Lmst

There will be ice cream and crumble.

#gyo #growyourownfood #gardens -#gardening #cotswolds

The berry bushes too! They're now full of unripe, green berries. I am sure they appreciate how I looked after them.

#gardentooting #gyo

photo of a redcurrant bush in early spring. its leaves are only just starting to emerge. the ground around it is fairly bare.

a redcurrant bush near midsummer (summer solstice). its leaves are lush, bright green and form a thick little canopy. It is full of green, unripe berries. the grasses and wild herbaceous plants around it are growing fairly tall. there's a birch tree behind it. the sky is clear.

Good afternoon!
#gardening report
Whew!!!! Hot one. Worked in the garden for 1.5 hrs and jusfrazzled.

Transplanted cuke, arugulas, left over calendula. Harvested lettuces, arugulas and the last of the spring peas. Hilled the potatoes, but pics of the potato in a thread about potato growing in a bag.
#gyo #GrowFoodFromSeed

A wide view of lettuces, arugulas, kale, peas, and one single zinnia. The lettuces are green heads, red heads, and red frizzles.

#gardening report: the usual, weeding, watering, harvesting lettuces for friends, collards, kale, arugulas for me. Potatoes could use hilling again but ran out of time. Hoping night temps stay above 60 as ready to transplant cukes and squash. #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeed

Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, spent a lot of time with his children when they stayed at their property #Osborne House on the Isle of #Wight. Every child had their own #allotment and wheelbarrow. In the Swiss Cottage they learned to cook their food! #gardening #gyo

Small wheelbarrows with the children's initials

BEANZ!!

#alloment #gyo

A pile of broad bean pods on a car seat.

#gardening report: At the allotment, I transplanted the peppers, sowed another round of carrots, and, of course, weeded. Harvested arugulas and lettuces. Now at home it's time to play a favorite game: pickup sticks.....the river birches drop a godzillion number of little, naked branches. #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeed

Delighted to see my feature on growing herbs in this week’s Garden News magazine.

I talked to the award-winning Kitchen Garden Plant Centre for some top tips.
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#gyo #herbs #plants #gardens #gardening #journalist #cotswolds

Part of a magazine article showing a herb display and the owners of the nursery.

#gardening report: planted potatoes, weeded, harvested enough lettuces and arugulas to give away to 3 other families. Going to start a thread about potatoes. #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeeds #share

Couple of people have asked about growing potatoes in general and in pots. I'm not an expert, so I always point out that many suppliers have reference articles on potatoes.

So here are my chitted potatoes ready for planting. You'll see the supplier name on the tag, but probably there are dozens of suppliers. I'm growing Yukon Gold and Red Norland #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeeds #potato

Two small boxes with seed potatoes sprouted and ready to plant. Red Norland on the left, Yukon Gold on the right. The potatoes are smaller than golf balls. Some have small green shoots.

So that's the #allotment polytunnel pretty much set up for summer. There are 22 tomato plants in the central beds, interplanted with basils. Down the long side there are 6 eggplant plants across 3 varities, one variety of capsicum, a Minnesota Midget melon in esch corner and a Petit Gris de Rennes in the middle. Down the shorter side there are also melons in the reverse planting pattern to the long side, and two varieties of capsicums between them, plus a pair of Beaver Dam chillis.

The tricky bit with the capsicums and eggplants is I lost track of which are which variety 🤦🏻 so it'll be fun to find out!

There is space for some chilli plants to go in at the ends of the tomato beds, once the celery and coriander is cleared... but most of the chillies will need to be in the greenhouse this year (better finish it, lol).

Another non-high-achieving allotment weekend, alas... weather has been meh. But I'd have actually preferred a lot more rain. But some is better than none I guess.

#gyo

A view inside a polytunnel, a wide bed left of the central path, then a narrow bed along the side where the polythene is, there are plants in all the beds with blue and yellow strings running up to the ceiling from them, the beds have low wooden edges and there is pale wood chip over the paths, there are garlics along the edge of the poly tunnel and down the center of the nearer bed.

a view inside a poly tunnel, straight ahead is a double width bed with the central path on the right and path behind it beyond which is a narrow bed along the side of the poly tunnel these only run for part of the length of the poly tunnel and just visible on the left is a cage for holding things and some other equipment, the beds have various plantings in the blue and yellow strings leading up to the ceiling there is garlic down the center of the foreground bed and down the far edge of the background bed to the right the central door of the poly tunnel end is visible the end of the central path.

We're struggling with the water a bit lately. So dry. The IBC and waterbutts are slow to fill. We have been keen for a while now to follow the advice to try not to use the chlorinated tap water on the beds directly, so we leave it to de-chlorinate at least a couple of days. And just haven't been able to keep up with our needs really.

So I have been shopping. One 10" filter holder, an activated charcoal filter for it, a cheap water meter (I'll test its accuracy later), plus some various fittings I have lying around and a good old spool of PTFE tape.

We have water flowing now, hopefully of a somewhat less genocidal nature viz a viz our community of friends in the soil.

