God I love growing our own

[Ian123]

Any got any suggestions regarding blight. Not seen any this year but gave up a few years ago due to constant issues.

 

[pargyle]

Any got any suggestions regarding blight. Not seen any this year but gave up a few years ago due to constant issues.

Fresh compost ... nothing from the garden that might be contaminated with the spores, water them from the bottom, keep the water off the leaves. If you can grow under cover and in pots you have more chance, if there is blight in the area ... really hard to avoid it. If you can't grow under cover a polythene or fine mesh screen around the plants helps but you also need plenty of space around them as the spores love moist warm air ... I've been battling blight for years and there's no guaranteed solution ...burning infected plants or the bits that you cut off when you spot it - not composting wlll help keep the spores at bay. Blight resistant varieties are largely a must ... I have no hope with any heritage varieties ... quick growing medium size fruit or cherry varieties seem to work best ... I've had the best results with Crimson Crush and Lizzano and Maskotka but they are not easy to find as young plants so have to be grown from seed ... like you, I've almost given up ... it's very disheartening when you get to the stage where you have ripening fruit with all the effort it takes and within a week the whole plant becomes brown and whilst the fruit remains edible it looks unappetising ...

 

[JamezF]

Which is why they are better planted in blocks rather than rows.

Indeed. My beds are 1.2m wide, so I plant mine in a roughly square block across two beds.

James

 

[Monbees]

I’ve got more of everything than I can cope with. I love growing but hate dealing with it all. I have gallons of tomato purée. I usually freeze Mediterranean veg for pasta but still have lots left over from last year. And no freezer space

i would love someone to give tips on pureeing tomatoes. I seem to spend hours skinning (boiling water method), reducing on the hob, pureeing in liquidiser then sieving to remove most seeds. Does anyone just liquidise the whole lot, skin and all?

 

[JamezF]

Any got any suggestions regarding blight. Not seen any this year but gave up a few years ago due to constant issues.

Blight is something of a nightmare. It thrives in warm, damp conditions and can spread tens of miles on the wind, so it's largely unavoidable. This is the first year in a long time that I've not had it to some degree here (so far), which I assume is down to the very dry weather. My potatoes always suffer first because they're outdoors, but it does eventually get to the tomatoes in the polytunnel too. Fortunately that's usually not until very near the end of the season when we're just trying to get the last few fruit to ripen.

The blight fungus actually requires a live host and from memory can't survive in any form (spores or "live" fungus) without one for more than a few days, so composting plants that have it really shouldn't be a problem. I've read suggestions that where potatoes are concerned, the larger problem is "volunteer" potatoes from previous years' crops that provide a host for the fungus over Winter and then spread it again when they sprout in the Spring. For that reason I've been removing all signs of volunteer plants this year.

Where potatoes are concerned, I think growing resistant varieties is probably the only real choice unless you just learn to live with it. Farmers have other options using chemical controls, but not ones that are available (nor even viable, really) to the rest of us. In the case of tomatoes growing under cover seems to be the best choice though there are blight-tolerant and blight-resistant varieties if that's not an option.

Watering when the air is still might help, as the fungus needs a period of time when the plant is wet to infect it, but all it takes is a rainy and windy summer day and whatever precautions you've taken may well be rendered useless

James

 

[JamezF]

i would love someone to give tips on pureeing tomatoes. I seem to spend hours skinning (boiling water method), reducing on the hob, pureeing in liquidiser then sieving to remove most seeds. Does anyone just liquidise the whole lot, skin and all?

Ours usually get roasted in the oven with whole cloves of garlic and then put through an attachment on the food processor that works a bit like a mouli, leaving the skins and pips behind. If my wife is in a bit of a rush to get a batch done though, it may well just end up being put in the liquidiser instead.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

i would love someone to give tips on pureeing tomatoes. I seem to spend hours skinning (boiling water method), reducing on the hob, pureeing in liquidiser then sieving to remove most seeds. Does anyone just liquidise the whole lot, skin and all?

