What have you done in the garden today?

Planted some leeks out in the space the potatoes were taking up. This year I've grown the leeks in modules (usually I use a 'nursery bed' - it's an old Ikea storage box with holes drilled in the bottom, and because it's deep they're quite happy in it until planting time) Not happy with my leeks in modules though: despite daily watering, and seaweed feed they are the worst, most pitiful leeks I've ever grown. They're not 'pencil thickness' - they're not really even cocktail stick thickness! They're never going to be thick enough to wrap in ham and cover with cheese sauce.

I have loads left if you want some, they are a bit bigger than yours? I have colossal, pandora, carentan, and several other varieties I can't remember just now.

That's really kind - I've filled the only available gap in the garden though (and I've got a certain dogged 'Im gonna make those leeks grow if it's the last thing I do...' feeling!) I love the fact that your leeks are 'Colossal' - mine must be 'Weeny'!! I might just sneak out after dark with the comfrey brew though, and see if this frightens them into growth. Back to the plastic box to grow them in next year!

Hmm, yes my leeks sound a bit like yours Dandelion. Love your idea of using the ikea tub to get them started though, might try that next year.

Today I've not got any further in the garden than eating a strawberry - weather's not so good and we've been doing DIY instead.

But this week I've been real busy in the garden and feel like I've got lots done at last. I've been cutting herbs for herbal tea - got lots of mint bunches hung up in the barn and a load of chamomile flowers laid out on paper drying too. My leeks are still not in the ground, but the bed they're going into is now ready for them at least. I've been weeding paths and beds, I've got two of my potted acocha outside ready to go into position against the wall once the trellis is up and I've been contemplating digging two new vegetable beds - one for the rest of the acocha and the other for my tray of kale seedlings. A job for next week! The biggest job though has been harvesting strawberries and raspberries. Yum! Lots of fruit smoothies going down at our house at the mo.

I've also been spending quite some time just marvelling at our wonderful new woodchip paths that are going to save me so much time weeding the paths between my raised beds. Hooray! Made these a couple of weeks ago and the novelty still hasn't worn off!

Something had my 2 courgettes in the night, if we had a lotty I would say it was vandels, they were clean off & left in the pot. Not happy.

Still having to water.

Toooooooooo hot to work in the garden any more.

Have pulled some onions & some shallots, green bits are cooking in a pan ready to liquidise &.freeze for soups later in the year, the bulb bits are drying off.

Have emptied bottom 1/3 of compost bin & put in the top & had a good stir round to let some air in.

Picked another helping of tayberries. My one little bush is doing very well.

Have just pulled up the broad bean plants and picked off the last of the beans. infested with blackfly - it seems to be a bad year for it, despite the soapy water/pinching out etc.

I need to remove the roots as well as I don't actually want the nitrogen fixing nodules in the bed - it is a high nitrogen bed already and what is going in next doesn't want too much, so the plants are going on the compost, roots and all.

Just stopping for a break then back out to do some mowing

My broad beans are very infested with blackfly too (good job I wasn't planning to eat the pods as well) and I am going to pull up the nasturtiums which are quite revoltingly black and sticky. Will probably spray the runner beans with soap (except OH has taken the spray to school to spray the beans in the autistic unit garden!!) Is it just this area, or is anyone else plagued with blackfly?

Not just you, we have blackfly as well as multitudes of little black beetle things, don`t know what they are but they are every where,

Oh grows the runner beans but is getting a lot of flower drop, any offers to the reason would be appreciated.

There is a beatle which does that...will have a read and a think and see if I can come up with some ideas.

Got no blackfly but do have lots of little tiny black beetle things - they're liking the chamomile and dandelions, but don't seem to be too much of a pest.

Yesterday we finally got our 2 new veggie beds dug over or at least the turf off where the beds will be. Tonight or tomorrow will try and do something to improve the soil there - is really compacted and pale looking. Got some compost and manure waiting to go in..

Are the tiny beetles pollen beetles? We had a picnic at Avebury once, and I was wearing a bright coloured t shirt and got covered with the things - I suppose they thought I was a flower!

