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Lee, your garden is a picture, I love it, much better than a lawn in my opinion!
Richard, I am on a (small) mountain in North Wales, about 1,000 up. I don’t want another year like this one, it has made the plot grow beautifully, but watering was very difficult with no mains water, the mountain heather caught fire on 25th of June and carried on for a couple of days and we were evacuated – along with 4 dogs and a cat. We still haven’t got the fibre cables or the telegraph poles replaced yet which were destroyed. It has been very difficult altogether, nothing was plain sailing.
I hope you are beginning to get your container garden up and running Richard and that it is keeping you occupied, you still have the hot weather down there don’t you?
Charles, you say it so much better than I can and with a lot fewer words!
I have found that bark peelings have worked great for me this year. I don’t have clay soil here but it does still get slippy in wet weather. I think that a coarser material like bark chippings could do very well for you, though it wouldn’t last long in the event of flooding I wouldn’t think.
We once bought hardcore from a builders merchants for a path. It consists of what I can only assume is some type of stone, every size from coarse sand size, to an inch or slightly more, in a pale grey colour. When you put it down all of the stone pieces combine and mesh together, between your raised beds I would think that hardcore would work if it is well pressed together. But it is heavy to move around and not cheap, plus you would need to have access for a lorry presumably, to deliver it.
Sorry that I can’t be of more help.
Brill, great to see your photos. I still haven’t taken any of my plot yet. It is good to see that your efforts have been rewarded isn’t it?
Good news, and while it isn ‘t good news, it is good to hear that I am not the only sufferer from cabbage root fly! The little beggars are still working here. Going to crop what is still in the ground to fill the freezer and then get winter crops in, which I have never done before.
I also had the best year with beetroot, onions – surprising when I only put 2 packs of sets in which were bought for 50p as end of stock and went in late. I will be trying seed onions Christmas time this year for the first time as well hopefully.
Carrots again have been great this year and I have also sown another crop of those, I had no carrot root fly although they weren’t netted as well which was a surprise.
Making another one bed at least over the winter and hopefully more, I have the room and the area is level there, but reclaimed from rose bay willow herb, so that worries me.
Perpetual spinach has done well too, proper spinach is going in soon, courgettes and my first ever summer and winter squash are doing well too.
I need to build more netted frames/hoops now for crops because the pests are not going away. Cabbage whites got under my floating nets but have taken the nets off now and birds are eating the pests, which is good news. I will be using your bacillus next year too Charles. I have never seen so many cabbage white butterflies in my life as this year.
We are not on mains water here, so I have had a problem watering this year, I save grey water from bathroom and kitchen every year but this year I have used ‘eco eggs’ instead of washing powder for laundry and saved that water for the garden too, which is a back breaking job, but better than watching the lot die. I also resorted to bark peelings around my crops as well, which did pay off. I moved it to one side to plant and sank half bottles into the ground beside plants to water them too. So again, more water storage is planned as soon as I can afford it. We have had 4 days of low cloud and I removed the dry peelings when it rained, or when the cloud settled as a layer of drizzle on the ground, so that the bark didn’t just take up the water. I have also bought more leaky hose which will be buried about 4-6 inches deep into the raised beds over winter. I only had one bed with leaky hose this year, but I have used them before, but because I remodelled the garden this year, I took a lot out. They do work well to save water because when they are 4″ – 6″ deep the roots benefit much more and there is no evaporation. I can link the lot to stored water barrels that way, I cursed myself so often this year for taking it out.
Sorry that I have rambled so much. Must go and cover the beds again with bark because the sun is back again today.
Sandra
I don’t see why you couldn’t use the recycling boxes Richard, except that you will need to water your containers more than you would an actual garden bed, they would dry out easily I presume, that’s if we have any more hot weather – we haven’t seen the sky here for 3 days again because of low cloud.
Things like potatoes can be grown in compost bags standing on end and you add more compost as the foliage grows I believe, though I haven’t tried it myself.
Good luck with your trials.
Purple sprouting is one thing that has totally failed me here, as well as Romanesco which is my favourite veg. I would need to buy more seed, but I am assuming that it is too late to sow these again.
