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March 28, 2024, 09:32:20 PM

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Gardening thread 2022

Started by Brian Freeze, January 29, 2022, 07:35:48 AM

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Zero Gravitas

Quote from: KennyMonster on July 04, 2022, 03:30:12 PMI'd appreciate it if anyone could follow up on if my pictures are visible at all?

Yep all showing for me, hedgehog postbox and all.

KennyMonster


Pink Gregory

Quote from: bgmnts on July 04, 2022, 10:17:45 AMPlanted a courgette seed in a pot a few months ago and it has grown but it's way too heavy and drooping sad, depressed green penis. Tried tying it together and pruning but just think it hates me.

Fuck you courgette plant.

In our experience they're not great in pots.  No idea why, their roots don't go that far and we've got theme in the same compost but in a planter but those always did better.  Maybe the pots dry out quicker or the temperature changes too drastically?

Brian Freeze

Quote from: Brian Freeze on June 12, 2022, 08:03:07 PMWe planted some wellies, Timberlands and Adidas today. Will post pics when in flower.

I had hoped for more variation in the colours but . . . .




Elderly Sumo Prophecy

I thought you were taking the piss when you said that.

Ferris

Strawberries are going like mad over here, the boy goes and picks 4 or 5 ripe ones every day after nursery as a snack. He loves em.

Highly recommend getting some of you have space, ours are in hanging baskets so they take up fuck all space.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

There's a small strawberry plant in one of our plant pots that wasn't planted there by us. I think it may have been seed dropped or shat by a passing bird that happened to fall into the pot.

Ferris

Got a bit fed up of the habanero always wilting and going yellow indoors then one morning it had fully collapsed out of its trellis cone thing and I thought "right you bastard sink or swim time" and stuck it in a slightly larger pot and put it outside weaving in and out of the hop bines for stability because it's probably 4 or 5ft tall with the branches laid out.

Anyway for a month or two it's been left to the elements and was looking a bit sorry for itself (it's been punishingly hot over here). Watered it whenever I remembered, but basically you're on your own pal.

Checked this morning and it's got a load of yellow flowers, and lots of new dark green growth so it looks like it's made a go of it! Gonna be a spicy time at our place assuming those fruit ok. Delighted.

Rest of the veg patch update:

Much smaller hop crop this year, I didn't trim the bull bines/shoots when they came up because I was so pleased to have anything grow I just let it rip unhindered.

Tomatoes/peas/onions/broccoli have all been a success and they'll definitely be a regular feature. Cabbages have been a total disaster but they've been eaten by critters and saved the other plants so sort of a win? Basil has started flowering so probably missed the cutoff to use that this year (whoops). No idea what's going on with the garlic, and I won't bother with beans again because I don't like them and they take over. Pumpkins have disappeared under the loam never to be seen again, cucumbers and courgettes a limited success, got a few nice ones back there to harvest in the next week or so.

Potatoes were good but need more room than I gave them, and carrots are doing... something down there so maybe they're a success too. Watch this space.

Fruit:
Apple tree has aphids which I'm trying to manage with limited success but that's ok, it's still healthy and growing reasonably well. I don't expect any fruit off that until next year at the earliest but even if it ends up having limited growth, that's fine because it's already 5ft.

Strawberries have been terrific, I'll definitely do them again. Coming to the end of their season now I think. We have two blueberry bushes/shrubs which seem to be doing surprisingly well, I'll get them in the ground down by the apple tree in the next month or so. One even has a decent crop of berries which is unusual for a first year plant so I'm pleased with that.

I'll keep monitoring but I'm really pleased with it all so far. Feel like I'm getting the hang of it, but it's been a very busy summer so haven't given it as much attention as I'd like (I should have caught the basil really). A friend of mine is staying with us for the next week and he's massively into veg growing so I'll get some pointers over the weekend for next year.

Buelligan

That sounds amazingly successful.  Would love to see some pics. 

In my news, a friend in Ireland sent me four Pinguicula grandiflora wrapped in sphagnum in a small takeaway tub.  They seem to be alive.  I do not know how.  I'm giving them all the love I can, pure spring water, trying to keep them shaded, cool and moist and hoping for survival.  At least they'll have plenty of tiger mosquitos to eat. 