#allotment #nodig #gyo

A transparent-blue housing water filter with a garden tap with green hose coming off it on the left and a meter sticking out of the right with a grey garden hose plugged into kg.

on the plus side, we have a big healthy clump of rhubarb which was already here before we got here! yay for surprise free food! 🎉I'm just sad we don't have strawberries to go with it (not yet anyways)

#gardentooting #garden #GrowYourOwn #gyo

photo of a patch of rhubarb growing amidst unkempt grass and stuff. there are still some dry brown stems from last year just sticking up. the rest is big green leaves on angular, red stems

one of the rhubarb plants a bit closer up, the red stems under the big leaves are visible

whelp, I tried 🤷

planted two cucumber plants outside two days ago after having grown them inside for weeks. they looked too big for their pot so I thought it was time to move outside. I guess it was still too cold, because there was rain and idk what else would have killed them this quickly. Poor babies.
Now we won't have any cucumbers (except pickles which we can buy).
🧵

#gardentooting #garden #GrowYourOwn #gyo

two small cucumber plants in a white ceramic pot. they each have only one leaf apart from the first pair of seedling-leaves. in front of the pot lies a tiny red plastic seedling pot (empty) which has "cucumber) written on it in smudged marker. this was their very first home.

photo of a patch of unkempt ground next to a pine tree and a fence; there's mostly grass.

photo of the same patch of ground, but now a small circle hass been cleared of vegetation and is bare, very dark soil. there are some earthworms. the two cucumber plants have been planted in the soil

tje same patch of ground again, with the two cucumber plants in it, but now the bare soil has been covered in lose grass so no bare soil is showing anymore. but the cucumber plants are peeking up through the grass mulch

Still so much to do on the new plot, and we are well behind the desired timeline... but that just is what it is. Just gotta keep on chipping away at it. I look forward to next year ... being able to focus more on the growing than the building. For this space to be as productively verdant as the space in front of the polytunnel, rather than just a sea of woodchip and junk.

#allotment #gyo

looking at an allotment plot, it is laid mostly to woodchip with some markers around the place to delineate where beds will be built, towards the back of the plot there is the frame of a greenhouse which has pallets stacked inside and next to it, and to the right are some tables and an IBC but is not in the best of shape, beyond all this the back of the plot shows more junk in general and a shed slightly hidden behind raspberry canes

The polytunnel plot is looking pretty good right now, and during today's brief visit we harvested some first peas, as well as some of the copious lettuce and some mizuna.There seems to be a decent crop of beans forming on our small broad bean patch, some of the garlic is looking proper thicc, especially thst from our own fattest cloves of saved garlic. The rhubarb is super lush, but lacks rhubarby redness to the stems... the main worry, aside from all the rodent/mole activity, is our asparagus patch seems to be in a bad way, which is sad after several years of care and just one OK harvest last year... not sure what the issue there is.

#allotment #gyo

View of an allotment plot. Three widthwize raised beds in front of a polytunnel spanning rhe plot. The beds are mostly full of lush growing greenness. The foremost full of a crop of alliums, mostly garlic, with some shallots to the left edge.

Looking down on a raosed bed covered with netting and filled with various leafy crops.

looking across at some raised beds, in the nearest one lots of different leafy crops grow under wooden framed cages, and just beyond it is a bed full of garlic.

🌱🐝🌻🧑‍🌾🍅

I would love to have some basic gardening stuff, like a watering can and a lil greenhouse tent, flower, vegetable and landscaping seeds (clover, not lawn!), a hoe, a hammer (to make my own compost bins) and a hammock bc I'm disabled and need breaks and that's the cheapest option. Also fun!

Gardening is the best therapy and medicine I've ever had, because I'm tending the land and regenerating the soil, I'm growing flowers for pollinators and vegetables and berries for my dear friend and me. Talk therapy hasn't helped me much, but this does!

Even just 💯 100€ would be enough for me to keep going!

Can anyone chip in? 🙏💚❤️‍🔥

#fundraising #fundraiser #DonationRequest #donate #MutualAid #MutualAidRequest #disabilityCrowdfund #therapy #garden #gardening #gyo #GrowYourOwn #permaculture

What's the point of a "plant passport" if I cannot garner any sort of information as to the authenticity or meaning of it? I cannot seem to find any way to look up what these codes mean.

I'm generally a little underwhelmed by the labelling on this grape vine from Suttons... sure, it is a Cabernet Sauvignon grape vine... but it has clearly (I think?) been grafted, which wasn't advertised, and - if so -I'd like to know about the rootstock and why they graft it. (Something for UK colder/wetter climate?)

I can ask I guess... I should do that.

#GYO #GrowYourOwn #Grapes #Allotment

A label on the side of the pot, top-left is a box containing the text:

UK Plant Passport
A: Vitis vin. Cabernet Sauvignon
B: 114327 D: GB

Then a photo of two bunches of dark grapes, top-right of the photo is the code 34520 and bottom-left is the code KA3700

A photo of athe stem of a grape vine, it has wax over it and a stem on the right which forks left to an upright stem on the left. This is all covered in grafting wax. So we assume this is a grafted plant?

A plant label on a pot, the big text at the top is: Vitis vin. Cabernet Sauvignon
Then it has text: A vigorous black grape most suitable grown under protection - classic wine grape for making red wine.

Then there is a bar-code, an image of grapse and some other text visible curving to the left.

A label on the side of a pot. A box to the top-right contains:

UK Plant Passport
A: Vitis vinifera
B: 24778
C: KA3700
D: GB

And in big text to the left "KA 3700" and then full width under that text and under the top-right box: Grape (Vitis) Cabernet Sauvignon 3 Litre Pot x 1"

#gardening report: decided to transplant all the allotment's tomato seedlings. Now, there's a row of heirlooms dedicated to @TheEddieShow for his love of Cherokee Purples. Also surveyed the lettuces and arugulas and we're declaring that they've reached Critical Mass: there's now enough to harvest from now til Nov (with, of course, another sowing for a fall crop). The family & friends giveaway program is now open, and you all are invited to reserve your lunch salads any day. #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeed #share

#gardening report: transplanted farm purchased flowers and set out around the house. Thinned the calendula, dill, and basil sprouts. #cycled instead of more work. Gotta put the chitting potatoes into garage to hold until after much wetter and cooler weather passes next week. Still have tomatoes, peppers, calendula, orchids outside, but orchids come in at night. #gyo #GrowFoodFromSeeds #CycleEverywhere

#gyo

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