest.....well she didn't manage to kill anything last year and we went away twice....

[pipkins]

I would only dare to go away at the end of the growing season

[perkin]

We went away for 3 weeks in August/September last year. My parents stayed at our house for some of that time so my mum was in charge of the greenhouse. When we got back I found that most of the chillies in pots were waterlogged and my toms in gro-bags were all parched and yellow... I managed to pull back a few toms from the brink but most were past saving.
We're away for 2 weeks from mid-May, and planning on asking the lovely neighbours to water things in the greenhouse. They grow their own veg/fruit so hopefully will do a better job than my mum (bless her, she tried). I'm currently formulating a pricking out/potting on strategy to have all of my seedlings and young plants either out in the raised beds or in gro-bags and big pots so that they need as little watering as possible. I also have some of those dripper bottletop watering devices so I'll be employing as many of those as I can. I may even paint shading on the greenhouse before we go as an extra precaution.

[cptncrackoff]

I'm going away for 5 days soon, i'm not entirely sure what state to leave the greenhouse in, theres no one I can get to pop round to water.
I'm thinking water well before i go, I cant decide whether to leave the door/window open or closed, and also read that you can leave a few buckets of water in a closed greenhouse and it will get really humid, and nothing will dry out, any advice greatly received!!

[Bramble_killer]

we go away during the colder months no holidays in the summer here

[Chef_uk]

Middle of July for 1 week so i'll be looking for tips on how to manage the break