When the flowers on my runner beans drop without a bean forming I usually suspect a water shortage, so I soak the soil around the plants, and also spray the flowers with water from a fine sprayer bottle in the evening. This usually helps. I also grow both red and white flowered varieties, because one does better in a cold summer, the other in a warm summer (can't remember which is which!!)

The pollen beetles LOVE yellow, or any really vibrant colour, but yellow is their favourite ( not surprising when you think what colour pollen grains are.)

HAve mowed the whole estate, including the paths in the wood , around the pool and the new clearing area in the wood...(which CM thinks is just for the hens but actually I have it earmarked for pigs ....shush don't tell him...)

Thank you people, I reckon pollen beetles for the tiny black things, I just hope they are goodies & not badies.

I thought a water problem for the beans, but according to OH I know nothing. He just plants these things & expects me to do the rest of the work until picking time.

Toooooooo hot in our garden again, will have to water when it cools off soon.

We've had fun using the gizmo I bought from CAT three years ago, which pumps/siphons water out of the bath. (I bought it just before the floods of 2007, so it hasn't seen much action)You connect it up to some hose, then annoy your neighbours as it gets dark (because you have to wait until someone in the family has a bath...) by shouting up to the bathroom 'Yes, it's trickling out!' 'How much more is there to come?' etc. This is why I don't have time to watch TV - too much time spent on educational water play!!

Spent a couple of hours doing things before it gets to hot.

Emptied another bucket with no flowers & greenery dying & found about 1lb of potatoes.

Had a hunt in the dustbin with the same problem of no flowers & no greenery, lifted about 6ins of compost in 1/3 of the bin & found about 1/2lb of pots, so I shall leave that a bit longer.

Started to thin out the leeks, (reason fo emptying the small bucket)

Picked some more tayberries.

polgara wrote:

Emptied another bucket with no flowers & greenery dying & found about 1lb of potatoes.

I had read in one of my trusty gardening books that when the potatoes flowered, that was the time to harvest. I have since read (can't remember where - it may have been a seed company website) that not all potatoes flower. I'm growing Lady Crystl for the first time, and no, they don't flower! I am also harvesting potatoes from yellowing and flowerless foliage!

But aren`t they tasty

The ongoing spud raising continues with another two rows, Charlots this time.

That's the variety I think I'll go for next year. Lady Cristl are OK, but having heard people rave about them I'm a little bit underwhelmed. The skins are bitter for a start...

The problem with taties is that it all depends on your soil type. I am sure Zoe will give you some suggestions: what type of soil have you got?

Wood Troll is right about the soil and there is also what people can taste. Some people seem to be able really taste that hash after taste others don't.....perhaps a new thread? Which potato??

I guess nobody's been writing in to this one but today I finally finished weeding the garden. Of course, the things I started weeding some days ago have little ones coming up. Sigh.

At least I don't have a job. Having to stay out of the sun (or be completely covered up from it) makes working in the garden less fun than it should be.

However, today, after a couple of weeks of drought and temperatures in the high 80sFarenheit or low 90s Farenheit was rainy. Cloudy, a little cooler and raining. It was wonderful.

I've been hauling water to the far-flung garden plots in big buckets and a two-gallon watering can and boy can I feel in it my shoulders!!

However, the butternut squash is doing well, thank goodness, and the plot it's in is way far from the hose so I can't even try to reach it. I've kept them pretty weeded and as watered as I could stand hauling.

Soon Mike will be working on digging up the garlic. I sure hope the drought didn't make the garlic bulbs smaller than usual. I love the garlic but the small cloves are the pits.

Hope everybody's garden is lovely this year. With the help of our grandson and a new lawn mower we not only have a veg garden in good shape this year but our pathways are mowed and the areas around the raised bed, the fire pit and the clothes line have been kept more or less mowed so this place looks relatively civilized.

Keeping the driveway mowed is one of the weirder parts of all this. We just don't get enough traffic.

yesterday I cleaned out the eglu, the two large wooden houses, the walk in run and all the feeders and drinkers, filled 8 compost bins with assorted stuff, moved 8 wheel barrowloads of an old bonfire pile to somewhere else ( lots of digging involved), hand mowed around the potato patch ( the raised bed ones), tidied the barn and swept the paved areas, watered and fed the polytunnel and picked lots of stuff.

I also did lots of inside, housework...so I fell asleep on the sofa later on...