Kitchen Garden Forum

PRIMROSE !!!!

HUUUSH Woman Never had you down as a mischief maker lol.

OH
Don't mention foxes to me, I need to get that composted manure dug in deep all over the plot. Foxes are loving digging in the heaps that are piled up around the plot !!! Little buggers are leaving their smelly stinking calling cards everywhere.

One ate half of a apple last week that it had got from somewhere, decided it didn't want anymore as it must have given it immediate stomach upset judging by what it left on the apple, meanwhile in the last couple of days another one got up on the new strawberry bed, had a good did round then deposited exactly what it thought of the strawberries.

Daughter has posted a comment, along with some pictures, on her Facebook page relating to the raised beds I am making

So impressed my dads making his allotment disabled friendly just for me

Told her she needs to start reading up on what veg to grow in raised beds now, and how best to grow them.

I'm wondering how she will best cope with the weeds. Hopefully with your lovely new compost there won't be many whixh need digging out but for deep rooted vegs like parsnips for example or some of the deep rooted calabrese , will she need to be able to get on top of the boxes so she has enough leverage to get the deep roots dug out?

Our existing raised beds, which are not as high, do not have a great problem with weeds. The few they do get are easy to remove as soon as spotted so we don't get a build up as we do on the main beds.

There should be no need for her to get on top of the beds, if anything grows exceptionally deep such as carrots or parsnips then they would have to be dug around all sides to remove anyway. We have found that trying to dig them straight out with a fork, even at ground level tends to result in damage, hence digging a hole around all sides with a long handled hand trowel or fork.

Putting any form of brassica in these latest beds is not an option, they would be far too high and very susceptible to wind damage.

I would be interested to see how the carrot fly gets on with 30 inch high beds.

What she can't manage her husband will undertake

Actually i think carrot fly and most weeds will be thwarted by the height at which you're planning to grow things in. Should make the whole process much easier.. I was bending down earlier this afternoon in the grey murky light cutting back bedraggled mint and thinking how much easier life would be without all this working at ground level, especially when you get down on your knees and find it difficult to get up again!
I've been growing carrots in a trough about ten inches off the ground and they seem to have been unaffected.

I was out there this morning making yet another bed. Damn rain nearly spoilt my schedule as I still had the two ends to assemble., managed to get it done though.

Having made two in two days my back aches

Prepare for the fanfare, put up the bunting, fly the flags and lets have the wind up gramophone music on full volume

The untidy neighbour gave up his plot today (Three cheers).
The plot is to be offered as two half plots to next two people on the waiting list.

Success, but I do not envy anyone who takes the plots on, there is a lot of back breaking clearing up to do from front to back, side to side.

Meantime I started cutting back the offending hawthorn /bramble bits of hedgerow today and now need to crack on with that before plots get taken over.
I want to avoid the 'it was there when I took over' retort.

That's indeed good news PaSnip. i suspect the two new plotholders will be somewhat over awed when they discover the role model they have to live up to. . But hopefully if they can do a good clearance job it will reduce the number of weeds spreading to your plot

Sometimes the devil you know, is better than the devil you don't...

Are you going to share with us a photo of the untidy plot now so that we can share the progress of the two newbies ???
You should tell them they have a very interested audience out there who will be giving them marks out of ten

hi Primrose
Be glad to share a picture or two once it becomes obvious how to do so.

At the moment (05:10am) I am trying to wade through 120 odd new posts to try and find the legitimate ones.
Security is working well then

Don't think Peter is going to be very impressed at the amount to be deleted when he wakes up

Primrose wrote:Are you going to share with us a photo of the untidy plot now so that we can share the progress of the two newbies ???
You should tell them they have a very interested audience out there who will be giving them marks out of ten

More likely to be grossly underwhelmed at present

Thanks to Geoff I have now seen where the attachments button is for pictures.

Primrose as requested








OOH we can drag and drop pictures into message box now, improvement, great.

oldherbaceous wrote:Sometimes the devil you know, is better than the devil you don't...

Devil also makes work for idle hands,

trouble is in this case the idle hands have now left the work for someone else to sort out

Someone asked about photo size - the original Dahlia was 640 wide as usual, thought I would try what 1024 behaved like - seems to work