What I did today - 2015

[pandasyard]

Bought some seeds.....

Winter flowering Pansies
"Blue Lake" French beans
Cauliflower
Winter Cabbage
Lupin flowers (assuming that's the right name)

[Nicos]

15 large pots of chutney- 8 apple and cardamom ( with added swazi fire chilli sauce) , and 7 spicy green tomato and pear.

Plus pots of jam- 8 blackberry and blackcurrant and 8 wild cherry and blackberry .

All using up stuff in the freezer.
Apart from the blackcurrants and onions, everything was dated 2011 or 2012 and from our own garden



started at 10am and just finished wiping the floor, walls , ceiling....

[Penellype]

Decided today was a good day to cut the hedge, as it was dry over night. Plugged the battery in to charge. 10 mins later - rain.

Went back to designing my next reshuffle of pots, and spent a large chunk of time in the garage looking for something that I am now sure I took to my friend's greenhouse. Doh! At least by this time the sun had come out, so I went and had a look at the hedge and decided it was dry enough to cut. Went indoors to get the battery and when I came out, you guessed... rain. It was only drizzle, but enough to put me off hedge trimming. Went for a wander round the garden and found a ripe wild strawberry, which I ate. Plenty more of various sizes . Also noticed the blueberries are showing their first tinges of blue. Shouldn't be long now. On the downside the flowers on the runner beans are not setting. They did this at first last year so I am not unduly worried.

Cut a couple of large courgettes and made some soup for lunch. Made up some epsom salts spray and sprayed all the tomato foliage. Went and tested the hedge again after lunch and decided come hell or high water it was getting cut, so I did that. Just one side left to do now.

Picked the remainder of the Hurst Greenshaft peas for tea and started cutting down the foliage. Its awkward as I have to reach over some huge courgette plants, so it is going to take several attempts I think. Also picked some strawberries, although my favourite (Marshmello) are finished now. Considering chucking out the Vibrant - although they produce big fat fruits, they are supposed to be "early and full of flavour" but they were ready at the same time as Elsanta and Marshmello, and unlike either of these, they taste of almost nothing at all. I was disappointed last year but gave them another chance. I hate throwing out plants that are still productive, but I don't have room for things with no flavour.

Anyone care to guess whether I will actually do this (bearing in mind I was going to get rid of the Everbearers 3 years ago for similar reasons and I still have those...)

[kris1960]

Spent a long time gazing longingly at the allotments on the hillside across from my daughter's house in Sheffield(Archers Lane, I think)- they look lovely, some really nice old sheds from what I can see. After I have done some of my daughter's garden tomorrow I may go for a wander to see if I can get a closer look.

[Martin H]

Feeling a bit under the weather today so I just popped down to the allotment to pick flowers and anything else obviously ready: enough runner beans for supper and also french beans, raspberry "Glen Ample" and strawberry "Flamenco". These are definitely the best everbearing strawberries I've ever tasted, by the way, so I'm making an effort to peg down some runners this year.

[bario1]

Harvested the rest of my one and only bag of 'Red Duke of York' spuds, and left them out to cure a bit. Used the compost from the bag as a mulch for my courgettes and French beans.
Planted out my 3 pots of giant parsley into the polytunnel bed, where (if they perform anything like as well as they did last year), they should provide me with endless parsley until next April... and we eat a lot of parsley!
Watered/fed where necessary.

[pandasyard]

I spent what seemed like a lifetime salvaging a few bits and pieces from a washing machine! I was faffing for ages and then realised its not anywhere near as hard to remove the drum as I made it seem.

I now have 2 good sized pots (one needs a bit of work) and a couple of bits to mess about with trying to plant things in as well.

I am also going to do it all again when another one comes up!!

[Snadger]

Originally was going to harvest half of my shallots which still appeared to be growing even though they were nearly the size of my onions! The plan was then to plant up the vacated area with Mooli. I then had a second look at the shallots and asked myself " How big do you want shallots?"
After convincing myself they were big enough I harvest the full 10 foot X 6 foot bed!
As I like to practice no-dig wherever possible and there is a lot of muck in the surface layer I just hand weeded it them deep hoed the whole area.
After raking I divided the plot in half and sowed three rows roughly 1 foot apart of Neptune Mooli and Mino Early Mooli. I then watered the bed with three X two gallon watering cans full of water to give the bed a good soaking and hopefully give the seeds a good start in life.

Made myself a bit sick by munching on soft fruit all afternoon!

[Lumpy]

Got the last teeny weeny raised bed into the 'all new veggie area' for next years attempts.

Pulled the bolting radish but left the bolting perpetual spinach as I think the flowers will look nice.

Re potted the aubergine OH got from Asders last night for 25p

Planted 6 more herbs, thyme, rosemay, sage etc also got from the above supermarket for 25p each - bargain.

Am about to hunt on the interweb for mooli seeds called Neptune - Ta for the recommendation off the 'what can I sow at the end of July' thread.

[kris1960]

Planted some parsley plants for my daughter but did not make it to allotments:
Had foolishly told children that I would cook whatever they choose for lunch from starters or light meals from their parent's cookbooks- got stuck with alsace onion tarts with anchovies and stilton soup. Stock, pastry etc. Saved tart for daughter which resulted in me having to make another batch! Had also promised to make old family favourite of puy lentils with smoked ham for dinner! Not much time left for anything but cooking.
Took grandson to Graves park yesterday and tried to get some manure from city farm- they used to give it away but someone had ended up with poisoned plants so they no longer could. Animals and park were great- I wish I could have chickens at allotment...and goats.....and pigs.....and

[CaroleL]

We had a rather overgrown eucalyptus tree cut down the other week, and today I cleared the area around the stump. It was full of brambles and ivy but is fairly clear now. I'm going to use the area for compost bins as it's up the back of the garden, behind the greenhouse.

[Jay-ell]

Yesterday I planted some stuff in the blowaway. Easy but I had to build the blowaway first.

Well they're not hard to put up but I had to build the bed first.

A bit more involved but I've haf practice but before I could build the bed I had to dig over the ground.

And that's why it took me all day to put a couple of things in the blowaway - digging out all the nettles, bind weed, reel to reel tapes, videos, cutlery (none of it matching though) .

I then got a message at 5pm asking me to go to work so I never got everything I wanted to do done.

Just been down to water today and realised that sometime in the last 24 hours vandals have been on to the plot next door and chopped down his entire crop of weeds - both annual and perennial.

He'll be gutted when he gets back from whatever country he's currently living in.

[marcofez]

Finally on thursday constructed 2 Enviromesh cloches and planted my leeks for one and sowed carrots for the other. Hoping that they deter the Leek Moth and Carrot Flies!

[pandasyard]

Went and picked strawberries and decided raspberries looked good too. Want to try a jam but haven't got a clue how lol

[Bigmallly]

Spent the morning feeding ducklings cos I'm pants at fishing................


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