Joined: 18 Feb 2010 Posts: 1467 Location: Somerset
Posted: Mon Aug 10, 20 12:48 pm Post subject: Veg to sow now...
I have done spectacularly badly at successional sowing this year (as always) despite actually being here all the time - so I need to do some late sowings. What are downsizers sowing now...?
Thanks Tahir. I might try some more carrots as mine didn't amount to much this year. It looks as if I will have enough runner beans to cover the bean situation, and with any luck my cabbages and leeks should be good. We don't tend to eat the rest.
Do you only have orchard? I thought you had a vegetable garden too.
Always had a plot till the new house got built. When we first moved here we had more than an acre of veg plus sheep. Unfortunately the only location that the planning officer deemed suitable for the new house was in the middle of our veg plot, right on top of the greenhouse. Since then we've just been too busy with the orchards and furniture and....
We'd love to do it again but we'd need someone local to do it in partnership with, but most people just don't have the necessary gumption.
Pak choi if you can keep the flea beetle off (wondermesh or fleece)
gythagirl
Joined: 18 Feb 2010 Posts: 1467 Location: Somerset
Posted: Tue Aug 11, 20 10:04 am Post subject:
Cheers, Tahir, I will pop in some carrots and spinach, will also try the new packet of rocket again which didn't germinate at all earlier. Have only just planted out my leek seedlings and the my cav nero is slowly disappearing under the weight of the caterpillars - talk about eating yourself out of house and home...
Wouldn't have thought of French beans but I have climbing French just coming into flower, so along with the over-productive runners (spiced runner bean chutney production starting soon!) should be ok there.
Have also remembered the pak choi - I recall Monty Don saying it's more successful later in the year, first sowing didn't heart up at all.
I am glad to say that we haven't suffered from that here yet. My leeks are coming on quite well, so should give a good winter crop. I might have another go at some french beans as mine were a disaster this year. Like you, time is a problem.
i got some nice nasturtium flowers and 2 radishes and 3 mange tout this year
the cucumber is hysterically inadequate the vine made it to about a foot from the soil and both the tiny rotting cucumbers are about half an inch long
even though i have been within in feet of them all most of the time a mix of slug, mouse, bird and invertebrate sneaked past me and devastated everything
the bramble is spectacularly productive, which is nice although it is full of things that bite, sting and scratch, my right forearm looks like it had a few months in a jungle
gythagirl
Joined: 18 Feb 2010 Posts: 1467 Location: Somerset
Posted: Wed Aug 12, 20 11:29 am Post subject:
Re nasturtiums I've come to the conclusion that they just encourage MORE butterflies, who see all the others and decide there's more room on whatever brassicas are being grown. I am indeed going to enviromesh the leeks - haven't grown them for a couple of years as last time out they got decimated - I'd never come across leek moth before. it's a bugger. There's always something...and yet we gardeners always have faith in the following year