This Season's Progress Reports

[Deb P]

I investigated raspberry 'shortcake', and apparently it is the same plant as Ruby Beauty, it's just named differently for the US and Canada....I have two big pots with three plants each in, and five in open ground at the front to make a little productive 'hedge'.

[Deb P]

[Hector]

Spookily I nearly bought one of those Raspberry plants today! Red Beauty is the same as/UK naming of Shortcake ( I believe....might be hallucinating )

I was waiting until I could find out a review on how they taste :)

Jeannine, I'll go look those buckets up :) Thanks.

[Hector]

Spookily I nearly bought one of those Raspberry plants today! Red Beauty is the same as/UK naming of Shortcake ( I believe....might be hallucinating )...edit to add...Deb...just seen your post :)

I was waiting until I could find out a review on how they taste :)

Jeannine, I'll go look those buckets up :) Thanks.

[Jeannine]

I am surprised to hear that because of the size of these .I have mine in a huge oriental stone oval  pot which is almost 4 feet long and about three feet wide, and about 30inches high it used to be used as a small pool with rocks built up to it;s sides  to attract the frogs to the garden.I have only one plant in it and it is packed. I could not get three in there , no chance. It was only planted last year and came in a 10 gallon pot.

Good luck with them, they are pruned like summer fruiting raspberries and fruit on last years new wood, so you need to prune the old wood out that fruited the current year ..they taste pretty good by the way.

XX Jeannine

[Deb P]

Your raspberry plants must have been much more mature than mine when you got them by the sounds of it, mine were single sticks about 8" high when I got mine bare rooted last year and fit easily in a large pot. They are bulking up rapidly though, so perhaps they wont stay in there for long!!

Progress wise, my sweetcorn were transplanted to the plot yesterday, grown without a check in rootrainers into nice warm soil with a plastic bottle to protect each plant, plus a windbreak double walled cloche around all 30 plants. Nice warm rain late afternoon to help them settle in, happy days 

[Jeannine]

Deb I think it may be a different plant I thought it was Sunshine originally/ They are not offered as bare root plants here, they come as large container plants and cost the equivalent of about 25 GBP each. This was the reason I thought they may be gimmicky. I will do a bit more searching for the label that came it.

The sweetcorn sounds good, you have given it all the right things so I hope you get a great harvest.

XX Jeannine

[Tee Gee]

Got the Sweet Corn in this morning and the rest is progressing steadily along as you can see here:

http://s222.photobucket.com/user/tgalmanac/slideshow/24th%20May%202016

[sunloving]

Isn't it lovely to be out from under the frost risk!
I'm making slow progress on the new plot , but at last I've finished planting my 40ft of tomatoes, this includes the winner of this years comp ;) Those big boys are in front positions. It's lovely to have the room to have multiple cucumber varieties plus 3 types of melons and gherkins growing up the poly tubes. Tomorrow if it's not to hot I'm planting two types of aubergine, maybe for the first time ever I will get some fruit from these! Also I'm excited that my edible passion fruits are doing nicely and just maybe will fruit in the polytunnel next year! That would be awesome!
But for now I'm content ing myself with abundant salads and fresh strawberries for breakfast!
X sunloving

[Jeannine]

Ho Ho  Sunloving I like your confidence...my Rebecca you know what and my Meg M. have flowers on 

Lovely to have all that space though I do envy you

[galina]

No big tomatoes here this year, but Cuban Black, which I am growing for the first time, is flowering and a few others are not far behind.  Also flower buds on Pasila Bajio peppers and on one of the (indoors) Basket of Fire peppers.

Yes anxious looks on the 10 day forecast and (barring a bad surprise) we should be out of frosts here too.  It really is true what they say, that it takes plants a long time to get past a brush with frost.  I was not expecting one night to be as cold as it turned out and that checked plants that were hardening off in the greenhouse.  And the tomatoes that were already out for hardening off (the early sown ones), really did not like it, but finally, they are growing away again.

So now I am planting out like crazy, but because of our voles, most beans will get their individual bottle cloche which stays on all season.  Can't do that with dwarf beans and they are usually badly hit.

Had a rabbit in the garden earlier, but that has stayed away and the deer that come to munch chard over winter is also gone with more activity (and next door's yappy little new dog). 

Planted some more tps out yesterday that were in pots, these were from Picasso berries harvested last year, and it was pleasing to see a few tubers forming already.   

