Kitchen Garden Forum

I could come and stand 2m from your shed door Geoff and direct you as you tidy!! And as you are in England, there is no limit on where we can travel.

Ummm, very white out there this morning...

oldherbaceous wrote:Ummm, very white out there this morning...

And your Runner Beans ? Yet to look at mine. Must find cooks contact number. just in case.

I've just been and had a look, Shallot Man and they don't look good.. I think the potatoes have been caught too...there was just too much stuff to cover.

Yes, there was a frost here this morning. I was always a bit of a late planting gardener but this year I have made an effort to plant early and may have paid the price. Potatoes, courgettes, lettuce and runner beans look like they have had a bit of a shock but at least the broad beans still look perky.

Barney

5 degrees last night in the greenhouse, so looks like my stuff escaped the worst

Watching a programme on sheep shearing. Memsahib looked at me and said, wonder If I can get one to come and shear you.

The local Garden Centre is opening at 0830hrs tomorrow;I had better get along there and start queuing!!!

As it is written in the Book of Ecclesiastes: "To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted".
Even now I live in the relatively mild northwest of Wales, I have never considered early May to be a suitable time to have tender summer crops planted out. I can't remember a year, even here, when there has not been frost in May, even into June at times. Normally I would be planting tomatoes in the polytunnel this coming weekend and taking them into the house on these cold nights. With all the summery weather of past weeks they were well advanced and had to be planted two weeks early. But they will survive under fleece for a night or three.

It was 5.4 overnight in my greenhouse, and I thought I'd lost my peppers...they'd gone all floppy. I had forgotten to switch on the propogator, what a wally. I turned it on immediately, and they seem to have recovered. After an hour, it was warm enough to turn it off again, it's been roughly 22-25 in there for most of the day.

Wise words, Alan. I learnt my lessons many moons ago when we had night frost on the night of 9/10 June, so that is the date I aim for for anything tender. We do have some potatoes in pots but I can cover those with a large piece of bubble plastic. Everything else goes into the greenhouse every night and out every morning at the moment.
I might risk planting some pots up with single dahlias because they are getting a bit big for their own good in the divided trays, but, again, I can cover those on iffy nights.
Our main concern is the lack of rain: less than 1 inch since the middle of March and almost nothing at all the last four weeks.

That's a coincidence Monika. In all the years I gardened in Leeds I took the eighth of June as the last possible frost, and it was surprising just how many years there WAS a frost around that date.

Shed management is important.
I'll take some shots but I have to take the wheelbarrow and the chairs out of mine before I can get in!

I dare not post a photo of mine.....or the shed we used to call the summer house, which is really a shed a size down on the bigger one...or the garage..

Shopping this evening...a small but useful re stock....I used to enjoy a food shop...scares me stupid now and has been niggling at me all day..

C.

I put everything I could into the greenhouse with my conditioning straw bales and it was a toasty 8C in there overnight. I don't know what the other greenhouse went down to as I only have 1 thermometer, but on the cooler nights recently it got down to 4C. The straw bales are magnificent!
I covered my newly planted strawberry beds with a fleece tunnel cloche as the plants are showing their flower buds and I'd have been very upset to see that lot frosted. All okay, though, thankfully.