Early summer bits and bobs

[John P]

Planted out Asparagus Peas yesterday,along with Little Gem,Boltardy Beetroot and Curly Kale. Broad beans,Hispi cabbage,Peas onward and early spuds coming along well. Tomatoes and Chillies still growing dispite the cold nights.Have nearly given up on the Sweetcorn,still in the greenhouse but moving very slowly. JP.

[donedigging]

Another lovely day here by the looks of things.
I love the bird song at this time of day

[oldherbaceous]

Morning Donedigging, at last it is light in the morning when we get up.

[donedigging]

Good morning OH. At least you won't have to put your lights on your wheel barrow this morning

[Monika]

Another great gardening day: put in all the pea sticks (buddleia cuttings), planted beetroot and rhubarb chard from roottrainers, dwarf beans under netting cloche and lots of flowers (cutting asters, cosmos, lavatera, tagetes) and watered and weeded and watered and weeded ....

Just off into the greenhouse now to pot on marrow and courgette plants into larger pots because it is still a little early for us to plants them outside.

[oldherbaceous]

I planted out 70 Celeriac plants earlier this evening, never grown them before, so i'm sure they will test my gardening skills, or lack of them.

[Geoff]

No planting for me for a week, off to beautiful Argyll and Bute. Hope the neighbour can cope with the watering with this spell of weather, didn't have a tunnel at 15 minutes a go last time he did it.

[alan refail]

Is this constant sunshine every day what we used to call "summer"

[Monika]

OH, just make sure you give your celeriac plenty of water ! And an occasional feed - they are hungry and thirsty plants, I find.

Runner beans, climbing beans and French beans are planted in the garden at home where I can keep an eye on them, just in case, but I will wait till the weekend to plant them on the windy allotment.

At the moment, we just seem to spend most of time watering.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Monika, thank you for the advice, i will follow it closely.

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Sally, a lady who i work for on a Wednesday morning, came to visit the gardens that you work at, this Wednesday afternoon. She said that she had a wonderful time and was very impressed. I did tell her you worked there.

[Clive.]

I was pondering the other day....does anyone know of a source of these wire cages these days. We have quite a few still but they are getting a bit tired...they will have been on site for many decades....

We use narrow galvanised wire mesh on the roll...but my pondering is about finding the real thing.

I think there are some ends, somewhere about, for them...that suggest they could have been more rounded at one time.?

As can be seen from my size 9 the wire cages are 3ft long so can be suitable for gardens small, or in quantity, large.
They could be posted out, delivered across the world first?, flat in simple card packaging...so quite a marketable item..??

Clive.

[Primrose]

I don't know the answer to this one but I could certainly do with a few of these to keep the darned pigeons off my young greens.
I've got some Perspex cloches of the same shape but now the weather's warming up the plants under them need to be exposed to the rain to keep them watered. I suppose one could buy sheets of wire and "bend" them up into tunnel shape but then you'd be left with a lot of jagged side bits to rest on the soil. We have all these experts coming up with highly technical innovations in the IT world. Pity some of them aren't gardeners who can come up with some gardening equivalents of an I-pad !

[Monika]

Primrose, we bought a roll of 3 foot wire netting some years ago, cut it up into manageable lengths and bent the jagged ends into the tunnel. They have so far lasted for years and are, I would suspect, considerably cheaper than single short tunnels.

You could also buy 3 metre long netting tunnels (I think I bought mine from Haxnicks) which are white, not dark green, and quite tall which have also lasted three years so far and are still perfect. They have the advantage of having self-closing ends.

[peter]

Get a roll of 4' high chicken wire and a roll of galvanised fencing "straining" wire.

Tools, gloves, tin snips, strong wire cutters, two pairs of good pliers (or one & some molegrips).

Cut 3' of chicken wire, 2 x 4'4" & 3 x 4' of straining wire.

Straighten the 2 longer wires.

Thread the three wires (stitch) through the chicken wire, at top and bottom (neat edges) & middle.

Either stitch in the same manner or fold the jagged chicken wire over the 2 longerwires, use the pliers to wrap the spare 2" at each end round the shorter wires, ensuring they have 6" spare each end. Use thin wire to tiewrap the middle short wire to the longer ones.

Bend the three shorter wires into hoops of the shape you desire.

For ends unroll some chikenwire, stand the cloche on the top or hottom edge (neat edge) with the 6" spikes off the chicken wire , use the tinsnips to cut round the outside of the hoop, at least 2" bigger, to give an oversized semicircle. Keeping the cloche stood on the semicircle fold the 2" overlap up and through/over/in the main bit of chicken wire.

Straining wire is I think 40' or 40m coil.
Chicken wire roll length not sure, mine is 30 years old leftover from mums chicken run and 5' high.