Kitchen Garden Forum

Whoop! Whoop! It worked! Now just got to figure out how to remove the long delay between pushing the shutter & it taking a pic & not pushing the button so hard it drops the camera down during this delay!

My determination surprises me sometimes! Wonder if my iPhone has a resolution setting - that would have just solved everything!

Westi

Well done Westi

A tip for how to get the focus and resolution sorted ........................................................a bottle of wine !!!
After which all that which is in focus becomes fuzzy .............. and vice versa

WOW, congratulations. You have the most amazing plantations! You and your entire neighbourhood will be self sufficient for months to come! Thank you for sharing these awesome pictures. Well done.

Good One Pa! Personally I find having a wine results in lots of photos of feet or fingers!

Well I went down with said camera & had a merry old time clicking away, of 32 pics taken only 10 are in focus. I kinda thought this would be about the odds. I had to banish Mr Westi to walk the dog as his helpful advice was in a foreign tongue. (Mr Westi goes to camera club & his camera & gear needs an elephant to carry)!

Anyway heres a few of the plot & I've posted my mushroom / fungi thing elsewhere.

The 5 coats of creosote shed & todays Harvest! And some smashing strawberries!



Westi

Westi

What a nice set of colourful pics,

Just one question, although it does take us off subject, when you say creosote, you don't really mean 'creosote' as in that's what it says on the tin do you. You mean that nice safe wood preservative stuff.


Revocation of approvals for amateur creosote/coal tar creosote wood preservatives under the Control of Pesticides Regulations (COPR)

In 2003, action was taken to remove the approvals given under the Control of Pesticides Regulations 1986 (as amended) for the use of creosote and coal tar creosote wood preservatives by the general public.
The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) acted on behalf of the former Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR) (now Department for Innovation & Skills) to implement, in part, European Commission Directive 2001/90/EC.

In summary:
Since 30 April 2003 retailers can no longer sell creosote and coal tar creosote wood preservatives to the general public in Great Britain
Since 30 June 2003 general public can no longer use creosote and coal tar creosote wood preservatives in Great Britain


http://www.hse.gov.uk/biocides/copr/creosote.htm

OscarSidcup wrote:WOW, congratulations. You have the most amazing plantations! You and your entire neighbourhood will be self sufficient for months to come! Thank you for sharing these awesome pictures. Well done.

Thanks Oscar

I do try but there are better plots than mine out there, and people who feel a damn sight worse than me on a daily basis
The aim of posting here is to inspire others to do as much as they can under adversity and hopefully encourage others to participate in the forums and perhaps post pictures

Words such as yours are a real encouragement, cheers.

love love love these pics! I will try and remember to take some of my plot, which is quite weedy at the moment, we've all run out of energy, and my parents, being of retirement age and with various bits of them not working so well (knees, neck etc) we are a bit behind this year. We have 4 plots in a block, accumulated them over a few years, over 20 years ago. It might be time to scale back, but none of us want to talk about it!
thansk Pa Snip and Westi, for sharing. lovely, just lovely.

Ouch, retro

4 plots !!!! that's some potential hard work if they get on top of you.

I did recently suggest to my family that perhaps I could take over another half plot that had fallen vacant adjacent to our existing plot but I got a very resounding NO !!!!

Glad you like the various pics

Well Pa!

The creosote aka nice safe wood preservative, was kindly donated by a neighbour & I shared it out equally at the plot - I am not general public anyway, I am Westi! It was used responsibly & no water course around or anything like that & the smell got rid of the rats trying to nest in there that came from neighbours chickens.

The shed will not be coming with us to the new site (if they ever find one), but will last until that time now! AGM had no update. The (very rich & titled) farmer that the council compulsory purchased the land from for the 600 to 900 houses keeps buying the new sites they find! Methinks he is a bit upset loosing his prime parcel of land & the allotment site his family 'gave' to the people of the borough!

Westi

Westi wrote:
The (very rich & titled) farmer that the council compulsory purchased the land from for the 600 to 900 houses keeps buying the new sites they find! Methinks he is a bit upset loosing his prime parcel of land & the allotment site his family 'gave' to the people of the borough!

Westi

I have been doing a little research into the history of our allotment site.
Our site used to be privately owned, then it was purchased by MoD,

then in 1980 sold to the council.
What cropped up during that research was the fact that when it was sold way back by the private owners there was a covenant included to say that it could never be sold for housing and had to remain for local community use only.

Hopefully Pa the committee has looked into anything like that. The land belongs to the Merrick family (Elephant man fame). Mr Westi went to their annual open day to see the grounds & gardens & was very impressed. Current trustees are restoring them as they can. The farmer is what I call them, but they are hands on folk.

I just might do a bit of research though, now you've planted that seed. Hope you don't mind me messaging you for appropriate sites to keep me on track, I'm one of those folks who finds something in an article that is interesting & completely forget what I was really looking for!

Westi

I thought I would also share some pictures of my vegetable raised beds. This year for us is all about learning and enjoying. And we love every second of it.

Things are starting to grow nicely, and I think a lot is about beginner's luck and brand new soil & compost... Normally everything is under cage with nets but today the weather was nice, and we installed the irrigation system.

In this bed we have 4 rows of carrots (F1 resistibly, F1 Purple Sun, Samurai, YellowStone), radishes (French breakfast) -now the second planting-, beetroot F1 Pablo(I think they are almost ready) as well as picking onions Paris silverskin and shallot zebrine. We can see the raised bed at the back with tomatoes (San Marzano) and strawberries (Mara des Bois and temptation). I also managed to squeeze a few more radishes last week. I disposed of a trial of italian Raddiccio Castelgondolfo (Yes i live in Kent not in Florence!) so used that space. Next year I will dedicate this bed to strawberries...


In this bed we have 2 types of tomatoes: Cornabel and Noire de Crimee [i think i got the density a bit wrong ] as well as some salads (Mottistone, Amaze, Lollo Rossa, Catalogna)



Here a bit more tomatoes (Yes I do like tomatoes!)... Again I may have misjudged the density... Yellow Stuffer, F1 Crimson Crush and San Marzano. Also this is where my 2 cucumber for which my other half had to build a climbing frame (I did not know some cucumbers liked to climb!)


Well it look likes I can only post 3 photo per reply, so i won't bore you with another post of the last bed, which has more salad, beetroot and more radishes

At first everything seems to take ages to grow but now with the "warmer' weather, things change on a daily basis and i realised that tomatoes do grow wild and strong and tall...

Happy planting everybody!

Oscar
Thanks for the picture post.

I don't think another pic would bore us.
Have to agree the toms might just be a tad close together

All looks like it is coming on well though

Goodness Oscar - really impressive - everything looks so green including your lawn! I can't believe how far ahead your plants are to mine. My greenhouse stuff is doing OK but my outside toms are nowhere as big as yours!

If you & Pa team up my envy will be overwhelming!

Westi