Kitchen Garden Forum

I have been very lucky, I have never had blight in any of my greenhouses, lost some tatties to the disease, but not tommies.

Cook has got covid, hope she is well enough to make my lunch…..and yes, I am only joking!

Had one of those nice productive days; well if you count weeding as productive! Weeded all the asparagus seeing it isn't keen on dying off & full of huge weeds & being invaded by the raspberries. Then as in the zone I just kept weeding & I can report both plots are looking pretty neat & tidy. Home day tomorrow to use up the 'not so cute' veg found amongst the weeds - how did those lettuce turn up under the currants???

I’ve had to remove 7 tomato plants out of the pollytunnel today due to blight

A "Last of the summer wine" moment here today. My breakfast consisted of a bowl of our last sun ripened cooked tomatoes and the flavour was delicious. Unusually we have no green tomatoes left to ripen.

I suspect the artificially ripened commercial ones will be a real "down to earth" moment. I may even give them up for a few months. Luckily iur freezer is well stocked with tomato soup and sauces.

I wonder how long OH will manage to hang onto his Late Summer thread. The sun is shining here and a load of washing is about to go onto the line for another lovely outdoor sunny drying day!

We were cut off by the floods yesterday, but seemingly we can now get to Arbroath, but the roads north to Montrose are still flooded, the river locally is almost eight feet up and the Tay in Perth is almost 19 feet above summer level and parts of the fair city are flooded.

Tigerburnie. It must be somewhat alarming to find these situations happening. I know northern regions are more vulnerable to higher rainfall anyway but is this something you,ve noticed becoming more frequent in recent years?
I hope your winter food storecupboard planning takes these unexpected incidents into account? A well stocked food cupboard to tide you over such emergencies seems to be an increasing necessity these days!

And to make it worse, we are having a scorching day and the leaves are still dark green and looking fresh….utterly crazy!

Funnily I was going to ask this evening how our more Northern members are faring with the abundance of rain that they have had; & still having! It must be worrying Tiger; Tay 19' higher as well as local river 8' & seems it is still forecast for more rain. I sincerely hope you & others in this extensive rain area remain free of any flooding.

Best wishes! My fingers are crossed for you all!

Must ring our friends in Argyl, on the banks of the Kyles of Bute.
Friday was pretty foul here but nothing like Scotland. Saturday was better, moved all my chrysants into the greenhouse. Today has been very pleasant, sorted my leafmould area ready to start collecting and cut the grass.
OH - how's cook's Covid going? Hope all is well.

Really has knocked her….spent 3 days in bed, is up now, but still feels really tired….thanks for asking, Geoff!

Primrose wrote: ↑Sun Oct 08, 2023 12:32 pm Tigerburnie. It must be somewhat alarming to find these situations happening. I know northern regions are more vulnerable to higher rainfall anyway but is this something you,ve noticed becoming more frequent in recent years?
I hope your winter food storecupboard planning takes these unexpected incidents into account? A well stocked food cupboard to tide you over such emergencies seems to be an increasing necessity these days!

After the storms and power cuts we had a couple of years back we are well prepared with candles, torches/batteries we have tined soups/puddings that we can heat up on top of the multi fuel stove, we have a camping kettle and my old beer making barrel gets filled with drinking water. We have a sack of tatties so we can do jacket spuds in the fire. A puzzle book unopened for if I get bored lol
We even fried eggs and had some bacon too so we try to keep things covered.
To be honest weather wise the main difference is it is warmer, so what used to come as snow, is now rain, same amount of precipitation, just some of it doesn't look so pretty out the window.

OH, I hope cook soon gets back to full strength soon

Sympathies to Cook. OH. The tiredness Covid can cause can be awful. You just want to go to bed and sleep for a month! We still seem to have a lot of it around here.
I see northern areas are due for more rain. Hope you escape the worst of it tigerburnie,

The rain is more on the west side today, we just have very strong winds which drying everything nicely, so I went train spotting today.(just click on the link to see it)
The Flying Scotsman by tigerburnie, on Flickr