Thanks cedarblue! ^.^ Grew them in a greenhouse and for a bit outside (a couple of days) as the weather has been nice =]
Thanks cedarblue! ^.^ Grew them in a greenhouse and for a bit outside (a couple of days) as the weather has been nice =]
Dug more holes, mooved more chalk.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
harvested some sweetcorn today and finally my toms are going red, yellow and purple.
have picked 3 large cues and many courgettes.
oooh, everyone is so productive
i have a couple of blokes coming to get my garden into some sort of manageable state in the next few weeks.. i'm afraid after all this procrastination, i stll can't face it. i am still composting though..and a peek inside the bin shows that it's really rotted down amazingly!!
hopefully when it's a lot more managable i can start getting interested and sorted for growing some stuff
ahronli sed ah dunit so thid tek thuh cheyus graytuh offa mi nihbles
phew - i guess no-one has been in their garden since aug 12th!
today i pulled up the tomato plants that either have rot due to the amount of rain we have had or potato blight, i have to research both problems.
i harvested parsnips, round carrots, pink fir apple potatoes and onion which we had for lunch, the only non-home produced items on the plate were some stuffing and gravy!! yum yum
i have pulled my onions and strung them up in the kitchen - note to self, next year grow more onions! - red and white, and shallots.
pulled up empty corn plants (the cob were just delicious!) and harvested apples from tree from which husband made an apple, pecan and caramel tart.
also been digging up a very old rose bush which had a root system on it 4" across!
I think this is the first year I don't have any tomato plants.
We have two small newish apple trees. One has several small apples on it which are quite tasty. The other has just one quite large one which doesn't seem 'loose' yet so I'm leaving it to grow some more. Is this the right thing to do?
Idleness is not doing nothing. Idleness is being free to do anything. - Floyd Dell
Ither witch way. If you leev it it can only get tastyer. If you pick it now it may tast tart then I'd serjest steeming it for a small puding. Keep the tree waterd so the frute stays as long as posible. What is the name of the tree? ( Jerry Ha Ha Ha )Some are early some are mid seeson and some are late pickers. It depends on what ya got.
I have a very old tree that has been dropping frute for some time now ( to dry ) and the pips are still white. Thees I steem and mix with Blackburrys ( of witch I'v picked 7 kg so far ) The Coxes Orange Pipen did have two fruts on it. One the woodlice got to after it had an open woond from tuching a leef, and the other droped way to early to be eaten ( to dry ). Me gona proon the old tree realy good this Autom.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
[quote=cedarblue;355253]phew - i guess no-one has been in their garden since aug 12th!
To bizzy in the garden to go on tinternet.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
cedar, absolutly adorable slugs!
my lillies arent dooing to well in the hot weather ive had latley but my tomatos love it!
the aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, dunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
-henry miller
[QUOTE=Tibetan Snake;355820To bizzy in the garden to go on tinternet.[/QUOTE]
touche!!
It's great to hear about all your produce everybody! Our kale has come through really well and some little cabbages. We have quite a few things that seem to have have sprouted out of the compost! I didn't plant any beetroot but have quite a few and one really big one I picked today....How could that happen? We also have lots of quite big tomato plants sprouting out of one empty composter, they look pretty good but we didn't plant them either!!
my cucumbers are brilliant, averaging 1 or 2 a week off a couple of plants grown from seed, wish i'd grown more!
You could make a cucumber and avocado lassi
1/2 small cucumber
fresh mint, chopped
1/2 avocado, mashed
50 ml soya yoghurt
Juice the cucumber and pour into blender. Add fresh mint, avocado, soya yog.
Blend and serve decorated with mint sprig and slices of cucumber...
I've never had one of these but was just looking at the recipe and thought it might be good!
just dug up some fantastic carrotts
can you eat the carrott tops?
i'll re-phrase that, i've just eaten a cartrott top, am i gonna die?
I dont get crunchy people?