My plum tomatoes skin really easily so it's no bother. If you have the space and are short of time you can pop the tomatoes in the freezer whole. Once thawed the skins come off with no difficulty then you can throw them into a roasting dish with salt pepper oregano and garlic, roast and blend. I never bother reducing them to the strength and consistency of tomato puree

 

[Erichalfbee]

Ours usually get roasted in the oven with whole cloves of garlic and then put through an attachment on the food processor that works a bit like a mouli, leaving the skins and pips behind. If my wife is in a bit of a rush to get a batch done though, it may well just end up being put in the liquidiser instead.

James

James what processor please?

 

[JamezF]

James what processor please?

I shall try to find the exact details this evening.

James

 

[enrico]

i would love someone to give tips on pureeing tomatoes. I seem to spend hours skinning (boiling water method), reducing on the hob, pureeing in liquidiser then sieving to remove most seeds. Does anyone just liquidise the whole lot, skin and all?

Cut big ones in half and small ones whole in a roasting tin with a couple of garlic cloves. Roast until juices run.(20 mins @160⁰) when cool throw the lot in a liquidiser and blend together but not too smooth and freeze in 8 oz tubs to use in anything that takes tomatoes! Eg. Pizza spag bol, casserole etc etc etc!!! Keep it simple. Any other seasoning can be added when it is used in whatever dish you are cooking

 

[JamezF]

James what processor please?

I can't be 100% certain as ours doesn't have any identifying labelling and it looks like the design may have changed since we bought ours, but I believe it is the masher and puree kit sold for (some of) the Magimix range of food processors.

James

 

[Skinfaxi]

My plum tomatoes are Polish Linguisa; seed saved from last year. They are doing very well. I’ve never had better cherry tomatoes than Sungold. I grew Aromatico from supermarket tomatoes which I presume were F1 and they have been good too.

Yes sungold are great my favourite.used to grow and sell lots of them

 

[Skinfaxi]

Charles Dowding has a short video posted last week about propagating F1 tomato plants from sideshoots. He said he does it because one of his favourite varieties was F1 and is no longer available. He's been keeping the plants going for six years that way.

As I mentioned earlier, I managed to get some to root quite happily last year using a near identical method (I got mine to root in jars of water before potting them on), but I think I possibly did it too early. If you can get the timing right (which I guess might be easier if the process were repeated every couple of weeks for a month, say) then the only other requirement seems to be somewhere suitable to keep the plants over winter. Actually the other tricky bit for me is that some of my plants are now over six feet tall and he says that October is the right time to be rooting the sideshoots, so I might have to adopt the "lowering strings" method just to have plants still growing that I can take sideshoots from.

James

You can use 400watt horticulture light. Grow two or three mother plants. Then in spring take cuttings from them and root how you wish.
you can keep cutting them back to control the size.Or make air layers on the mother plants early in the year
And pot on deep

 

[Skinfaxi]

Wasn't Hivemaker very active on home grown veg, IIRC setting up a hydroponics system for his tomatoes?
I thought my garden was far less ambitious than others described above but then started making what I thought was going to be a short list. I'm lucky to have a large garden and several years of effort has resulted in 4 rows of asparagus now yielding well every spring, some raspberries (variety Polka) desperately in need of rain, sweetcorn loving the recent heat, a few rows of beetroot for roasted veg, borlotti beans destined for drying and then winter stews, some aphid ridden dwarf french beans, parsnips coping surprisingly well with the heat, an abundance of rainbow chard, a couple of strawberry beds, courgettes and butternut squash, outdoor tomatoes and blueberries in containers and about 20+ top fruit trees.

When it come to hydroponics i find some peaple get confused. You can get hydro systems in glasshouses tunnels fields. Meaning the nutrient is mixed in water ph adjusted and applied in my different ways in inert media.
Then you have grow lights. They can be used in many ways as well. To control day length and for growing under. You can grow in any medium.

