Kitchen Garden Forum

Made three more 8' x 4' cabbage cage support trames and added them in, then put the net over (end two frames are clad in chicken wire) top amd sides.
Think I might need new net next year as I spent an hour stitching holes with string, before planting out a dozen curly kale. 8'x 30' cage now ready for all the seedlings to flow from the greenhouse.

Cleared and weeded where cage was and dug over a third of it. Two 300L daleks full.

A couple of things amused me this weekend. We have bought a Mulberry tree and this is how it came packaged, it had travelled OK now nicely planted and staked.



I cleared the Dahlia tubers out from under the staging that I had been using for cuttings. I usually snap off the old growth and either put them in odd bits of the garden after it warms up a bit or give them away (I grow the rooted cuttings in the veg garden for cut flowers) but I couldn't with this one - I've never seen one do that before.

I am wondering whether to plant the tomato plants out in the greenhouse border now or wait until after the predicted cold spell. I will still have to mess about moving them into the warm section if I don't so I think I will risk it and get the fleece out to protect them. Fingers crossed.

I'm going to lay straw over the newly emerged potatoes instead of earthing them up again and I've got the fleece out to protect the strawberry flowers. The rest will just have to fend for themselves. Hope it doesn't ruin the fruit blossom which is absolutely beautiful this year.

Geoff, i'm surprised with what the delivery drivers are like these days, that they didn't say they cut the top bit off, to save it getting broken,,,,

Geoff, would that be one of the old bagpipe dahlias

Removed a wasps nest off the inside of the shed door today! I do normally leave them, but i thought it wouldn't be the best thing to have on a door that's being opened and shut all the while.

Peter, we stretched our large net over the 22'x22' brassica bed today and also decided that for next season we must buy a new one because lots of holes had to be mended with string. It's partially old age (it must be more than 10 years old) but also the fact that the winter before last it was really put to a test when the heavy snow weighed on it and even broke the tall bottle-topped bamboo canes on which it rests. But for this year, it'll have to do!

The bed now has all the summer brassicas (cauliflower, calabrese, summer broccoli and kohlrabi) planted out, the winter brassicas are still in root trainers. The net above it is tall enough to walk in and do the weeding, hoeing, harvesting etc, in other words, like a temporary "fruit cage".

Usual busy May Day. Sowed Runner Beans, Courgettes, Squashes, Gourds and Sweetcorn. Also cleared the last of the Carrots so I can dig that area over for the maincrop Peas that are nearly ready to out in their rootrainers.

Dreaded f...t word in the forecast for tonight so now I have to figure out how to support that sheet of polythene over this lot.

Evening Geoff, i have just been over the allotment trying to cover a vast amount of (to early) tender plants. The runner beans were the most troublesome.

Well that should stop it going frosty.

I have just half a dozen early experimental yellow climbing beans planted out under individual cloches and sowed the remainder of my beans indoors today. It's always a risk between them catching a frost and sulking or growing into a tangled jungle. I never seem to get my timing exactly right.

I suspect OH is buying a lot of favours around his village with his beans. Come cropping time he probably has a succession of ladies lining up to tempt him into visits with Earl Grey tea and delicious cream scones!!

Well that worked a treat, minimum +2.8°C last night, panic over for at least a week by the looks of things.

I wish it had worked here, very white indeed, and some of the potatoes have that translucent look, although they were covered, time will tell.

I took a risk with the French and runner beans that I had planted out as they had become pot bound. it didn't pay off by the looks of the leaf.
Greenhouse went down to zero but everything seems fine in there, I suspect the outside temperature was about the same as Geoff's.