Yes, it'll take a while though, and a lot of screaming
"I don't want to live on this planet any more" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
dug up some parsnips, carrots & onion & leek for lunch today
[cornish pasties;mince, carrots, leek, onion, garlic with roast parsnips avec maple syrup, steamed brocolli, roast spuds, mints sauce, gravy YUM]
cleared out the dead sweetcorn canes, took up the dead brocolli plants though there are some still sprouting from roun the main spear which was cut off.
repotted my small bay tree [7"] into bigger pot.
harvested two more cucumbers.
amazed to see the butternut squash patch, which i thought had had it due to slug damage, displaying 3 biggish squash and half a dozen biddy ones too!
Hi VBB
As far as i know, carrot tops are completely harmless. I've eaten them before with no ill effects. Even eating a bit of soil covering the carrot is actually quite beneficial (as long as its not chemically treated, or had fresh manure put on) Fertile soil contains a certain amount of naturally occurring B12.
Hope this helps
vbb, do you mean the tops of the carrot or the carrot top greens??
i have been eating the leaves from the green bit. apparantly they are ok but high in pottasium so you shouldnt consume too many. i think they're very nice
(and the bit you're supposed to eat are fantastic)
I dont get crunchy people?
i know people who use the green tops in green smoothies and they seem ok!
The only thing i have grown this year is parsley on my kitchen window sill. As fast as i eat it , it grows back, which is good. I miss not having a garden and allotment since i moved to the flat i am in, but i have put my name down for an allotment in this area. They are more popular in this part of Surrey though, so might have to wait quite a while. Still, at least my mum gives me some of her produce when i visit her, the last time i came back from hers, i was loaded down with tomatoes, swiss chard and homemade plum jam, which is yummy. My daughters (11 and 3) loved the allotment we had, i think its great for kids to grow their own veggies, they would eat stuff they wouldn't touch normally, because they had planted it and watched it grow (peas straight from the pod to the mouth, raspberries, radishes etc) Our fingers are crossed for a plot for next spring.
today i picked apples and blackberries from my garden, to make a crumble.
also cut my herbs, sage, rosemary, chives, thyme, pepper mint, corsican mint, nasturshums, garlic, lemon balm. however the harvest is tainted with sadness as my garden is being dug up this week to be levelled off and landscaped. it's a shame as all the plants look so lovely and most of them will be gone by the end of the week
i know the landscaping needs to be done as the garden is so hard to manage at the moment.
i've just been tying white ribbons around the really precious plants that i want to keep
when everything changes...change everything
mmmmmm blackberry & apple crumble - i think i'll make that later!!
hopefully you will be able to work with the garden when its been done in terms of herbs, fruit, veggies pheonix rising?
more carrots, onions & parsnips from garden yesterday for roast dinner.
my jerusalem artichoke buds are starting to open, i've heard the flowers are similar to sunflowers.
when everything changes...change everything
I had some which were doing pretty well but my husband mowed over them thinking they were weeds..One is still trying to survive. Marrows are doing well and the kale suppy is constant
i just built a cage to go over the top of my pond to stop suicidal hedgehogs its not the best but it'll do for now!
I dont get crunchy people?
Due to the poor Summer, my butternut squash are obviously not going to ripen. I've sometimes bought butternut squash that turned out not to be fully ripe and the flavour (I usually just boil them) was disappointing. Can I use them like courgettes (which after all are basically immature marrows) which I normally slice and fry for a minute before adding tomatoes and sweet pepper?
in my exerience mzee, if you chop squash up small and fry, it doesn't take long to soften. why not try roasting it with olive oil drizzled over? - it's delicious!
we ate a butternut squash on saturday in our curry and it was perfect!
Thank you, cedarblue; I'll give it a try. I think we might get a ground frost later this week, so I'll need to cut them soon. I hope I don't find the slugs have eaten away the bits I can't see!
I think my gardening days are over for this year. Oh well, I shall try again next spring.
...actually this week in the garden ...
I planted the first of my winter crops (lettuces, spinach, kale, beets, & carrots) and built coldframes so hopefully I don't have a germination problem like last year.
I also planted garlic for harvest next summer and put chives and rosemary in my permanent bed.
