God I love growing our own

[JamezF]

So you've grown loofahs !! Very impressed - presumably in the greenhouse or tunnel ?

A couple of plants in each, though I reckon the ones in the polytunnel may have done the better of the two.

James

 

[E&MBees]

I grew loofahs with one of my gardening groups at work. Put them in the poly tunnel. Very successful, extremely rampant though, we had tendrils everywhere.

 

[JamezF]

I grew loofahs with one of my gardening groups at work. Put them in the poly tunnel. Very successful, extremely rampant though, we had tendrils everywhere.

Yes, I had one plant climb out of one of the greenhouse roof vents (which are at least eight feet high) and there were two gourds on the outside of the roof

James

 

[JamezF]

I spent some time this morning replanting garlic cloves that (presumably) mice have dug up, then sowing field beans in the empty areas of the main plot. Hopefully the fleece that I've spread over the top of the beans will keep the mice off them. Something is also eating the leaves of my father-in-law's wallflowers. No idea what though. Only the lower leaves are being eaten so I assume it's a small animal rather than deer. My best guess at the moment is rabbits.

This evening I have been pickling jalapenos. Last year I managed seven large jars and one small one and we're a long way through those now, so this lot isn't going to be sufficient. On the positive side there are still more on the plants and at least these ones are red, whereas all of them were green last year. I saw some completely black jalapenos last weekend. I'm going to have to ask where I can get some of those.

I've also cleaned up some tomato seeds that I saved to sow next year. My tomato cuttings are generally doing well though I've lost one plant, but I thought I'd best have a backup just in case so I saved one very ripe fruit and squished the seeds and juice into a jar. After three days in the airing cupboard it was a bit unpleasant and mouldy on top, but I've read that this process gets rid of the jelly-like outer seed coat which I think inhibits germination. The seeds are washed off now and drying on some paper towel. I estimate that I have about eighty seeds and they're currently selling at sixteen for £3.20, so as long as they germinate (I shall do a test shortly) I'll be quite pleased with the outcome.

I have some new raspberry canes to plant out, too. The raspberries are kind of my father-in-law's thing. I'd always have them, but they're one of the plants he can in theory still largely look after by himself. Unfortunately the autumn fruiting ones have suffered a bit of a bindweed invasion and whilst I was quietly attempting to deal with it less unpleasantly, without my knowledge he decided to attack it with glyphosate. Unfortunately he wasn't that careful where he sprayed it and killed most of the raspberries at the same time Hopefully as I've bought these ones I'll get more of a say in how they're managed. He did the same sort of thing with a couple of flower beds that he made around the base of some of our apple trees. They got a bit overrun with weeds because it's difficult for him and my mother-in-law to look after them now. I took one over earlier in the year and pretty much killed all the weeds off with a few layers of cardboard and a thick layer of compost. Clearly a couple of weeks back he decided to hit two of the others with glyphosate, but seems to have managed to cover an additional area of grass larger than each bed in the process and it's now dying. It really frustrates me sometimes He knows we have loads of cardboard because I keep plenty specifically for this purpose, and he knows we have plenty of compost. If he'd said "Would you mind dealing with these two beds?" I'd have sorted it in a couple of hours. I'm not religious about not using chemicals, but I do object when it's clearly not necessary. I'd hide his glyphosate, but he'd only go and buy more

James

 

[rossbyjove]

Pretty much the same time as outdoor garlic. My experience is just that the polytunnel bulbs perhaps seem to get a little fatter. This year all my outdoor garlic (I had two bulbs worth in the polytunnel and two outdoors) suffered really badly from rust, which is why we're short of it and why it will all be under cover this time around unless I just can't find space in which case I might plant a few cloves outdoors to see how they do. I have no idea why the plants got rust this year. Nothing else was affected -- my onions and shallots were fantastic and the previous year's crop (in a different place in the plot) had been absolutely fine.

James

All my garlic, leeks and onions had yellow leaf virus this year, left me with nothing.
Go the sheen flame gun over various plots and have planted out this autumn.
Everything is looking very good......too good, I don't like it.

 

[enrico]

All my garlic, leeks and onions had yellow leaf virus this year, left me with nothing.
Go the sheen flame gun over various plots and have planted out this autumn.
Everything is looking very good......too good, I don't like it.

It was a bad year!!!

 

[JamezF]

Picked the very last of this year's peppers/chiles today. They're just not going to get any more ripe now. Then, after replacing some cloves that the (presumed) mice had dug up, I planted the remaining garlic that I'd not previously had space for. I think I probably have about eighty cloves in the ground now. Some have already sprouted, though they're hardly more than a few millimetres above the compost.

