Yes, Peter, tomatoes was what I was going to respond to Jennnifer. But you are very lucky, Jennifer, to get so much. I don't; I did get a couple of peaches, which I tried to grow on, but they got the leaf curl the following year and didn't make much of themselves.

What's your climate like, Dahlis, where you live? I don't know enough about Oz, but I think you have rather warm winters compared with ours. Or is it somewhat cooler in the highlands? Do the varieties of veg we grow here sound familiar, or do Australians have a completely different set to choose fro...

Hello all. Dahlis has told me how to put images onto the forum, so I wonder if anyone will be interested after all in seeing what a dry bedford allotment looks like. Here's the first of 4. Yes, Weed, you may well laugh. The shed was cobbled together over a weekend about 3 years ago and cladded with ...

Primrose, I read some time ago a letter in the "Organic Way" magazine in which the writer triumphantly claimed to be getting excellent parsnips from 5-year-old seed. The secret is to keep it in the fridge in a jar with asilica gel sachet. I tried this and found to my surprise that it worke...

Thank you Tigger. Redwillowrose, good luck. I think I was in a similar position 4 years back when I took over the clearing of my two plots, which hadn't been cultivated for at least a year. It took surprisingly little time to clear, but you could stage it, say a quarter or a third under cultivation ...

Thank you for your consideration, Chantal. But what does "PM"ing mean? And Redwillowrose, I envy your environment. When i first applied to the council here to get ontotheir waiting list, they just laughed at me. What waiting list? It seems Bedford is a bit of a dead area for enthusiasm, al...

When I started growing toms my aunt told me that when I used the tomorite I should give the leaves a sprinkling as well as the base. Now that I use organic products, I am very happy to do this with SM3, a seaweed based fertiliser, because the leaves of all plants benefit from it. But, oh thanks, Cha...

Hello there, Figtree. I once knocked a shoot off a gooseberry bush by accident, stuck it in the ground and 2 years leter it was fruiting. However, if the person you are getting the cuttings from has really bushy bushes, it might be to your mutual interest to dig them up and divide them. Then his/her...

Amo, I can endorse what almost everyone has said. As a teacher, I frequently have rather less than your 3-5 hours, and I am very glad of school holidays. I am in the process of changing my allotment to raised beds and I don't think you'll regret it. As you get each bed ready you will be able to grow...

My schedule is similar to yours, Wellie. I recently found one small green squash forming on my one surviving plant [the others turned out to be pumpkins, so I've got rather more of those than i thought!] I should learn. Each year I despair of getting any butternuts, and then sure enough, they start ...

Thank you, Sanders. I've personally never bothered to protect the curds, and their taste has not been affected, but yes, come to think of it, they have become slightly discoloured some of them. I only plant in August for spring maturing, so the issue of sun is not such a problem as for summer/autumn...

DahlisMarie, I have 4 pictures of my allotment in driest Bedford [but we had had some rain when they were taken]. As I suspected, however, I have no idea how to get them from the cd they are on onto this site. I'll keep on trying, but, if you are still interested, you can email me with your email ad...

Congratulations Chantal. You seem like a great person and I hope Tim appreciates what a fine future he's letting himself in for. More hands to the watering-cans no doubt.

Very best of luck

mike

Yes, Johnboy, I have had similar experience with seeds of Outdoor Girl. I collected them from one fruit the summer before last, dried them on kitched towel before storing them in the fridge. The plants came up excellently the following spring and fruited well, but this year the fruits have been rath...

Thanks a lot for this topic everyone. This is the first year I have grown elephant garlic and I assumed that I could plant a row of them this autumn and see how they fared. But now I'll do that with half of them and pot up the rest - thanks for that tip, Deb - and overwinter them in the greenhouse. ...