[tricia]

 Twelve containers, four small raised beds and the 2 x 5 greenhouse all planted up now. Took me three weeks, a bit at a time, but great satisfaction to see it finally done. I have net 'food umbrellas' over the squashes and courgettes and plastic bottle cloches over everything else- membrane too on the raised beds. So, hopefully, I'm all set for a comparatively work-free summer  .

Tricia

[Jeannine]

It must be very frustrating to think a good weather start is here and boom here comes that frost again.. we too have that occasionally but it is usually more likely to be cold rain and so far it has not done anything to me.

Everything except my roots are growing fast now, peas are in flower, scapes are curled and almost ready to be taken of the garlic. Potatoes are done growing I thik and are in full flower now, well all but one kind.

I have cucumbers about three inches long but just flowers on the melons, fruit on about half the tomatoes.

Finally got my Daubenton plants into their final place.

Sowed new micro tomatoes to play with later in the season and sowed kale for shoots and for the canary. Lettuce patch started again. We are eating green spring onions now with lettuce, another week or en days and I think the first cuke may be ready and I have one tomato changing colour..if I can lift a few early spuds, I shall get my Dad's wartime first of the season meal ..Can of corned beef, home grown  salad  with new potatoes and home made bread. We might even get a few peas. It was a ritual and it had to be done in early June.

I am concerned about my root veggies though, they look very puny, hardly growing at all.

Gigandes and family beans are climbing nicely, worried about the family beans  a bit as they are in tubs but it was Hobsons choice.

Got to stake tomatoes today otherwise I am in trouble.

it won't be long before we are all harvesting and comparing yields..LOL  maybe I should start a what are you growing in 2007 topic

Good luck to you all, I hope that cold snap goes away real quick. You know they talk about global warming but I remember distinctly as a child in England that I got a new dress etc for Easter, it always had short sleeves and I didn't wear a cardigan. I think it is getting colder not warmer!!

[johhnyco15]

just back from a full day on my new plot shed roof all felted greenhouse all glazed 3/4 of the edges edged to make a straight 2ft6 " path all the way down all weeds strimmed ready to scalp tomorrow and then dig over its been a long day oh and planted out some runners beans and squash

[johhnyco15]

had a salad today at the plot just red and saladdin lettuce onion chive flowers Nasturtiums radish and beetroot leaves  and feta cheese dressed with lemon juice fantastic even though it was a cold day all washed down with a glass of rose some days just dont get any better summer my friends  is on its way

[Jeannine]

Well it looks a though I might meet my Dads challenge again this year, see above post.

I have green onions, lettuce, kale shoots. 1 Carmen cucumber is almost there and 1 almost ripe micro tomato to make a salad.Flowers are on all the potatoes and I have just had a firkle and felt a few I could sneak in a couple of days. So Mums birthday ,which is June 2nd,  I shall open the corned beef, make the bread, stew the rhubarb with just a tiny amount of black currants added and eat my first home grown meal of the year. She would have  had a good chuckle at keeping the tradition going another year.  Bless her, she was 50 on Coronation day, I  have missed her every day since she died..

My Dad used to say if we made it we could look forward to a great year.

Here's to a great year for you all

[galina]

Jeannine,  we are almost there with your Dad's challenge, but there are a few days to go:  I now have one small pea pod and one of the Red Duke of York potatoes has flowerbuds on it (tubers hopefully developing underground).  The salad bit is easy as the lettuces in the garden are starting to grow away very nicely.  As it happens, we bought a packet of corned beef in last Friday's weekly shop. With the bank holiday weekend coming the shop was sold out of rolls or any other bread that OH fancied, so we made our own.  Honestly, I had not read your post before we went shopping 

[Jeannine]

That is wonderful, tomorrow is the day. I shall toast you with a bottle of home made blueberry wine from last year, and get quite a kick out of doing it with you. It is a bit of fun each year.. we should start a post for next year maybe and pick a common  date..

[Tee Gee]

Got my late/winter Brassicas in this morning:

They are a bit small by my standards but I thought they might progress better in natural conditions rather than in a pot, particularly with the weather being so hot.



The plot is now fully planted out and this is how it looks from various angles:





This is some late season brassicas I planted last week and some I planted out about a month ago this was done to give me a bit of continuity through the summer rather than feast and famine.



The Potatoes from the top: 1st Early, 2nd Early & maincrop:



The garlic is coming along nicely as are the tomatoes in the greenhouse:



Sweet Peppers & Climbing French beans in the 12x8 GH

[johhnyco15]

nice pics tg took a pic of part of my rose wall planted two seasons ago now

[johhnyco15]

lupins are going loopy