James

 

[pargyle]

I planted out all my broad beans I started in pots in the greenhouse. I'm a bit worried about them as they are all about a foot tall and a bit straggly. Really good root system on all of them but I had to stake them as they were, mostly, not self supporting. If the weather remains as mild as this I can see them starting to flower. I'm putting some protection around the raised beds to stop the wind blowing them about and I will have some fleece ready if there is any sign of frost but I've never had broad beans this tall going into winter ...

 

[JamezF]

My daughter and I spent most of today pressing apples. In total I think we got through about sixteen feed bags worth -- perhaps in the region of a quarter of a tonne of apples. One of these years I shall weigh them

Now I just have to work out what to do with twenty-seven gallons of apple juice

Some we will freeze and then I'll see what's left. Ideally I'd like to pasteurise it all and I've bodged that in the past. Domestic scale pasteurisers just aren't workable for that kind of volume though (and I reckon I could collect enough apples to get another ten gallons if I wanted, perhaps even fifteen). It's tempting to try to make a DIY pasteuriser using a large drinking trough, kettle elements and lots of insulation though I've no idea if that would work.

James

 

[Bryang]

JamezF..... Some years ago I was having the same problem with the garlic cloves, I also thought it was mice. Was told by a a fellow "allotmenteer" that it was the birds pulling them up, thinking the tops are worms. I now plant them so the tops are covered. Have had no problems since. Also works for onion sets..

 

[JamezF]

JamezF..... Some years ago I was having the same problem with the garlic cloves, I also thought it was mice. Was told by a a fellow "allotmenteer" that it was the birds pulling them up, thinking the tops are worms. I now plant them so the tops are covered. Have had no problems since. Also works for onion sets..

Mine aren't visible above the ground and they're in my polytunnel, so it seems unlikely to be birds. I used to get that with my onion sets though, until I started growing onions from seed.

James

 

[pargyle]

My daughter and I spent most of today pressing apples. In total I think we got through about sixteen feed bags worth -- perhaps in the region of a quarter of a tonne of apples. One of these years I shall weigh them

That's a lot if apples ... have you got a scratter ?

 

[JamezF]

That's a lot if apples ... have you got a scratter ?

Yes, I had the opportunity to buy one of the full stainless garden shredder style ones a good few years back for well under half what Vigo sell them for now (the Vares Fruit Shark), direct from the importer. It is outstanding.

Prior to that I used to use a hand-powered roller type model similar to the ones Vigo still sell. It did an ok job, but the fruit wasn't crushed as well as it is with the new one and it was hard work with a lot of apples.

Getting the fruit well crushed looks to be key to the efficiency of the extraction. Years back I had a tour of Sheppy's Cider, before they were "modernised" and the pomace they were making up the cheese with was really sloppy. That was an impressive process to see. They had a three-table rotating press, each table being about a metre square, the entire thing being manned by two people. One table was being pressed (using a hydraulic press) whilst the next one was having the cheese made up by one person as the other took the just-pressed cheese apart. Once they were done the tables rotated to bring the new cheese under the press and the entire process started again. Must have been back-breaking work though.

James

 

[pargyle]

I made one .. turned a beech wooden roller and impregnated it with scores of stainless steel screws set it on a shaft between two Picador bearings and fed via a hopper made of plywood. Version one was hand driven ... very hard work and unless I cur the apples up into quarters tended to jam up and not do much of a job. So, Version 2 - I fitted an electric tumble drier motor and pulley ....it worked, of a fashion, but I found the scratted apples then needed pulverising to maximise juicing - so I made a tamper out of an old stainless steel saucepan that I filled with concrete with a handle set in it. That worked very well but it was hard work. I only used to juice up 40 or 50 kilos so doable ...

I used it for a few years but then the small orchard I had access to was sold to become a housing development and the motor and bearings got used for another ill-fated project (a leaf and compost shredder - that was a disaster and proved totally useless) - so, whist I still have my press - I am currently scratterless !

 

[JamezF]

We had a frost this morning. Not a particularly hard one as the air temperature only got down to 1.6°C according to my weather station, but I'm taking it as a sign of things to come and have moved my tomato cuttings and pineapple plants from the greenhouse into the house to overwinter.

