Kitchen Garden Forum

We've had a welcome 5.3mm - you might get more this evening.

4.5mm today but no more expected until next week at the earliest. Scorching weekend ahead.

The 1.2 mm of rain we had this morning brought out some slugs and snails and there were frogs hopping about all round the garden, so many that I had to be careful where I walked.

I planted out the rest of the brassicas and got them covered with butterfly mesh and hope nothing has already laid eggs on them.

No rain!

None here either!

Added to my heat load today by preparing fresh ground cover material, after cutting the planting holes I ran round the cut edge, and the ends where it was cut from the roll, with a mini-blowtorch.
Hopefully the will prevent the unravelling I had with the existing bits.

Wrang my T-shirt out before putting it in the wash basket.

Hope you didn't set anything else on fire using the blow torch Peter. I was quite tempted to get rid of some weeds with the flame gun but remembered the two occasions in the past when I used it in very dry weather and decided not to risk it. The first time the flames went off the path, through some aubretia and up a large conifer with spectacular results and the other time it went from the path, through the compost heap and took out ten feet of my privet hedge before I managed to put it out. It's very tempting though I like a good fire

Glad I don't live next door to you Plumpudding.....only joking.

Do we have an arsonist in our amidst

Don't worry, I'm not anti social and choose times when the neighbours have their windows closed if I have a bonfire, but the two accidental infernos showed how quickly fire can spread. The conifer was reduced to charred stumps in about five minutes.

I Think Bob Flowerdew did the same to a customer's conifer hedge, when he was a working gardener....

There's nothing like a bonfire. Staying with my son in suburbia the other week I did a bit of pruning. Previous owners had left one of those dustbin incinerators so we thought why not? None of the neighbours complained, perhaps they thought it was a dodgy barbecue.

It has got very anti bonfire here now.....down to a lot of new folk moving in....

I think I am finally becoming Australian heat tolerant again! Got loads done on lottie without that sickey feeling from too much sun & even the dog has found her own spot & will let me go out of sight. Between us we scoffed 4 lts of water & shared the pint of chocolate milk! (Impulse buy, but it is liquid)!

Continuing the positive I even managed a harvest - carrots, beets, radish, spuds, loads of blackberries & my first summer cabbage - & obviously the courgettes! There were more raspberries but I've got raspberry overload! Won't bore you with the negatives, but Runner Beans better wake up at some point!

Sounds like you have achieved a lot, Westi, well done. I wilted this afternoon and kept in the shadows...