Mid Summer Bits and Bobs - 2016.

[Primrose]

After two days of gusty winds some of my climbing bean and tomato poles are leaning at rather precarious angles and with plants tied or twisted round the poles and heavy with crops and foliage it's proving difficult to stabilise them again and anchor them in an upright position without damaging the plants.

Returned from holiday to find a couple of small ripe "peppers" on one of my plants so they were chopped up and used. My husband complained that his fingers and eyes stung when chopping and frying them and the cous cous in which they were used was unbearably hot. They were obviously chillies resembling a Hungarian Hot Wax variety. i have six plants, the seeds of which all came from the same packet of long Italian pointy peppers so a bit of a mystery how one turned out to be a chilli. I know the seeds and plants look pretty identical but wonder if anybody else has experienced these "rogue" variants when growing these plants. Perhaps a odd seed got accidentally packed wrongly at the packing bench station.

[Ricard with an H]

That could have been even worse if he'd had the need for a pee, it happened to me once. Very hot and in a tender place.

[dan3008]

ricard... On my degree, we had to do a catering demonstration, any one of the lads did exactly that, just before getting up to do his demonstration... he spent the whole time dancing from foot to foot trying not to cry lol

[PLUMPUDDING]

I would think it was a stray seed Primrose, but the variety of hot wax peppers I bought from Real Seeds that were described as medium, not too hot, had a mixture of heats on the same plant. These ranged from pleasantly spicy to blow your head off. It was like playing Russian roulette.

I've been growing the long pointy Italian ones for the past three years from seeds I saved from a very nice one from the shop and they are still doing well.

[Geoff]

Dumped another 33.8 mm on us today. River was quite impressive when I took the dog for a walk after it let up.

[snooky]

Finally the"Man" has started to lay the base for my new shed which I promised myself as a 70th birthday present instead of "treating"my family to a party.A discussion took place on which machine was most dangerous in man(or womans)hands;chainsaw or forklift truck.
We agreed to disagree.I reckon the forklift truck(having a few near misses) is the most dangerous,he,the chainsaw.Any other suggestions?

[dan3008]

Forklift is definitely more dangerous. However, overall I recon chainsaws are responsible for a lot mot accidents

[Shallot Man]

Many years ago I drove fork lifts of all sizes [ well up to 30 tons.]. The secret of operating it safely. Consider everyone within a mile radius of you is, deaf, dumb, and blind, maybe add moron to the list.

[Shallot Man]

Just come back from the plot. Xmas Pippin apple has nice lot of fruit on it. Notice I have started getting bloom's on it. Idea's.

[Westi]

Wow! First day of Autumn tomorrow.

Slow start to Summer but OK when it finally got here, but would have been more fun without the very early blight & the critters that caused me so much trouble. In the last 2 days I found 3 dead rats on the plot so the council rat bait man must have been down, shame he didn't come more often & that they didn't decide to die in the hedge row!

I've has some wins & some losses, pleased with my veg that won in the show & generally with my brassicas, which is an achievement in itself - even my last winter's cabbages are hearting up so might be the first to have a savoy! Not pleased with some of my other stuff, my salad beds have been disappointing, but got a crop so shan't complain, my garlic was rubbish, blight attack & all evidence of my hard work over winter improving my soil doesn't seem to have had much impact, still too sandy to hold much moisture!

Not to worry, more gardening challenges to come no doubt, fingers crossed for an Indian Summer then!

Westi

[oldherbaceous]

Dear Westi, i would just like to say what a wonderful job you are doing of keeping the forum going at the moment. It members like you and others, that keep the forum going in tough times. I really have been lacking on posts this year, through one thing and another, but will try and get back into things soon.

[Primrose]

Westi, I really sympathise with the problems you have with your non moisture retentive soil. We have the same problem here and it seems that however much available humous you shove onto it!s never enough. I marvel sometimes that despite. this nature sometimes provides some pleasant surprises. Every year something usually does well enough to balance out the disappointments.

Surprisingly the best salads I've had this year, which have been way above my sown mixed salad leaves and which have grown more copiously than we could eat, have been the £1 living salad leaves punnets we've bought from Waitrose and planted out. The plants all droop at first but once the roots get going they've produced a positive forest of leaves and have helped overcome the non germination problem I've had with auccession sowing of salad leaves in hotter temperatures.

[Ricard with an H]

I did the same with two basil plants, the ones I sowed from seed are stunted. The supermarket basil is doing great on the lounge table if I keep snipping the top growth.

Three years I've been trying to grow basil every year, under cloches in the raised beds and in compost in seed trays, hopeless.

Coriander used to be a problem until I discovered Calypso.

[Monika]

I bought two herb pots from a supermarket, parsley and basil, at least two months ago and they are still going strong in the greenhouse with a bit of occasional judicious 'gardening'. Considering that my seed-grown basil usually grows out of itself very quickly and the parsley suffers from carrot root fly, the supermarket option is by far the better one, for me at least.

Yesterday we dug up the calabrese and summer broccoli plants after they have given us a really brilliant yield this year. Fresh brassicas from now on will be kale and then flower sprouts.

[Westi]

OH. Very kind of you to notice, but I post to get others to post. I'm still an erratic grower, but your answers (& so many others) have been what keeps me striving to improve! Hope other circumstances in your life improve soon, so you can come back more regularly!

Primrose, I've had success from those salads in the past but they bolted quickly his year! And I am regretting telling the other plot holders about the milk farm in the next village - I had 2 years of good old muck delivered to improve the soil & note they are getting some wet yucky stuff.

Monika & Richard - ditto plant out the bought ones!

Westi