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This week in your Kitchen Garden.

I have a chilli question (couldn't find the chilli thread though :mad: )
Basically a few flowers have opened now, then wilted away and the flower has just fallen off (stem as well) and nothing has started to grow where the stem was :S what's happening there then? I neeeeeeed chillies I already had to throw away all my tomato plants!
 
my tomato plants have died :(

on the plus side, the rhubarb is growing great guns, so are the strawberries and we have tons of potatoes and carrots :cool:
 
Everything fruit and veg-wise has been crap in my garden except for rhubarb and strawberries.....and White Emergo* runner beans, which I didn't grow this year but I gave loads of seeds away which have done really well for the people I gave them to. They are good for harvesting for the white beans as well as for the immature runner beans.


*Available from Chiltern Seeds, but they come true if you leave a few pods on the plants for seed collecting purposes.
 
I've got a couple of vines of tomatoes on one plant, and the others are just starting to flower for the first time :rolleyes: They were sown late though. Peppers are growing happily on my shop-bought pepper plant, but nada on the chillis - the shop-bought one just doesn't seem to want to put out, and my two seedlings were totally decimated by indoor pests before it stopped raining long enough to put them outside.

The whole experience has been brilliant for learning though :) I'm well looking forward to gardening more!
 
Yes, I'm not looking forward to getting pest rage once I start gardening proper...at the moment our tiny backyard is what I like to call a wildlife haven, i.e. completely overrun with giant triffid-like weeds. The bugs and pests seem much more interested in all that than in attacking my miniscule collection of plants. Come autumn, though, I plan to dig it all out and try and do something with it, so am reluctantly preparing myself for rage and disappointment.
 
I've stuck some potatoes that had started going to seed into our front wasteland and whaddyaknow, they've starting growing now :)

My question is, though, how on earth do i know when i should start digging them up? Some of the plants are still quite small (~3-6 inches) whereas a few of the others are a good foot tall now with lots of leaves. But surely they can't have any potatoes underneath them yet can they. So how do you know? Any advice gratefully recieved.
 
Thanks Mrs M, as ever. From that it would appear that (1) i should look to harvest them when/if they begin to flower and (2) i've planted the damn things too late anyway? It says for main crop, i should have been planting by end of April at latest, whereas these were done in July iirc.

I'll see what happens.
 
I dug up some spuds yesterday:

1303776540_b1d112ae00.jpg


Forgot they were purple ones!

Made them into a salad with diced onion and a mustard and fresh mint vinaigrette.
 
I went into the backyard last night for the first time in a little while, and lo! there was one single, solitary red tomato glowing on the vine, amongst all the foliage and the rest of the green ones.

I'm so excited. I thought everything had gone on strike.
 
I've had one, yes ONE, pumpkin off five plants. It was delicious though. I blame a combo of shite weather and powdery mildew.
 
One of my tomato plants has made a bit of a miraculous come back, but it's all a bit too late. There's a few green toms and a lot of flowers...in October ffs. Not even enough to make a decent sized batch of green tommy chutney. I'm just waiting for the council to deliver our promised brown bins (for garden waste and stuff) then I'm going to chuck the whole lot in there and start afresh next year. All my herbs, apart from the rosemary and chives have died. I think the cats have had summat to do with that though, they've got a whole garden with grass and soil borders to piss in...leave me herbs alone :mad:

Anyways, a disastrous growing year :( Will be looking to cat proof stuff next year...wanders off to investigate electric fences :rolleyes: :D
 
just went out and picked about 50 tomatoes, some less ripe than other.
the Thompson & Morgan "Black" cherry tomatoes were first on, and last off this year. also, some generic small plum tomatoes did well.
perpetual spinach has died back badly.
Aubergines - we've had a few, but then again, too few to mention. We've moved most of the rest inside.
courgettes and squashes have just taken up growing room.
 
So now that my little collection of plants has died back and started shrivelling, what should I do with them? Can I just sling 'em on the compost heap? Or should I effect a rescue operation?
 
Paulie Tandoori said:
Thanks Mrs M, as ever. From that it would appear that (1) i should look to harvest them when/if they begin to flower and (2) i've planted the damn things too late anyway? It says for main crop, i should have been planting by end of April at latest, whereas these were done in July iirc.

I'll see what happens.
Click to expand...
What a result, i've managed to dig up about 10lbs of lovely looking potatoes. Hooray for growing things, its marvellous fun :)
 
Cleared 4 big sacks of leaves, pruned grape vine and black berry bush and other assorted rubbish out of the garden at the weekend. Topped up the raised beds with some compost out of my bin.
Considered chopping back the passion flower / clematis monster which has over run the trellis on top of the garden wall and broken it so that I could repair it and start growing them again. Shouldn't prune either until March/Feb so I'll wait a couple of weeks for that.
Bought a heavy, posh metal framed mini-greenhouse after the plastic one got blown to bits in gales last year.
Planted some spring flowers to give the place some colour while waiting for the veg and salad to get growing.
Started on the herb garden.
 
I'm getting some jerusalem artichokes this week. i've already got the old water tank to plant them in. Just have to get it to the plot and set it up.
 
Just took delivery of new re-usable garden waste bags from the council, so I may finally get around to clearing the heap of rotting vegetation that's been in the garden for about three months now.

Gonna plant some chillies at the weekend.
 
I had a mental day in the garden yesterday...but it was lovely..
I planted
2x Mock orange (Philadelphas Virginal)
1 small silver birch tree
1 euphorbia
1 holly
1 Lilac Shrub
3 Frittilarie bulbs
1 Rhubarb (strawberry)
5 Summer Alium Bulbs
1 Fox Tail Lilly

I also cut back all the flower stems that I left for the birds over winter (winters over now?? lol)
Dug over a veg patch

sowed Onion seeds both in the ground and in pots..

This week i should be able to pick leeks and perpetual spinach (does that stuff ever stop growing???)
 
My peach tree is just starting to unfurl its blossom...too early :( So that'll be another year with blighted blossom and no fruit then :(
 
Just sowed some parsnips, never have grown them before + some Borage + planted some shallots. Have to just hope they grow now.:D
 
My lemon pips have just popped their heads up :cool:

Also growing tomatoes, chilis and sweet peppers.

My tomatoes were fucked last year so let's hope they do better this time.
 
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