Winter chat and preparations

[tigerburnie]

Somewhere to maybe talk about non gardening related things, or perhaps loosely related to gardening......... plans for next year perhaps?

I shall be sowing Onion seeds in a months time, so that down season wasn't very long! I shall dig the electric propagator out of the shed in the next couple of weeks and see how much compost I have. I have a lot of seed to choose from:-
Mammoth Red Onion is a must for me, I really like the taste of them and I only lost one to bolting last summer(now I've gone and done it!!)
Organic Sturon will be my main white Onion, these will will go in the prop and when they are ready to come out, then the leeks will go in, I just hope they do better than last season as we lost the lot to bolting in all that heat.
Another job will be to order some new strawberry plants, Marshmello is one for outdoors and for inside the greenhouse a perpetual called Flamenco, the catalogue says both are disease resistant and good croppers. I shall grow the Flamenco in containers and a new bed will be made for the others.
The new bed is currently under grass, so when I get my strength back after mowing it, I shall dig a bed about 3 metres(yards) by half a metre(or a foot and a half), dig in some farmyard manure and the plants should arrive around March time.

[Shallot Man]

Best of luck.

[Westi]

I have sown some my onion seeds as I bought them from a farm in France & just following the instructions that came with them. I have a white, a pink, a brown & a red. The ones that I have sown are up but only tiny & I'm just leaving them in the tunnel on the staging. I can recommend Marshmello - superb taste & I've found the slimy things don't bother with them too much.

I am currently thinking of my 'experiments' for next year, definitely going to re-try the long watermelons but will find a sunny spot without active rats digging under them & will re-create the dripper & bubble wrap enclosure. Unsure on what else to consider but thinking I might re-visit trying a proper purple passionfruit vine as they are quite attractive as well as productive if weather is warming & have some seeds.

As it stands I will be down on the plot quite a bit over winter as want to sort out my wayward raspberry canes & still catching up on bed prep as just been too wet. On the wet subject another 3 days of heavy rain forecast & one of the weather apps with a yellow warning for flooding.

[tigerburnie]

I have a few fruits left on my autumn raspberries, left them for the birds as there's not many, I shall do my half and half pruning on them later this week before any hard frosts, there's a gooseberry to dig up as it gets really bad mildew on it no matter how I tried to improve the air flow through it, that will probably be it for out door gardening for this side of Hogmanay. We have a lot of rain forecast over the next week too,but we need it to top up the levels for next year.
I wonder if we will have two years on the trot of drought summers like we did in the mid 1970's?

[retropants]

I can also recommend Marshmello they are very sturdy plants, delicious fruit and lots of it, although maybe not as much per plant as elsanta, which I also grow.

[tigerburnie]

For some reason Elsanta plants didn't like my garden (or my growing methods!) first year were good, but the plants perished and that was before the drought hit. I previous years I have grown more than one variety in the same bed, then the runners go all over the place and I end up not knowing which are which. This new bed will just have one variety to save the confusion, the local farmers grow Elsanta, so maybe it is just me lol.
Another plant I've never grown is Blueberries, anyone recommend a good variety?

[retropants]

Tiger, I grow my strawberries in 10L buckets, (3 plants per bucket) as I only have a small space now, so it is easier to keep them separate. We took all our elsantas back from the allotment when we vacated 4 years ago, and I've been taking runners since then. (and giving loads away!)

[Geoff]

I've grown Symphony strawberries (bred in Scotland) from my own runners since original purchase in 2008. They are healthy, tasty, well shaped and prolific. They are not the earliest but I always put some in pots that are in the heated greenhouse until I run out of space and then move to the tunnel and they come reasonably early. I tried Centenary soon after its launch to see if I could spread the season but they were a disaster just shrivelling up and dying with some sort of virus. Outside I have three beds and every third year I consign the plants to the bonfire and change the soil in that bed with some from the veg plot, usually the potato bed.

[Shallot Man]

Geoff. Have mentioned this before. many years ago, visiting another allotment site, was speaking to a Pole working his plot. I say working, he was running a lawn mower over his Strawbery bed. Told me this was a regular thing in Poland. This way they never bought replacement strawberry plants every three years. So, from then on, I did same, though not as low as he did.

[robo]

My project this winter is to try and plumb up a pear bush I planted around six years ago if it wasn’t so prolific every autumn I think I would dig it up but now I have a decent stake knocked into the clay subsoil and a webbing going from the bush to the stake when it’s rained a lot like now I pull the bush back and tighten the webbing up to now it’s working

[tigerburnie]

That mowing the strawberries is a new one, I've heard of a few ideas from other countries, you learn new things all the time.

[oldherbaceous]

I’m sure Johnboy used to do this to his Strawberries….

[Colin2016]

Got the mowing strawberry tip from here a few years ago, it works for me.

[tigerburnie]

Do you not move the plants to a new bed to prevent any likelihood of a build-up of pests or diseases?

[Shallot Man]

tigerburnie. Nope. They stayed in the same bed until I gave up the plot. Some 10 years. Never had any problems.