Finally I mulched my lemon grass really well in hopes that it will make it through the winter.
Next week I want to plant radishes & chard.
Realy proond the old Apple tree hard. It looks like it has worm so if it falls over next year then there will not be to much damage to the stuff near it, and if it is as dry as this year perhaps a smaller top will help the froot to stay on untill there ripe.
DON'T BEEMOAN THE DARK. LIGHT A CANDLE AND SHOW THE WAY.
I've been scrubbing and disinfecting all those pots that have been lying around since end of summer! It's taking forever!
Next year will be different ... I'll scrub 'em and put 'em away as I've finished with them... honest I will!
'course you will - just like i did!
nothing doing in the garden right now, still harvesting parsnips, carrots, kale, brussel sprouts, chard, peppers, chillis, cape gooseberries
chillis, peppers, gooseberries, carrots, kale all harvested. a couple of parsnips, tiny bit of chard and couple of sticks of sprouts left now.
we are going to buy and erect one of these instead of a greenhouse.
http://www.firsttunnels.co.uk/polytunnel.asp?cbowidth=8
first we need to hire a skip (muchos ££) and clear the area and then buy (more ££) and erect!
Hi, cedarblue,
My old gardening book "Peter Seabrooks's Complete Vegetable Gardener" 1976 (ISBN 0 304 29738 0) gives instructions on making your own polytunnel!
[I haven't tried this and I haven't checked his calculations of the lengths, either - perhaps you could do a scale drawing to make sure everything is OK before buying the materials.]
For a 3m x 4m tunnel, you require 3x 6.4m lengths of 10mm bore galvanised water pipe for the hoops. Drive a series of short posts into the ground in a semi-circle and bend the pipes around them. The hoops are drilled near their ends for nails which fix the hoops to 6 stakes driven into the ground in the correct position in the garden.
2x1.5m lengths of straight pipe are drilled and wired to the tops of the hoops to form the ridge. (A single length of 10 gauge fencing wire passes through the 2 lengths and drilled holes at the top of each hoop.)
The cover is 1 piece of 7.3 x 7.3m 125 micron UVI polythene stretched over the top with the edges buried in trenches at each side.
Doors are made at each end. 2x 2.4m 5x5cm wooden uprights are fixed into the ground 1.2m apart, joined by a 1.2m wooden lintel. These are fixed to the 2 end hoops. The polythene is cut and folded around the door frame - it is covered with wooden strips and nails driven through into the frame.
A roll-up polythene sheet forms the actual door at each end. (A bit more work could make a wooden frame covered in polythene which would be a sliding door.)
So, a lot more work, but less £££! Of course, the neighbours might not be impressed, but they might not even like any polytunnel...
Last edited by Mzee; Jan 9th, 2008 at 08:39 PM. Reason: sizes
It's probably quite easy to get a free greenhouse from freecycle if you wanted to save some cash.
"I don't want to live on this planet any more" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
actually it's not so easy risker, certainly not in my area. i'm checking it every day, they are never on there and very rarely in the newspaper ads either.
I saw the first snowdrops in my garden today! How exciting.
there are a few dozen of the flower heads fully through and thousands more poking the green up.
I want a garden back, university is so rubbish
It's nice to browse through the seed catalogues with a big mug of tea and be all optimistic about spring being round the corner
My greenhouse is a right mess, full of manky pots that need cleaning, but gigantic spiders are squating there at the mo and I don't want to turf them out
Still got leeks and sprouts at the allotment but haven't been since xmas.
here comes the sun
Not as scared as when you're chilling out on the sofa with a glass of wine at night and one scuttles towards you faster than Lewis Hamilton
They don't bother me when they're outdoors, they just have a knack of taking me by surprise
For indoors I have a fantastic spider catcher to remove them to the garden but if they're really big my 6 year old has to do it for me
I actually find them fascinating, but from a distance.
here comes the sun
p.s. thanks for the building instructions - i'll pass them onto my husband and see what he thinks. our problem is time, i could'nt make it on my own and he works lots of weekends. we'll see. thanks again.
"I don't want to live on this planet any more" - Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth
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