I am in North Wales too Heather, on Mynydd Cilgwyn, where the big fires were, I came out of hospital on the 24th I believe and we were evacuated (with 4 dogs and 1 cat) the next day, nightmare. The house and garden were fine thank God. Where are you?
I have just sown brassicas and cabbage 2nd crop and hopefully a second crop of carrots today as well, in high hopes, at least we have some water now which we have been very short of (we are on a well here) I agree though, as you have your sweetcorn in modules you can’t lose anything by planting them out. I had a similar problem, I ended up in hospital for the best part of 2 weeks and everything romped away here too and a lot of my stuff was lost because of the heat and drought to modules not yet planted out. Mind you, got a few good harvests of beetroot, carrots, kale, cabbage, onions, garlic, courgette and squash which I had been able to plant out before I went into hospital.
Best of luck and good weather to you.
I have also planted shop bought garlic and had good results. I had a variety of garlic in the ground from last year’s October planting and harvested them last week. I had a mixture of hard and soft neck garlic, I can never remember which is which, but the ones with the scapes did better than the others and I will plant those again this year. Incidentally, I have never eaten the scapes, I have always replanted them. I have never planted them separately or written down anything about them, but I will keep a little diary now and see how things go for the next year and they will have an area to themselves from now on. I usually replant late September/early October.
Stringfellow/anyone who may be able to advise, I use a lot onions/shallots here and I am wondering whether to grow from seed instead of sets next year. They would be taking a fair bit of space up for a longer time I believe, so I just wondered whether you could advise whether you think that seed is worth the extra effort and space?
Shane, there are 2 ways of making nettle or comfrey ‘tea’.
1) Cut your nettles or comfrey, put them into something like an old pillowcase so that you can take them out easily once everything has rotted down. Tie a knot in the pillowcase so nothing falls out and put it into a bucket or any sort of container that will hold water. Add water to cover your pillowcase and leave to ‘steep’ (you may want to add a lid because it gets stinky!) After 10 – 14 days or so, remove the pillowcase. Dilute with water as Rhys says and feed your veg with it.
2) 2nd method, cut your nettles or comfrey as before, pile them into a large plantpot, pack them in dry and weigh the leaves down with something heavy.
I also like to beat up my greens too, bruising them I feel, might get things going a bit quicker and I can pretend it’s someone who is not my favourite person.
Put your flower pot inside a bucket or anything that will hold water and leave it for the 10/14 ish days. Liquid will start to come out of your leaves, and into the outer bucket. Collect the liquid and dilute in the same way to feed your beans or whatever, good for tomatoes too.
The good thing about the dry method is that there is no smell at all, and believe you me comfrey or nettle tea really stinks when made with the 1st method.
You could try a little pond, nothing fancy, just a dip in the ground would do,few inches deep at most with graduated sides so that anything getting in there could also get out. The birds would like it as well.
Or, one of our neighbours has quite a deep container, probably a couple of feet high, just a flower pot shape it is and he has a miniature water lily in it and it looks great. I wouls also want to put a ramp on the side to help anything get out if it fell in!
I have never had one, or even seen one, but how about a low growing plant to have instead of grass. Chamomile? (Spelling?) Or you could pave an area, enough for a couple of chairs and a table. Crazy paving? Decking if you can get anything like that from your local Freegle maybe?
I have often used the seed that you can get, in a box, B&Q, Home Bargains and places like that sell them. They usually have a theme, eg bee friendly, or specific colour themed flowers etc. I have used them for the last few years and they work well and are very easy as far as looking after them goes. You would have to be quick though, we are in June already. The plants are just annuals, but some like poppies might seed themselves for another year, we have got fennel, both green and a bronze colour, orange and yellow poppies, growing from seed from last years plants. They are cheap to buy too. They are in a box and you tear off the side to find 4 or 5 holes, you rake the soil level and shake the box to release the seed. It is mixed with a little sawdust so you can see how much you have put down and where. Water it in and bob’s your proverbial! No covering the seed either.
Why can I never limit my messages? They seem to go on and on, sorry again.