Roaming Zebra

Well, we’ve just got back from holiday, and a number of the courgettes have turned into rather large marrows… There’s a couple of normal sized fruit, but mostly marrow sized. I’ve picked them off to encourage the plants to produce more, hopefully they’ll grow on a bit … Some of the smaller fruit looks like its baked a little against the soil, I guess its been quite hot on a few days, and the heavy clay soil as cooked them a bit.

Some of the other things are looking a bit worse for going away, but then some of the things were moved out of the greenhouse at home as they definitely would have died there.

Surprisingly some of the broccoli seems to have gone to flower, given that I thought it was all winter type veg, I’m not sure what’s going on there! Sweetcorn seems to be doing well, though it seems to be sprouting shoots from the bottom rather than going tall…

The cucumber plants are doing well and there’s a number of good sized fruit on them, though the tomatoes in the greenhouse don’t seem to be doing much really. They’ve grown lots of stem, but haven’t really started to develop fruit. The Edonis melons are also doing well and a number of fruit on each plant have set, so I’ve cut the growing tips and removed the rest of the flowers to encourage the fruit to develop properly.

So I finally succumbed to applying some Glyphosphate based weedkiller to the allotment plot. I’ve sprayed the bottom section of the plot which we aren’t using at the moment, so hopefully it will kill off the weeds - particularly I’m bothered about the spread of convolvus down there as well as the brambles and thistles which seem to be coming up with abundance. I’ve also sprayed a couple of other bits of convolvus by the path at the top - that’s the bit which keeps invading into our plot… That was on Wednesday and when I popped up on Sunday afternoon, a few things had started to look like they were dying down. Its supposed to take up to three weeks, so we’ll see …. given that we weren’t going to have time to clear that section in time for use this year, I don’t mind waiting 9 months or so for it to breakdown so that its safe to use next year.

Sunday was mostly tidying and I did a bit of watering. Planted out the sage, lettuce leaf basil, sweet green basil and another type of basil which I’ve forgotten the name of right now (edit: Lemon basil it was)… Also put the last few sweet pea plants out on the plot in a gap where some beans didn’t germinate. Also put a couple of Pinocchio’s nose chili plants and some normal toms out which I didn’t have space for in the greenhouse.

The corn seems to be coping OK and has certainly started to grow … just need to hope for a bit of rain! - Apparently if they lack water then it can stop growth completely, the plants will look healthy enough, but just won’t grow… Hopefully the clay soil will retain enough moisture to keep them going, assuming we get the odd rain shower!

I’ve now removed the glass cloche from over the melon plants as they are starting to put out flowers, hopefully some will set soon! There’s also a few flowers starting to appear on the bush tomatoes I planted out last week. The courgette plants look like they are starting to produce some fruit as well, I suspect in the next week or so, some will be ready for picking!

I’ve put the plastic hoops from the cheap poly-tunnel that I bought out over the strawberry plants, need to add some bird netting over it - at some point I’m going to build a proper full sized bird cage, but I don’t think I’m going to get time before the fruit comes. There’s certainly some fruit on there now, and its starting to ripen. I don’t think we’ll get a huge crop this year, but then some of the plants only went in this year, and the rest were the remnants of the ones which were removed by the previous occupant. The ones at home look better, though the fruit isn’t ripening yet.

Back at home we’ve done some general tidying of the garden (removing the odd bit of couch grass there as well!). I’ve also just installed a drip-water irrigation system in the greenhouse. Got the drip system from Amazon as well as the timer module (just went for the basic one as it seems to have all the functions I need!). I did have to replace our outside tap with a new one - the old one used to spray water out the top of the tap when it was turned on, but under pressure…. it was actually quite easy to replace, (though it looks like there might be a tiny tiny drip, so I think some more PTFE tape may be needed).

Well, I managed to twist my ankle on Friday when leaving work, which limited the amount of allotmenting I could get up to. Did drop a couple of pallets of there though, from paper and PC deliveries at work.

So mostly taking it easy on Saturday, cut the hedge at home, piled more trimmed tree into the green wheelie bin, so its full again and general tidying of the garden at home. Cucumber plants have started to produce fruit and the melons in the greenhouse seem to have come on quite well. Planted up some hanging baskets with a couple of the Balconi tumbling tomatoes in each one (found some hanging basket liners which are actually the correct size this year from the local DIY/hardware store, which is also quite cheap for other garden products, including paraffin for the heater!). I think I’ll give them a couple of days before putting them up onto the hangers, but they seemed to have grown quite a lot by Sunday! Generally quite pleasant weather on Saturday, so much so that I got the BBQ out!

Did manage to get a couple of hours in on Sunday afternoon though. I was surprised that we were the only people there - maybe everyone else was put off by the rain in the morning. Cleared the area around the water-container again and dug out some large convolvulus roots again. Lined the edges of the plot just there with empty compost bags to try to discourage the roots from invading from the sides again… Earthed up the spuds (after adding some organic feed), though I think I got a bit close finding soil on a couple as I spotted s mini potato at one point!

Planted out the rest of the Balconi tomatoes on the plot next to the corn (which is mostly looking healthy), so they can grow as a bush variety. The melons under the cloche look OK, though the growbag had dried out quite a lot.

Put in the spare canes that I have as a wigwam and planted up some mangetout peas, though I suspect the local pigeons will probably attack … some sort of bird-scarer may be in order for that!