 

[JamezF]

Most of tonight's dinner came from the veggie plot -- potatoes, courgettes and this, which particularly appeals to the mathematician (and in fact the computer scientist) in me.

It's a Romanesco cauliflower. The whole non-random self-similarity of the curd just has a deep appeal to me. That plant genetics might embody a set of instructions for growth along the lines of "keep repeating the same thing, but at a smaller scale" seems a brilliant way to grow very complex structures using very little (and simple) information, though I have no idea whether that's actually what happens in reality.

As is typical with these things though, we have about ten plants ready to eat all at the same time and in the current weather they run to flower in just a few days, so I've cut all the others and I'm experimenting by blanching and open-freezing them. The whole "ready at the same time" thing is an issue I've never really been able to work around with the likes of cauliflowers and calabrese. This year I've made multiple successional sowings each month, but it feels as though I might need to get to the level of raising a couple of plants every week just to get a nice succession ready for harvest which isn't exactly the most convenient way to garden on a household scale. It might help if I understood what triggers the production of the curd (like day length being the trigger for the fattening of onions, for example). I've read some suggestions that degree-days since germination might be relevant, but beyond having an understanding of degree-days I'm quite out of my depth there.

I've also been busy planting out winter brassicas in the ground newly freed up by harvesting red onions, clearing broad beans and suchlike: savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, red cabbage, that sort of stuff. Still have a few more left to get in the ground and then, along with a good few dozen new lettuces, the plot will be full once again.

I have failed in one respect with the lettuces, sadly. The hot dry weather has caught me out by causing the last batch to bolt more rapidly than I'd allowed for and this new bunch were effectively already too late. For the first time since just before Christmas 2020, we've actually had to buy some salad leaves I'm quite disappointed.

In the last couple of days the leaves have started to fall over on the "brown" onions, so it looks like I'll be harvesting them very soon. Fortunately I've just finished putting a bit of a roof over one of the compost bays which means I can put some mesh above the compost and use that as a space for curing them. Not that it actually looks like protection from the rain will be necessary in the near future.

James

 

[Martimart]

Most of tonight's dinner came from the veggie plot -- potatoes, courgettes and this, which particularly appeals to the mathematician (and in fact the computer scientist) in me.

It's a Romanesco cauliflower. The whole non-random self-similarity of the curd just has a deep appeal to me. That plant genetics might embody a set of instructions for growth along the lines of "keep repeating the same thing, but at a smaller scale" seems a brilliant way to grow very complex structures using very little (and simple) information, though I have no idea whether that's actually what happens in reality.

As is typical with these things though, we have about ten plants ready to eat all at the same time and in the current weather they run to flower in just a few days, so I've cut all the others and I'm experimenting by blanching and open-freezing them. The whole "ready at the same time" thing is an issue I've never really been able to work around with the likes of cauliflowers and calabrese. This year I've made multiple successional sowings each month, but it feels as though I might need to get to the level of raising a couple of plants every week just to get a nice succession ready for harvest which isn't exactly the most convenient way to garden on a household scale. It might help if I understood what triggers the production of the curd (like day length being the trigger for the fattening of onions, for example). I've read some suggestions that degree-days since germination might be relevant, but beyond having an understanding of degree-days I'm quite out of my depth there.

I've also been busy planting out winter brassicas in the ground newly freed up by harvesting red onions, clearing broad beans and suchlike: savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, red cabbage, that sort of stuff. Still have a few more left to get in the ground and then, along with a good few dozen new lettuces, the plot will be full once again.

I have failed in one respect with the lettuces, sadly. The hot dry weather has caught me out by causing the last batch to bolt more rapidly than I'd allowed for and this new bunch were effectively already too late. For the first time since just before Christmas 2020, we've actually had to buy some salad leaves I'm quite disappointed.

