"Today I Am Mostly Gardening"

[niall Y]

Just spent a good part of today clearing out the greenhouse, mainly of tomato plants, with a few cucumbers and some very dead basil. I always feel this marks a particular turning point of the year, where I can now bring things in to the empty greenhouse to shelter during the coming winter

Its not been too bad a year, for tomatoes, Though, given my location ( coastal and exposed ) I can't match the yields, or the number of trusses, I used to get in Beckenham, in S E London. But even this pales into insignificance , when compared to growing them as a child in Lincolnshire.

Am in the midst of planning for next year, with a few more new varieties to try out. Have successfully
grown ' Paul Robeson' for the last few years, which is now a firm favourite. For next year I hope to get hold of some 'Ananas Noire ' seeds , which I will certainly look forward to growing

 

[Kittyhawk]

Gardening.. I sympathise.
Wife plays around in the soil here at our place - my view is that if it's under 6 inches you spray it, if its over 6 inches you mow it. So thankfully I'm not allowed near the garden and that suits us both.

 

[baldkev]

I tend to go to tesco for my 'gardening'
The mrs sometimes tries potatoes, but for the return, tescos is definitely less hasstle.
I had a chilli plant last year but left it out too long mind you, weve still got a load in the freezer. Ive got a pot with mint because i love mojitos and its hard to kill off mint.

 

[Inspector]

Gardening.....hmmm. Does shovelling the snow off the decks and a patch of ground for the dogs to pee today and plowing the driveway with the tractor yesterday count as gardening? Our tomatoes were planted at the start of June after the frosts and struggled all summer only to be frozen on the vine mid October. Radishes did well though and we can cool Beer and Cider quickly too.

Pete

 

[ian33a]

Gardening is big in our place. My wife does much of the small and intricate stuff. I use large mowers and the tractor for the rest.

 

[clogs]

Im trying to convince my wife we need a midi digger for planting out.....hahaha.......
here there's no soil as such it's a sandy gravel desert.....
if u need soil it comes in 1 ton bags.......

our toms were pathetic so next year we have a plan.....
well rotted hores muck, just found a stables....plus will use shade netting to save from the sun.....
we can plant out toms usually end of FEB.....
Nail.....Ananas Noire, are they the black to purple ugly fruits that taste so good.....?
Did buy the seed....?

 

[niall Y]

...
Nail.....Ananas Noire, are they the black to purple ugly fruits that taste so good.....?
Did buy the seed....?

Just ordered the seed, which was a lot more difficult than I would have expected. It does not seem to be available in the UK, only Europe, America and Australia. Some of the postage rates quoted were in the. region of 18 quid, which is a trifle excessive. The cheapest I could get them still amounts to 70p a seed!
I'm buying them as much for how they look, as how they taste. Colour wise , they are an admix of green red and purple. Given that I haven't tasted them yet - I will be happy if they taste anything like the 'Black Russian ' varieties to which I have become quite addicted.

 

[Tris]

Once you've got them, tomato seeds are easy to save as the plants are self fertile and come out true to type. Some methods recommend 'fermenting' the seeds to remove germination inhibitors but I have found spreading ripe seed on sheets of kitchen roll and thoroughly drying them works well. You can 'sow' the whole sheet in a seed tray the following year and away they go

 

[Richard_C]

It's been a very odd year. Here in East Anglia we had no rain for weeks - a few thunderstorms nearby but they all missed our village as they often do. We had 39 degrees for a couple of days, probably the first time ever it was better to keep windows closed all day because the air inside was cooler than outside. The heat seemed to stop a lot of vegetables, a neighbour dug up his runner beans when it was clear the flowers weren't setting. I left mine and they came back and gave a decent crop mid September onwards. Tomatos - I grow mine outdoors - also came pretty late - I took the green ones off, still on their vines, early October and they are still ripening nicely on trays indoors so we will probably get through to December with a continuous supply of fresh tomatoes. No sign of blight this year, spores get carried in rain, no rain.

At least we got some rain in October and early November, maybe 3 inches in all. I would normally do a final cut of the grass late October and clean/drain the mower ready for winter. Looks like I will need one and possibly 2 more cuts to stop it being impossible in spring, so the machine might not get winterised at all.

What made me write this today was a walk out into the garden late morning. It's 17 degrees, the very early snowdrops that normally appear soon after Christmas are in full flower, the leaves are mostly off the trees but still bright golden yellow, the late summer Dahlias and Zinnias and a few other things are still flowering. 3 seasons mashed into one. What next?

 

[Tris]

It is very odd, we've got delphiniums blooming alongside asters, and on the way to Stratford last weekend I saw blooms on a horse chestnut.
Some plants are made dormant by very high temperatures, almost like a type of 'winterisation', but I've never seen it in the UK before

 

[Seascaper]

Hello,
My best tomato plants came from seeds from Waitrose tomatoes. I selected the tastiest tomato dried out the seeds in a piece of kitchen tissue and planted the seeds at the beginning of the year. They were delicious. I was fed up of the cost charged by some seed merchants where you can pay £1 a seed. I doe the same with seed potatoes.
Regards

 

[clogs]

Niall,
u wont be disappointed with the taste.....
for ours we just buy one tom of the variety we want take out the seeds and dry...then store in a paper bag...NOT plastic....
we save our bog roll tubes to use for seedlings....easy to plant, once they are wet they fall to bits...
our purple toms looked terrible the first year we tried em....all split / earwigs etc etc.....we asked our neighbour when will they fully ripen as they were still green in places ....
to our suprise they were ready...best toms I have ever tasted....
I dont go shopping at all now but when in France the average price for Tiny Tom type toms was between 12-14euros per kilo, they weren't on the vine...and tasted of nothing.....
we cant do it now but when we had a large veg garden we used to grow so many toms, enough to bottle/preserve for winter use.....
we also used to trade produce with our French friends.....

luckily we have a local Bio organic small holding that sells to the public......nice veg plus free range eggs n chicken.....lamb on the odd occ....
we wont bother with runner beans or sweetcorn anymore it's just gets to hot......
have installed an irrigation system for all the veg patches.....one tap does it all...watering was a real pain......

 

[stuart little]

I tend to go to tesco for my 'gardening'
The mrs sometimes tries potatoes, but for the return, tescos is definitely less hasstle.
I had a chilli plant last year but left it out too long mind you, weve still got a load in the freezer. Ive got a pot with mint because i love mojitos and its hard to kill off mint.

My mint literally died off & disappeared & that was in the garden, so has a neighbour's who had a big patch of it. I can't even get mint to grow now! Weird, & this was a year or two ago.

 

[baldkev]

My mint literally died off & disappeared & that was in the garden, so has a neighbour's who had a big patch of it. I can't even get mint to grow now! Weird, & this was a year or two ago.

Oh dear

 

[stuart little]

Oh dear

Yeah, it normally spreads like covid!