Veg plans for 2020

MacDanger

Hi


I planted some calabrese, cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli (4 varieties). The calabrese & cauliflower came up fine and was harvested in late Jul / early Aug but I'm getting hardly anything from the sprouting broccoli. The plants seem fine and healthy but from 12 plants, I've literally gotten about 4-6 tiny pieces.



Do I just need to wait a bit longer? Or any idea what's happening?


Thanks

Seve OB

Living Off The Splash wrote: »

We found a slug among our lettuce plants that if you wrapped it in breadcrumbs it would feed a family for a week. It was a monster.

Any pics?
Did you deep fry it or stick it in the oven?

SouthWesterly

Went into the garden today. My 30 artichokes were flattened by the latest storm

MacDanger

MacDanger wrote: »

Hi


I planted some calabrese, cauliflower and purple sprouting broccoli (4 varieties). The calabrese & cauliflower came up fine and was harvested in late Jul / early Aug but I'm getting hardly anything from the sprouting broccoli. The plants seem fine and healthy but from 12 plants, I've literally gotten about 4-6 tiny pieces.



Do I just need to wait a bit longer? Or any idea what's happening?


Thanks

Any advice?

MacDanger

MacDanger wrote: »

Any advice?

i've purple sprout broccoli down too and its going the last week/two .
First time growing it .

Heres a haul from the other day !

patnor1011

Could not resist and check my beans. They got a lot of damage last week but still looks like most of crop can be saved. Some are already good (left) but they still need few weeks (middle and right). Far right are some peas I am saving for seeds.





Hmm cant embed my picture for some reason. Link is in a post yet it does not show.

https://ibb.co/xfVKBSH

Bill Hook

patnor1011 wrote: »

We leave them till they are semi dry on the plant then we harvest them and leave pods to dry out in the air. We harvest beans and dry them out even more so they are bone dry. That way you can store them for a very long time. When we plan to cook from them (soup or stew) we usually soak them in water for a few hours but only if we want to cook faster. They can be used as they are they rehydrate while cooking. Pretty much like you would use your beans or lentils.
Only french beans and peas when small are used whole with the pod in the house.

I'd love to be able to get some dry beans for the winter. What variety do you grow and how do you dry them? My efforts with broad beans ended in a soggy mess; I hung them up in a shed with plenty of space and air but they all went mouldy.:(

SouthWesterly

Bill Hook wrote: »

I'd love to be able to get some dry beans for the winter. What variety do you grow and how do you dry them? My efforts with broad beans ended in a soggy mess; I hung them up in a shed with plenty of space and air but they all went mouldy.:(

Planted these recently for an autumn harvest
https://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Vegetable-Seeds/Popular-Vegetable-Seeds/Broad-Bean-Seeds/Bean-Broad-Bean-Seeds---Luz-de-Otono_194118.htm

pconn062

Bill Hook wrote: »

I'd love to be able to get some dry beans for the winter. What variety do you grow and how do you dry them? My efforts with broad beans ended in a soggy mess; I hung them up in a shed with plenty of space and air but they all went mouldy.:(

Recommend borlotti beans. I grow a dwarf variety of them but you can grow a climbing variety too. Let them dry a bit on the plant then shell and dry the beans completely.

Bill Hook

pconn062 wrote: »

Recommend borlotti beans. I grow a dwarf variety of them but you can grow a climbing variety too. Let them dry a bit on the plant then shell and dry the beans completely.

I have a bean called Beefy Resilient Grex (dwarf French type) in the garden at the moment, plenty of pods but I can't see them getting big enough or dry enough to store for the winter. Maybe I should be growing them in a tunnel/greenhouse.



http://www.brownenvelopeseeds.com/product-p/beefy-resilient-grex-bean.htm

Bill Hook

SouthWesterly wrote: »

Planted these recently for an autumn harvest
https://www.suttons.co.uk/Gardening/Vegetable-Seeds/Popular-Vegetable-Seeds/Broad-Bean-Seeds/Bean-Broad-Bean-Seeds---Luz-de-Otono_194118.htm

They look interesting... have you tried them before? My broad beans were disappointing (I grew Aquadulce, Monica and Crimson Flowered).

