What have you done in the garden today?

30 tomatoes in the ground today all staked and sorted - 20 more potted up and in the greenhouse - more onions in and hopefully tomorrow more ground turned for spuds and onions and beets

I have a nearly red tomato on the Latah plant in the polytunnel...and allthe other 40 plants in there are laden with fruit.

THe outside plants are nearly as good, I have 12 more outside and another 5 to plant out into the ground. And ifI don't sell the last few I will put them out as well - I can always sell surplus toms at the gate!

Glad you have got into the swing of planting, again

Looked on in dismay. Sparrows have dust-bathed amongst my leeks, burying and pecking them as they did so. Something has eaten through the netting and eaten ALL the ripe strawberries. A row of carrots have been mowed off to a line of green stalks, the beans are nibbled, and the garlic looks to have white rot.

To cap it all, something has bitten a hole in my hosepipe. Not happy.

Chilli-head wrote:Looked on in dismay. Sparrows have dust-bathed amongst my leeks, burying and pecking them as they did so. Something has eaten through the netting and eaten ALL the ripe strawberries. A row of carrots have been mowed off to a line of green stalks, the beans are nibbled, and the garlic looks to have white rot.

To cap it all, something has bitten a hole in my hosepipe. Not happy.

Oh dear Have a and a very large .

I have surplus leeks; if I could think of a way to post them to you, intact, I would.

Thanks for the kind thoughts you two. Had a better day on Saturday - I had some leek plugs left over so I've squeezed in another row, and planted out another 3 wigwams of beans with the help of C-H Jnr, who was pretty handy at making the wigwams !

Hoping the carrots will grow back, because at the moment they are a bit too small do to much with,, about pencil thickness.

They will be fine, ours only went in last week at about that size, for eating in Dec/Jan/Feb.

More worried here about the last two night's temperatures 2.1 C and last night, 1.9 C

I covered up as much as I could with fleece, but I couldn't cover up everything.

Off out in the rain to take a look at the possible damage.

Yes - glad I didn't clean out the wood burner 'for the summer'. I don't think the temperatures sank that low here in the pulsating metropolis and urban sprawl of town, but it was certainly chilly. No damage as far as I can see though.

Yes, everything looks ok - but the outside toms will have been checked by it, anything less than 10 C and they are slowed down for a bit.

"Pulsing metropolis"? "Urban sprawl" ? We are talking about Ledbury, right?

Over a dozen container plantings of toms at MIL place, a container of chard and one of spinach. Have moved our containers of herbs and onions from old place to MIL and they are set out and doing nicely. Made the van smell lovely, I assure you, lol. Not as ambitious as I'd hoped to have been this year, but it's getting something for the table anyway.

Finally it is sunny here again, after weeks of miserable weather! so we have started planting out some Autumn seeds, some borage, some rainbow chard, some broccolli and even some sunflowers! the sunflower sprouts are delish in my salad I have also pruned back to within an inch of its life the bush basil that was taking over the pathway, which means Gully can now ride his bike down in again. We have also plated out the window boxes in his Cubby house, I will post some pics when they flower. ahh the joy in getting my hands dirty!

I did a quick patrol of the plot this morning, to check how my bean varieties are getting along.
Cobra are leading the way up their poles. Blue lake are following behind, with Yard long sitting sulking at the bottom, looking rather unwell. Still, there's time yet. I'm hoping that they won't all come ready at once !

Leek Musselburgh look to be off to a good start. I generally grow Musselburgh and an experimental variety each year - this year it is Startrack - but despite all the glowing words in the seed catalogues, the old favourite always seems to outperform the other varieties. Mind you, everything is marvellous according to seed catalogues. I wish they were more honest; in fact perhaps we need a thread of unbiassed accounts of vegetable varieties, including the downsides ...

My spuds and broad beans and spinach are terrific as are the courgettes, carrots, onions, shallots and leeks are good, parsnips, celeriac and celery doing OK

French and clinbingbeans are ribbish - hardly a couple of fett up the poles or in some cases still sulking at ground level...am really a bit worried about a serious lack of beans.

Previous years would be eating dwarf beans by now...>!