In the last couple of days the leaves have started to fall over on the "brown" onions, so it looks like I'll be harvesting them very soon. Fortunately I've just finished putting a bit of a roof over one of the compost bays which means I can put some mesh above the compost and use that as a space for curing them. Not that it actually looks like protection from the rain will be necessary in the near future.

James

I've not done any brassica's this year, fed up of pigeons getting in. My onions have gone flat, so I will lift them in a weeks time. Spring onions, lettuce all done okay, my runner beans seem behind with loads of flowers but no real beans yet, peas failed as usual. The sweetcorn is looking good though as are raspberries and kale.

I've been inundated with weeds this year, so nothing growing over winter, I'll put cardboard over the area and put a couple of inches of compost on top, to get back on track with the no dig.

 

[JamezF]

my runner beans seem behind with loads of flowers but no real beans yet

I think runner beans like a bit of moisture in the air when they're setting fruit. If you've not had much/any rain that might be part of the problem.

James

 

[Bryang]

I think runner beans like a bit of moisture in the air when they're setting fruit. If you've not had much/any rain that might be part of the problem.

James

I spray my beans most evenings with water to encourage the flowers to set.. Last Sunday went up the allotment in the PM to find that a load of the bean flowers had dropped off. Filled 3 large buckets with them.. So disapointed.

 

[roche]

Most of tonight's dinner came from the veggie plot -- potatoes, courgettes and this, which particularly appeals to the mathematician (and in fact the computer scientist) in me.

It's a Romanesco cauliflower. The whole non-random self-similarity of the curd just has a deep appeal to me. That plant genetics might embody a set of instructions for growth along the lines of "keep repeating the same thing, but at a smaller scale" seems a brilliant way to grow very complex structures using very little (and simple) information, though I have no idea whether that's actually what happens in reality.

As is typical with these things though, we have about ten plants ready to eat all at the same time and in the current weather they run to flower in just a few days, so I've cut all the others and I'm experimenting by blanching and open-freezing them. The whole "ready at the same time" thing is an issue I've never really been able to work around with the likes of cauliflowers and calabrese. This year I've made multiple successional sowings each month, but it feels as though I might need to get to the level of raising a couple of plants every week just to get a nice succession ready for harvest which isn't exactly the most convenient way to garden on a household scale. It might help if I understood what triggers the production of the curd (like day length being the trigger for the fattening of onions, for example). I've read some suggestions that degree-days since germination might be relevant, but beyond having an understanding of degree-days I'm quite out of my depth there.

I've also been busy planting out winter brassicas in the ground newly freed up by harvesting red onions, clearing broad beans and suchlike: savoy cabbage, cavolo nero, red cabbage, that sort of stuff. Still have a few more left to get in the ground and then, along with a good few dozen new lettuces, the plot will be full once again.

I have failed in one respect with the lettuces, sadly. The hot dry weather has caught me out by causing the last batch to bolt more rapidly than I'd allowed for and this new bunch were effectively already too late. For the first time since just before Christmas 2020, we've actually had to buy some salad leaves I'm quite disappointed.

In the last couple of days the leaves have started to fall over on the "brown" onions, so it looks like I'll be harvesting them very soon. Fortunately I've just finished putting a bit of a roof over one of the compost bays which means I can put some mesh above the compost and use that as a space for curing them. Not that it actually looks like protection from the rain will be necessary in the near future.

James

Fractals!
There was a fascinating lecturer at VUW who went into the maths of plant growth patterns. He used to write on the boards so quickly I could never keep up, and now I cannot remember his name. Unfortunately he never gave the references either, and I lost all my notes, such as they were, years ago. I would really like to read more about it now though...

 

[enrico]

I spray my beans most evenings with water to encourage the flowers to set.. Last Sunday went up the allotment in the PM to find that a load of the bean flowers had dropped off. Filled 3 large buckets with them.. So disapointed.

Sure the bullfinches hadn't done it?