Harry Palmr

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Stew tonight - home grown carrots, potatoes, onion, tomatoes (a gift from from a client who's are well ahead of mine) plus mushrooms - and beef, not mine!

The tumbling toms are about 3 days from ready - tried one today and a bit crunchy still. Ailsa Craigs not yet fruiting but not that far away I think, while a Moneymaker sits in a teepee and is completely reliant on a fine Autumn if it's going to yield a crop!

Christmas potatoes are sown as are kale and lettuce, carrots to go in very soon.

One month later

The spuds are coming along just (I ran out of summer potatoes last week)



The Ailsa Craigs are finally fruiting I might get 20 or so, Moneymaker got washed away in the storms but I had a spare in the shed which is now in front room window so we'll see how far it gets before the sun/heat runs out!

The onions are lifted and should last me for a few months at my rate of use, carrots almost gone - a two's stews worth left. Debating if I should overwinter onions and do a late batch of carrots for "baby" sized harvest.

patnor1011

Bill Hook wrote: »

I'd love to be able to get some dry beans for the winter. What variety do you grow and how do you dry them? My efforts with broad beans ended in a soggy mess; I hung them up in a shed with plenty of space and air but they all went mouldy.:(

Sorry for the late reply. The variety on the picture is Red flowered scarlet runner. I do grow there for long time storage as when dry they are good for a couple of years. You do not need to dry whole pods, that can be done only in dry warm climate due to mould. I just harvest pods when they start yellowing and going sort of soggy or soft. Then I pop them open and harvest individual beans. I put them on homemade drying rack which I left on top of furniture or simply somewhere out of the way. Preferably on the sun but since there is not much of it just somewhere where there is air circulation and they dry in a few days. I use homemade drying racks I made from some wood and window netting from B&Q. These can be put on top of the radiator.

Dried beans can be used in stews or soups, the best way is to soak them for few hours or overnight in water before you plan to cook something with them.

Some beans I harvested today. I already got 2 times more and estimate to have about 5-6x more from just 10 plants. There would be more but they got battered pretty bad in last storm.



I can send seeds to anyone who will want some (seeds will be free, I only kindly ask you to cover postage and envelope).

patnor1011

My tomatoes are dying they are not going to survive damage done by last storm and I am wondering what can I plant instead of them. I already planted some spring onion and coriander which came out nice but I will have more place and do not know what I should put in there.

Bill Hook

patnor1011 wrote: »

Sorry for the late reply. The variety on the picture is Red flowered scarlet runner.

They look lovely. I have 3 types of runner bean producing loads of pods - Yardstick, Black Magic and Desiree - so I will let some of then mature (hopefully) and have a go at drying them. I need a bigger house: there are trays of seeds all over the place, chilli plants taking up half the kitchen table, etc.

Bill Hook

patnor1011 wrote: »

My tomatoes are dying they are not going to survive damage done by last storm and I am wondering what can I plant instead of them. I already planted some spring onion and coriander which came out nice but I will have more place and do not know what I should put in there.

You could try rocket and some oriental greens - mizuna or giant mustard.

SouthWesterly

Bill Hook wrote: »

They look interesting... have you tried them before? My broad beans were disappointing (I grew Aquadulce, Monica and Crimson Flowered).

First time growing them. They seem to be doing well. Not growing very tall but in flower now

patnor1011

Now I will have even more space. I decided to clear out all outside tomatoes. It seems that they got way too damaged to survive in the last storm. The fruit started to rot still green so I am salvaging what I can before it will be unusable. Mostly cherry tomatoes. I got 2 tubs full this morning and still cleaned just one-third of what I have. Looks like I will fill another 3 at least.

