Early Summer Bits and Bobs.

[Westi]

2 hours to weed the strawberry beds! What a faff when they are fruiting - gently lifting the stalks & using a kitchen fork to get the bindweed & other nasties out! OK sounds OTT, but the weeds were giving the slimy things a bridge between plants & found a few fruit with fungal disease due to lack of ventilation & a result harvest wise as got another 2 punnets & can see I have quite a lot more to come. You know what I am like with bindweed, my personal challenge; so take of an hour off the time, a normal person would have done it in an hour tops! BTW I am normal (kind of), just sick of the stuff taking over!

[robo]

What I'd do westi is when the strawberries start to flower I get straw and twist it tightish I then place it under the flowers I sprinkle a few slug pellets around first but not a lot,the berries tend to sit on the straw as they grow keeping them clean

[Elmigo]

This is also just what I needed for my strawberries! I was thinking about our new plot, where I may create a really narrow strawberry bed. Then I can hang the strawberry flowers over the edge. Maybe something similar is possible for you. If you placed the strawberries in rows you can give each row a slightly heightened PVC pipe or something for the berries to "lean" on.

[Westi]

Hi Robo! I tried the straw but not twisted just thrown in the gaps! That makes much more sense - I just created a slug habitat & a crossing point! The big bed has all sorts of runners planted on it I haven't a clue what variety they are but have a few plants that are holding their fruit high - I've marked them & think they are the pink flowered ones. Not that I saw the flowers as they went into overdrive when the weather perked up & missed it, but the leaves around the fruit are drier even though fruit is superb & perfect & have a bit of a pink rather than brown tinge.

Hi Elmigo! I am going to put guttering around the edge of the asparagus bed next year as have 8' poles around them sturdy enough to hold a bit of soil & guttering & strawberries! & strawberries will be finished before the asparagus is just growing & it is wispy foliage anyway!

[Geoff]

What a difference a bit of sun and warmth make! Ate our first tomatoes today, Sungold, what a pleasure to get some flavour again. Even got the first flowers on the sweet peas.

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Different story with the over Winter onion sets. I wonder if they decided February was a season so after it went cold again it must be time to flower.

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[Elmigo]

Those sweet peas, there are so many of them! Do you still harvest those onions, directly after flowering or when the leaves start to turn brown?

[Primrose]

First tomatoes already Geoff? Obviously in a greenhouse. My outdoor ones have only just started to flower !

Do all of you have your "First ceremonial picking and tasting of the year" in your households? It's a bit of a tradition here.

Less to celebrate with my blackcurrant bushes. Noticed when I rushed out somewhere yesterday in a hurry that the protective netting had slipped in the wind. Made a mental note to fix it immediately I returned. When I got back, would you believe, every darned blackcurrant had been pinched by wood pigeons, and the fruit wasn't even ripe yet. Hope the damned birds have the king of all belly aches.

[Geoff]

I do grow a long row of sweet peas, Elmigo, everybody loves them and we barter them with a local farmer for eggs and the lady on a vegetable stall we use occasionally swaps them for things like avocados. There are 88 plants of 22 varieties. I take the flowers off the onions and we just use them as we need them straight out of the ground, they won't keep even if I leave them to the drying stage. There are three varieties and they have all done it, I planted a few spares in the greenhouse and they have been fine so it must be weather.

Yes Primrose we always celebrate the first tomatoes, probably the first of everything in truth, though I have realised I don't put 'first tomato' in Dear Diary.

[Colin2016]

Have you noticed the onions going to seed early this year?

Been eating the scrapes from my onions for past 6 weeks, had a few from the hard neck garlic last night.

[Monika]

Those sweet peas look grand, Geoff! This year will the first year we have not grown peas or sweet peas at home because we must have at least six house sparrow nests in the garden and in the last two years the birds have completely devastated the plants. This year they are concentrating on the beetroot which are now mostly leafless. Oh, what it is is to to be kind to wildlife .....

On your onions, Geoff: I have found overwintering shallots are much less likely to flower than onions and now only grow those (they are ready now). But you don't get the size, of course.

[Monika]

Might it be time for a Mid-summer Bits and Bobs, OH?
I hope you have been away on holiday and not poorly!!

[oldherbaceous]

It is indeed time for Mid summer.......

Been so busy with everything, Monika, I have barely put a post on the forum....going to try and get a holiday in September!

[Geoff]

Just dug the last three roots of Rocket out of the tunnel and they weighed in at over 16 lbs. Going to see what they bake like, one is 1½ lbs.

[robo]

My onions have been a failure this year I don't think I will be storing many

[Westi]

Ditto robo! All my seed sown came to nothing & wouldn't unhook themselves & it was too wet for the sets, so the stalks succumbed to mould or bolted! Thankfully cheap to buy!