Keep it simple - less worry!

[Tiny Allotment]

It just means that instead of throwing plant residue in the compost you just let it drop to the ground and it will rot down naturally. It will also act as a mulch thus protecting the surface of the soil.

it can harbour slugs though

Paul

[Bill HH]

VC I am with you all the way. I planted a short row of peas in the spring and we picked them yesterday, enough for two meals for 5 of us. I thought was that realy worth it, putting up nets and stakes etc etc. a bag of frozen peas cost about a pound! I am concentrating on the more expensive stuff from now on.

[Jungle Jane]

Chop & drop is good with all the pea/runner bean/sweetcorn end of season waste too,full of nitrogen,feeds the soil.

[Penellype]

My main concern with chop and drop, which is probably why I keep "forgetting" to do it, is that often by the time it comes to chopping time the plants are covered in pests as well as seed heads. It doesn't seem a great idea to chop aphid or caterpillar infested foliage and leave it lying round other plants. My peas always have copious numbers of caterpillars on by the time the pods have finished, and I've noticed that there are often lots of small caterpillars on the ground when I have removed them. If I use the ground and supports for a late crop about half of the new plants don't survive. This year instead of planting Geisha after the Meteor as planned, I have used a 30l bucket for them. My notes from previous seasons tell me that this variety only grows 12-18 inches tall and produces few flowers and peas, but is worth trying for a taste of late peas. I'd take a photo if it wasn't pouring with rain at the moment, but suffice it to say that the plants are nearly 3ft high, have outgrown their pea sticks, needed tying up to stop them falling over and have plenty of flowers. The only difference is that they are in a bucket of compost that grew potatoes instead of soil that grew peas.

Anyone any thoughts/experience of this sort of pest problem with chop and drop? Or do you only do this on soil that is not going to be replanted immediately (something I don't have)?

[Jungle Jane]

I haven't noticed the pea caterpillar affect my runner beans,the dead foliage is next to them,I suppose they could cocoon inside a leaf & survive,or crawl somewhere else. I did squash loads during the pea harvesting. There could be a few out there,birds might find them? When all the foliage is chopped up,I'd give it a couple of days for spiders & ladybirds etc to leave,then you can dig it under if you want to plant straight away,it will go slimy & brown amongst your plantings otherwise? Or drop it as a mulch around shrubs? I don't drop tomato foliage incase of blight problems.

[roitelet]

I haven't noticed a marked pest problem with chop and drop. I only do it this time of year when I can cover it with grass cuttings or straw and leave it over winter to decompose.

[veggiechicken]

Remember the 140 spring cabbages that I sowed? All 14 varieties neatly labelled and pricked out into their own modules. So far so good..............until it was time to plant the biggest of each out. No way was I going to write out labels for 50+ cabbages so I've bunged them all in together. They're all spring cabbages - does it really matter whether its a Pixie or a Durham Early? Thought not
I shan't be saving seed as I have hundreds left and, to be honest, it'll be a miracle if many of them survive to be big enough to eat. Any spring cabbage will do me nicely, thank you!

[rosiepumpkin]

Chopping our dead rasps stems may mean I actually do it. I have rasps from someone else which fruit in summer and autumn and one I bought which fruits twice a year. This whole when to chop has been so confusing, I haven't.

So from now on, if it's brown and looks dead, I'll chop it.

If it's brown and look alive, it's yet another caterpillar.

[Sarico]

To keep simple everyone as more plants that you actually need so don't worry about any little problem. Following the classic tip like water from the bottom and start feeding after 6weeks don't worry about 1leaf turning yellow, one black spot or a small plant or any other problem. Most of the time when planted out and the summer kicks in everything will start grow ok. If not you have the spare one.

[veggiechicken]

After last year's confused labelling of 140 cabbages I've realised that it doesn't really matter what they are, as long as they grow and don't all mature at once. I pick them when they're ready to harvest, not by the dates on the packets.

Some of the seed companies sell mixed variety seeds as "Continuity Collections". I'm going to make my own Take a pinch of each variety, mix them up and sow them in a seed tray labelled cabbage, or lettuce or leeks etc. No more time wasted on labelling or heartache when they get mixed up

[Snoop Puss]

I'm doing a lot more direct sowing this year. It means these plants will be starting a lot later, but quite often I don't have time to plant things out when they need to go out and they never quite recover from being cramped in their pots. The number of peas I've loving germinated, grown on in modules and then done nothing with is beyond belief.

[Muddy_Boots]

This year is the first time I've grown winter tolerant Broad Beans and Peas, when I was planting them in the lottie last year in November I said to myself out loud ' If these don't do anything I don't care'. Nobody was about luckily or they would of thought I was mad talking to a load of seeds so I just dug the 2 shallow trenches and chucked the seeds in and covered them up.

The Broad Beans are now about 5ft high (I'll see later today if they have grown higher) and have the most flowers on I've ever seen on anyone's on the lottie's and the peas are not far behind and are in flower, just need to find out from DT Browns what the variety is that I bought o I can buy more for next year.

[veggiechicken]

I've been deadheading the daffs - again. It takes ages tracking them down as they're scattered randomly throughout the garden. Then I came to a clump of "wild" daffs that were here when we moved in. There used to be hundreds but they were destroyed by grazing horses. I've been leaving the surviving clumps to multiply - and they have!

Light bulb moment - nobody deadheads or thins out wild daffs but they spread and look glorious. So why don't I stop dead heading and let all the daffs naturalise?
That's another job I won't do again

[Bren In Pots]

I never dead head mine either mostly because I used to end up breaking of some of the leaves instead. so now I leave them along and they look much tidier.

[lottie dolly]

why have i not seen this before ,some good ideas,earlier on i sowed parsnips,not the usuall carefull way,i dug an indent with one hand and chucked some seeds in and covered up,this was done a few inch apart,what i not want will be yanked out,as soon as they are identifyable,i also let daffs go to ground on their own,when we had them in the old lawn,they got mowed off,so they seem to do better leaving the to get on with it.