CelticRambler

Drop a banana or two in with them to speed up the ripening process.

SouthWesterly

Sorted out my artichokes that fell in the last storm. Some stems broken so hoping the plants survive the next couple of months.
I managed to straighten others up with stakes and cable ties.

Lesson learned for next year.oca and mashua doing well.

patnor1011

CelticRambler wrote: »

Drop a banana or two in with them to speed up the ripening process.

Have something else in mind for them
Green tomato chutney. I made about 10 bottles of it last year. Good to eat in itself with bread or crackers or as a side with sausages or puddings. It also can spice up your sauce or stew. Sterilized in jars so it last longer.

Our greenhouse tomatoes are ripening fast.
Have 3 decent pumpkins too.
The Atlantic giant is allready basketball sized !
Next year I'm going to buy another glass house just for growing a monster pumpkin.

Just got home from a few nights and to find my pumpkin vibes wrecked by frost.
Hopefully the fruit still ripens.
One of them is beachballs sized !

patnor1011

I like spicy food. By that I mean extremely spicy where jalapeno does pretty much nothing for me. I got something called african chilli in my local asian food store. I noticed that some of pepper were pretty rippened so I dried them out more and saved some seeds. I planted them and kept behind window and I now have 10 healthy 20-30cm plants.
Since it is pretty late and I do not have glasshouse I am going to keep growing them in the house. I am going to use led grow lights just to see if I can grow successfully something which does have africa in the name.

I took this picture 2 weeks ago and now they doubled in size. Time to put them in new pots.

CelticRambler

patnor1011 wrote: »

Since it is pretty late and I do not have glasshouse I am going to keep growing them in the house. I am going to use led grow lights just to see if I can grow successfully something which does have africa in the name.

Careful you don't attract the wrong kind of attention with the grow-lights... :pac:

But let us know how you get on. Amongst my batch of 29ct seeds from Lidl this year were some jalapeños which were hot enough to have my African nephew dousing his throat with fromage blanc (my Dutch visitor got to the yoghurt first!) but we were rapidly desensitised so I have some cayenne peppers on standby for next year - as well as seed saved from this year's jalapeños. I will try to get some of them started quite early, as it'd be nice to have them available to use with the veg harvested in July, or even June.

patnor1011

My lights are not that variety. It is just sqare full spectrum led light. Thousand + small tiny white, red and blue led. It emits light not heat so no use in producing anything stronger than vegetables.
I used them to grow tomatoes in a shed when there was cold and rainy outside. Plants love them.

CelticRambler

I'm lucky in that our long dark evenings here (at latitude 46.4°N) aren't particularly long compared to Ireland, so I don't really need supplementary light ... except that the only rooms in the house that are convenient for laying out seed trays and a propagator are those on the north side of the house with small windows. Great for keeping cool in the height of summer, but not very practical for starting off seeds in January. My greenhouse is too far away from the main house to run power to, but I'm hoping to rig up a solar panel and an inverter so that I can put the propagator up there this winter. Longer term, part of my "sunken garden" project will involve the creation of a sort of conservatory-orangerie-pergola structure in the sunniest part of the garden - a greenhouse for the winter and a sitting area for the summer.

In the meantime, I'll settle for buying some under-bed storage boxes to use for early sowings, which I'll take with me (in my campervan!) while I'm away in the early part of the year. Hopefully that'll allow me to overcome the problems I've had in recent years with sudden changes of weather killing off my newly germinated seedlings while I'm not there, and not being able to do anything about it (like planting more) until I get home a fortnight or three weeks later. But that's "Veg plans for 2021" now, isn't it? Off topic for this thread ...

SouthWesterly

We need to open a new thread

Harry Palmr

Are my Christmas spuds cancelled?

Harry Palmr

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Are my Christmas spuds cancelled?

Mine are fooked !