God I love growing our own

[enrico]

I rarely get enough Charlottes to store - we eat them very quickly but it looks like a good crop for me this year - how do you store them ?

Cool dark room. Ours are fine until November. But we only grow 20 plants outside and we dig them when the two pots that we grow in the greenhouse are finished. We replant a pot full for new potatoes at Christmas. There are two of us with occasional large family meals so they are fine until November. We use the Sagitta for chips, roast and mash.

 

[JamezF]

Where do you keep them?

Used to keep them in the cellar, but it's often quite warm in there these days so now they're in the workshop (because having stone walls it doesn't warm up that much). They may well move into a garden shed once I'm happy that it's rodent-proof.

James

 

[JamezF]

I've just been watching one of Charles Dowding's recent videos (recorded at the end of June) in which he harvests the potatoes from a Charlotte plant. He also has some tubers from last year's harvest. They do have small shoots, but clearly they'll keep for almost a year in appropriate conditions. He also points out that if they start to shoot you can just rub the shoots off and eat them anyhow. Just because they're shooting doesn't mean they're inedible.

James

 

[JamezF]

I understand potato merrchants keep their stocks in giant refrigerated buildings

They do. I know a farmer locally who grows hundreds (quite possibly even thousands) of tonnes of potatoes. He has at least a couple of cold stores for storage. They're costing a fortune to run these days.

James

 

[Goran]

https://postharvest.ucdavis.edu/Com.../Datastores/Vegetables_English/?uid=27&ds=799

 

[pargyle]

They do. I know a farmer locally who grows hundreds (quite possibly even thousands) of tonnes of potatoes. He has at least a couple of cold stores for storage. They're costing a fortune to run these days.

James

it's no wonder the price of spuds has gone through the roof !

I dug up one of my garlics tonight - you were right - it was well formed but not the biggest cloves I've ever grown. With a bit of warm weather predicted this week I'm inclined to leave them for a bit longer. There's no sign of garlic spears forming yet and though the stems are leaning over they are still well attached at the base. What's the worst that can happen ? They don't get any bigger ?

 

[JamezF]

I dug up one of my garlics tonight - you were right - it was well formed but not the biggest cloves I've ever grown. With a bit of warm weather predicted this week I'm inclined to leave them for a bit longer. There's no sign of garlic spears forming yet and though the stems are leaning over they are still well attached at the base. What's the worst that can happen ? They don't get any bigger ?

Pretty much I think. I checked today and a very small number of mine have started to form an additional ring of cloves around the first which is certainly no hardship -- similar to the way that elephant garlic does. If they start to form scapes then I'd have them out of the ground straight away (though the scapes are apparently edible) as I believe that affects the length of time they'll keep for, but I'm not aware of a major problem otherwise.

For storage (plaiting and hanging, basically) my personal preference is for the neck to be undamaged so we'll work our way through the split ones first. Otherwise our experience with softneck garlic is that in good conditions it will keep until the next harvest.

On a slightly related note, last year I strung all our onions but ran out of storage space in the workshop, so hung the rest under the roof of the compost bins (just a clear corrugated plastic roof running into a gutter to some water storage, high enough that it's comfortable to walk underneath). The latter kept noticeably better than the ones in the workshop, I assume due to the better air circulation around the bulbs. The workshop is certainly cool during the winter, but I'd guess there's not much airflow to help keep damp under control during times of the year when it's too cold to be out there regularly.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

There's no sign of garlic spears forming yet

Quite a few of ours have but we ate them and they were delicious. These were autumn planted and the bulbs are good. Now drying in the greenhouse

 

[enrico]

I've just been watching one of Charles Dowding's recent videos (recorded at the end of June) in which he harvests the potatoes from a Charlotte plant. He also has some tubers from last year's harvest. They do have small shoots, but clearly they'll keep for almost a year in appropriate conditions. He also points out that if they start to shoot you can just rub the shoots off and eat them anyhow. Just because they're shooting doesn't mean they're inedible.

James

Take shoots off frequently while in storage

 

[markb2603]

Is my apple tree bending like this due to the apples bad for it? Should I remove them? It’s been in place 3 years now and this is the first year with a good batch of apples. I’d like to keep a few if I can.

 

[Erichalfbee]

Is my apple tree bending like this due to the apples bad for it? Should I remove them? It’s been in place 3 years now and this is the first year with a good batch of apples. I’d like to keep a few if I can.

Mine do that. I prop the branches up.

 

[enrico]

You can summer prune the ends off where the apples are not growing. Thin any double apples out to single ones. It all reduces the weight. Other than that they should be fine.

 

[markb2603]

Thank you.

