This is year 3 for my asparagus bed and it's been cropping heavily for about 2 or 3 weeks now and I've been harvesting the spears for the first time. The first flush seems to be coming to an end. Should I stop cutting the spears now, or can I have more once another flush comes along? The bed has bee...

Sorry! Having attachment problems - will sort later:(

Hello Westi, I'm a bit late to this, but it does look like a nasty infestation of box moth. We had an awful lot of this come in a couple of summers ago and it's a familiar pest. It's a nasty thing but with diligence, and the right treatment, you can get rid of it. We used xentari. It's not licenced ...

Evening, all, waving from deepest darkest Dorset after one of my shamefully prolonged absences. I've just been having a catch up on posts and see that everyone else seems to be having what is, at best, a mediocre season. Lots of things in my kitchen garden are struggling, except for the snails and s...

I've been fleecing up in my cold greenhouses despite what the weather forecast says - it's been at least 1.5 below the forecast temperature quite regularly here over the last few nights and so they've been frosty ones. One pot of early spuds in the greenhouse got its leaves nipped by frost when I mi...

Geoff wrote:Bit of light reading viewtopic.php?f=4&t=9517&hilit=tomato+graft

Thanks for the link, Geoff, it's very informative. And I now want to graft an aubergine as well as my tomatoes!

I'll be happy to graft one! I found my unused seeds and had completely forgotten that in anticipation of failure, I still had 2 rootstock seedlings untouched. They're a weedy looking pair so I shall leave them to fatten up for a while and use them once they're a bit sturdier. The experiment continues!

Colin2016 wrote:"Cut some more PSB today - such lovely stuff. Having it with pasta and ragu sauce for tonight's dinner."

Sounds very tasty to me, going to do mine with lots of olive oil, leeks & pasta.

Yum! Just as tasty!

Yup, still breezy now, Westi, although it's supposed to be calming down in the next couple of hours - hope everything has stayed put on your allotment. I can't pot on any more tomatoes, as I've run out of pots. Tsk. I'm going to chance some toms in the unheated greenhouse, but I may well need to get...

Thanks for the encouragement, chaps, I shall sow the rest of my rootstock seeds today. It was always intended to be an experiment and something to learn from, so I'm not daunted by first time failure. And I really do have so very many tomato plants! Potted on another load today - my sister in law as...

Lordy, it blew and howled last night! Everything is still in tact, thankfully, and nothing is the worse for it. I'm waiting for the weekend to put my overwintering sweet peas into their final home of a couple of large pots with canes, or at least once the wind has died down. I sowed some leek seeds ...

A quick update - failed at the first hurdle. Boo hoo. I followed the instructions on the Kings Seeds site and grafted at an early stage, once the first two leaves had appeared but I think this was too early and the stems just weren't sturdy enough to stand the weight of the graft and the grafting cl...

We had sparrow terraces at our old house (3 wide boxes, each subdivided into 3 individual compartments) and when hubby cleaned them out each year, he often found sprigs of lavender and bay leaves in them. Ahhhh!

Hubby and I were contemplating putting down bark chippings on the pathways between the raised beds and greenhouses but we've postponed until tomorrow. We can do either wind or rain, but we have both in large quantities this afternoon. I have no excuse not to get the VAT stuff to the accountant now. ...

Cola works on quite a lot of things, including dissolving teeth! It contains a reasonably high level of phosphoric acid. If you buy some new jeans and want to soften them up, put them on a wash with an added can of cola poured in - works a treat!