I am a bit concerned about my lawn,it has some suspicious brown marks on it, and as I have had lawn grubs before I am well aware of how much damage they can cause. I have put out some cardboard tonight so hoping I don't find any little suckers under there in the morning!

Chilli-head wrote: Mind you, everything is marvellous according to seed catalogues. I wish they were more honest; in fact perhaps we need a thread of unbiassed accounts of vegetable varieties, including the downsides ...

woohoo no grubs! then I think maybe it is my puppy dogs toxic wee ,she used to only poo and wee on the pavement which made it easy to clean up but not anymore oh well, has anyone found dogs bane to actually work?

Losts of clearing up at the moment.

I now have 3 water butts in place, number 4 is on the way.

Forgot to add this & can`t find the edit button.

I have also been thinking hard about what to grow next year thinking about the general situation with money & the weather. I think the answer for the OH & I is to think what we eat & go with that. It still takes some thopught though.

Emptied one of baked bean tins today, nice bunch of spring onions, even look nicer than the ones you buy. So well pleased with that. Must plant lots more so that OH can have them in sarnies etc.

Also onme of the new water butts is filling up & working well OH is very pleased with himself, as he should be.

Today I have prepped and stuck 30 rose cuttings.


And potted on 70 odd chilli plants - four varieties, should give us enough for the year

I also took time to admire my very first Black Hollyhock.

Envy the black hollyhock. It's lovely.

All I did today was cut grass and burn up some branch trimmings. This may have been where I got the poison oak rash, as we'd done this last weekend too. DW got it so bad on her face her eyes were swelling shut and had to go to doc for cortisone shot. Yikes!!

Badger - I'm interested in your chilli plants. From the size in the picture, do you get a long enough season for them to ripen ? I have no real idea of what your climate is like. What varieties are you growing ?

Also ... you need 70 chilli plants for a year's supply ? Respect

CH

I can have the chillis growing until late October in our climate - our summer starts later than yours, but ends later as well. These are rather small as I am about a month behind with everything this year.

I have
Bulgarian Orange Carrot
Jalapeno (of course)
Kung Pao
and a nother whose name escapes me - I will check when I go out to the greenhouse later (am still in m'jammies)..

I grow a lot to pickle and dry and usually end up giving some away as gifts - hence the 70 plants...

I have 50 + tomato plants in as well, down on last year, but again a years supply..

Edit.

Serrano Chili was the missing 4th variety

The strawberries are finished (I took the nets off and let the blackbirds have the last few little wierd ones) so I tidied up the bed, cut them back and raked the straw off.
Then I decided that the supports under the enviromesh on the brassica bed needed to be taller as the swedes are looking a bit crushed, so I messed around finding/cutting canes the right length, deciding they weren't the right length, getting them right then putting little flowerpots on the top to support the mesh which promptly fell on the garden. Does anyone else have 'irritable Saturdays' when after the week you feel all tetchy? It was one of those - things kept snapping, I kept tripping over and would repeatedly lose the tools I was using. But it's done now - the butterflies are kept at bay and the swedes are happier.

Just looked up those chillies - I like the sound of the Bulgarian Orange Carrot ! Chilli gifts are a great idea - I was thinking that for two people 70 plants would be rather a lot of chiili !

I'm growing Hungarian Wax, Thai dragon, Ancho, Mulato and Rocoto, as well as bell peppers California Wonder and Gourmet. The Hungarian wax are just about ready, but the Rocotos need a long season and are just at flowering stage.

Today I've been having a go at plaiting my softneck garlic, following -> these instructions <- I found by Google. Seems to work nicely.

I had a poke around at the allotment last night and found lots of Cinnabar caterpillars all over the place. Unusually for an infestation, they appear to preferentially eat the weeds ! How good is that. And I seem to have some sort of black aphid preferentially eating the Fat Hen. Perhaps I can hang up my hoe for a while.

Whilst there I harvested new potatoes, beetroot, Nantes carrots (now I wonder where those seed came from ), calabrese and Purple Moldovan hardneck garlic. Tonight it will be a Indonesian vegetable curry