 

[JamezF]

I have spent much of today cutting glass for Frankenstein's Greenhouse. Most of what I need is standard 2'x18" or 2'x2' sheets, but because I had to make some compromises where I joined the two frames together and to make the door fit I've also had to cut quite a few pieces to size. Fortunately most of the cut pieces have come from damaged sheets that I couldn't have used elsewhere anyhow. I even managed to use up some quite small pieces in replacing most of the glass slats in two louvred vent windows. Hopefully they'll have a nice empty skip when I take all the glass offcuts to the tip after I'm finished

I have a very small amount of metalwork left to do and glass to cut for the gable ends but then (ignoring a bit of landscaping) I think I'm within sight of the end of this particular project, though chicken run repairs might turn out to have greater urgency next week.

James

 

[JamezF]

Belay the chicken run repairs. I just heard the dishwasher finish and then go into spasms and it refused to turn off. Emptied it and pulled it out to discover that the (mains pressure, because it's the kitchen) cold water feed pipe has split inside the wall and water is pouring out everywhere. I guess I should be grateful that I hadn't gone to bed otherwise that would have been the most horrendous mess in the morning.

James

 

[Goran]

Since frosts burned most od our fruits.. we are now been overpowered for few fruits left by the swarm of various birds.. Apples and pears what left birds get even unripe.. at this tempo won't taste any.. Little early plums we managed to harvest.. thanks to cats.. cause it is in spot where they can get these birds.. evenso birds repeat their atacks.. horror.. Plums are very sweet and big this year ( 70-80 grams each)..

 

[Gilberdyke John]

I have spent much of today cutting glass for Frankenstein's Greenhouse. Most of what I need is standard 2'x18" or 2'x2' sheets, but because I had to make some compromises where I joined the two frames together and to make the door fit I've also had to cut quite a few pieces to size. Fortunately most of the cut pieces have come from damaged sheets that I couldn't have used elsewhere anyhow. I even managed to use up some quite small pieces in replacing most of the glass slats in two louvred vent windows. Hopefully they'll have a nice empty skip when I take all the glass offcuts to the tip after I'm finished

I have a very small amount of metalwork left to do and glass to cut for the gable ends but then (ignoring a bit of landscaping) I think I'm within sight of the end of this particular project, though chicken run repairs might turn out to have greater urgency next week.

James

As a boy I used to help my dad with greenhouse repairs which invariably involved cutting glass and tacking in place with small brass nails driven into the sides of the spars. We mostly had English style glasshouses but also one dutch glasshouse. Broken Dutch lights were cut up to produce smaller panes for the English houses. Dad had a diamond to cut the glass but I couldn't master holding it correctly so I used a wheel cutter. Glaziers used to say a diamond only suited it's owner.
We had a neighbouring farmer who if he spotted us working on the glass used to appear with a barrow load of broken dutch lights to be cut up for repairs. We had a deal that we would cut it for him only on the condition he disposed of the cullet.

 

[enrico]

Lifted all my sagitta spuds. About half as much again as the Charlotte for same amount of plants. Spuds were bigger and ideal for chips. Love both varieties.

 

[JamezF]

I'm sure it must still be possible to get diamond glass cutters, but I don't think I've ever seen one. Even memories from my childhood of watching my dad cut glass was with a carbide wheel cutter. All this practice has meant that I am getting so much better at cutting thin strips off sheets by scoring and then "chasing" a crack down the line of the score by tapping the glass on the opposite side with the other end of the cutter.

I mostly got the kitchen pipework repaired yesterday morning and installed an isolation valve just for the kitchen at the same time. This morning I had to cheat and use some sealant on a compression joint I'd taken apart to make working easier which then wouldn't go back together without weeping. I should really have replaced the olive, but it didn't want to budge and there wasn't really room to fight with it. I even managed to get the dishwasher to work again -- it was throwing fits because its anti-flood mechanism had been triggered by the water that was splashing about from the failed pipe.

As a result and thanks to the persisting rain preventing me from addressing the issues with the chicken runs I've had time to carry on doing more of the glazing. Everything is now done other than one gable (very little glazing required because most of that end is one side of a pair of compost bins) and one run for the roof. I've had to fiddle with the spacing of the glazing bars on the gable so I can use up glass of the sizes I now have left over, but I can't finish the roof because I've run out of rubber sealant strip. I was only using up some I found in the workshop that happened to be the correct design, but it's irritating to have to order more now when I'm only about 4m short Thanks to some "creative" cutting I might possibly even manage to get the entire job done in glass. It's meant I've used more glazing clips and so on, but they're no use sitting around on the workshop shelves like they have been for the last ten or possibly even fifteen years.

James

 

[Erichalfbee]

James....you are a one man industry. Do you find time to sleep?