I've had two losses from my tomato cuttings thus far. I took thirty-two initially, eight from each of four varieties, and I've lost one each of two of them. I don't actually need all the cuttings as I'm sure I'll be able to get seed again for most if not all, but as it's an experiment I wanted a decent number to work with so I could see how they do. I'm actually slightly shocked by how much they've grown. All I did was strip most of the leaves off a side-shoot and firm them into pots of compost that I'd poked a hole in with a pencil. I've already had to pinch off flower stems and today I found a new sideshoot on one plant. I'm a little concerned that the amount of growth they've put on is a bad thing and that they might not make it through to the Spring in the 4" pots I used. I guess I'll find out in a few months.

My wife has just come up the cellar steps clutching our last jar of pickled jalapenos from 2021. Just as well we've got another 1.5kg from this year's harvest

Despite the frost I saw dozens of median wasps (workers feeding, by the looks of it, rather than queens looking for somewhere to hole up for the winter) when I was outdoors today and even got buzzed by a bumble bee!

James

 

[fian]

Mi hija y yo pasamos la mayor parte del día presionando manzanas. En total, creo que gastamos unas dieciséis bolsas de alimento, quizás en la región de un cuarto de tonelada de manzanas. uno de estos años los pesaré

Ahora solo tengo que averiguar qué hacer con veintisiete galones de jugo de manzana.

Algunos los congelaremos y luego veré lo que queda. Idealmente, me gustaría pasteurizarlo todo y lo he hecho en el pasado. Sin embargo, los pasteurizadores domésticos a escala simplemente no funcionan para ese tipo de volumen (y creo que podría recolectar suficientes manzanas para obtener otros diez galones si quisiera, tal vez incluso quince). Es tentador tratar de hacer un pasteurizador de bricolaje usando un gran bebedero, elementos de la tetera y mucho aislamiento, aunque no tengo ni idea de si eso funcionaría.

Jaime

La sidra se elabora con jugo de manzana, simplemente dejándolo fermentar. Puedes usar levadura de cerveza y si le agregas un poco de miel le darás un poco de dulzor.
Recomendación y consejo.
1. Busca vídeos de Asturias en los que vierten sidra. Un arte en sí mismo.
2. Ojo, la sidra sube y deja una resaca terrible.

 

[philipm]

We have loads of Cape Gooseberies (Physalis)this year,lucky my daughter is home and can pick them for me .My fractured spine is getting better but I,m now also having chemo.

 

[pargyle]

I made a new seive to sit on my barrow, just pallet wood and some bits of mesh I had laying around... it's dual purpose - the main seive is for rough seiving compost and then a finer mesh one sits inside it when I want it finer to make potting compost. Put it to work on last years leaf mould ... works well. Made half a hundredweight of natures finest ... 'Helped' by my friend, the stick monster, who seemed to think the plan was to redistribute the twigs i'd seived out back across the lawn !

Then I filled two 1 tonne bags and one 2 tonne bag with this years leaves ... so far ,.. there's a lot left on the trees !

 

[pargyle]

My overwinter peas ... Douce Provence - in the greenhouse today, these were only planted 10 days ago. They are already pushing roots through the bottom of the plugs ... I normally plant them out, under cloches, in February for an early crop but they are growing so fast I think I'm going to have to pot them on into 4" potsand let them grow on Oddly, the ones I sowed in guttering a week or so before these have not germinated at all - same seed but the only difference was that I used compost from a bag I picked up in Aldi and the guttering was on the bench rather than in the mini greenhouse I have inside the greenhouse....the compost was very cheap and I rather suspect that the compost is duff ...

 

[JamezF]

I made a new seive to sit on my barrow, just pallet wood and some bits of mesh I had laying around... it's dual purpose - the main seive is for rough seiving compost and then a finer mesh one sits inside it when I want it finer to make potting compost. Put it to work on last years leaf mould ... works well. Made half a hundredweight of natures finest ... 'Helped' by my friend, the stick monster, who seemed to think the plan was to redistribute the twigs i'd seived out back across the lawn !

Then I filled two 1 tonne bags and one 2 tonne bag with this years leaves ... so far ,.. there's a lot left on the trees !

I've thought about doing something similar, but making a rotating sieve in the style of a cement mixer, so the raw material gets shovelled into the front of the "barrel" and the sieved stuff drops out underneath. Obviously a tipping feature would be useful too so the big stuff could be dumped out as well.

Last year I collected twelve dumpy bags of fallen leaves, but I've been using them as a "brown" to mix into the compost bins. Carbon-rich material always seems in short supply compared with green nitrogen-rich stuff.

What's your potting compost recipe? I'm still looking for a viable alternative to commercial composts that usually contain either peat or coir (or both). I tried green waste compost this season and whilst it did work I can't really say that I was happy with it. I don't think the plants did as well as they do in commercial compost.

James