Ferris

Working at the mo but will take some snaps today or tomorrow!

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

My habanero plants seem to be doing quite well. I went a bit overboard and ended up growing five of the bastards, so the greenhouse is mostly taken up with them and a couple of cherry tomato plants. I'll post a few pics in September if I remember.

They are stupid hot though. I've already nearly killed a couple of family members by suggesting they try a sliver of one with their dinner. The heat seems to come on almost immediately, not a slow burn or anything. Tasty though, if you can hack it. They taste sort of tropical, like maybe a mango or a passion fruit. I don't get those people who grow the super hot ones like Carolina Reapers. What's the point apart from making yourself very unwell for the next six hours?


Ferris

Yeah the super hot ones seem pointless to me. I had a few drops of a 1m scoville hot sauce and it was basically quite unpleasant with no real upside.

My plan with the habaneros was to make my own fermented hot sauce - I did it a couple of years ago and it was great, and only requires a small amount of produce so even if I fuck this up and only get 2 peppers that's more than enough.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

The Great Habanero Harvest 2022:









I'm going to make some hot sauce out of them and then freeze the rest. Sick of eating the fucking things all summer, to be honest.

Brian Freeze

Is one of them a chocolate one?




Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Yeah. The chocolate ones are quite striking looking. Unfortunately that plant has only just started to produce chillies, having spent most of the summer trying to grow as tall as possible - the stem on it looks like a bonsai tree trunk.

Brian Freeze

Think we grew those once.
I think we enjoyed them?


Brian Freeze

This is our crop from the found bag of seed potatoes on the wall by the canal.



Best looking spuds we've grown in ages, no blemishes or slug damage at all. Also no label on the packet so alas they will be a one off.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy


Ferris

Ah well, bit of a laugh for everyone here (albeit at my own expense).

We had friends staying with us a few weeks back, and one is a very keen gardener in the UK. He took one polite, baffled look at my habanero before gently explaining that it was undeniably a tomato plant and that by following instructions for chilli plants I was essentially killing it.

About 3 days after he left it started growing tomatoes, the bastard, so he was absolutely right. We got a good laugh out of it (I don't take myself very seriously, and even less so among old friends) but I am slightly ticked off about the whole thing.

The seed came out of a chilli packet. There weren't any tomatoes around in the sprouting area, and I was really pleased (and immediately very peeved) that's the one time I got a seed to germinate (after 24 attempts) it was the wrong fucking one.

Ferris

Tomatoes are great though, no idea what species they are but they're really nice for cooking with. Like massive cherry tomatoes.

Elderly Sumo Prophecy

Are they nice and hot and spicy then?

Ferris

Not even slightly, but I have cracked that joke to the relevant friends and got a good laugh so there you go.

Buelligan

Who do you buy your seeds from Ferris?  Were the 24 attempts from one packet of seeds or various?  I need answers.

Great looking chillis, they're really quite beautiful plants even if you don't like chilli.  Potatoes, not such beautiful plants but beautiful tubers, CaB's first virtual harvest festival is nearly upon us.  If I had a camera, I'd show some grapes, figs and maybe a large bunch of prize zinnias.

Brian Freeze

Big fan of the potato flower though. They're bonny.


Buelligan

I actually received four!  Got them on a stone shelf below an east window.  Don't think they could stand even moments of the sun here.   Or the heat.  Watering only with spring water. 

They lost their leaves.  The shock of what they'd been through sent them into a faux winter but the central growth point remained full of life.  They're now putting leaf back on and I'm hoping they'll start eating some of the mozzies here. 

I've also managed to keep the sphagnum moss they were packed in alive, not sure what I'm going to do with that but I couldn't let it die.

I love potato flowers too, all that family, a lot of whom are very toxic are, IMO, quite beautiful.




Ferris

@Buelligan I got the seeds from the local organic hippy bastard shop. They're typically very good, I've never had issues except for their habaneros.

@elderlysumoprophecy those are lovely habaneros! Excellent work.

I'll try and get photos of the harvest but the growing season is shorter here so I'm already snaffling onions etc before it's too late.

Buelligan

Just wanted to tell you, lovely evening here, navy blue with a huge low moon.  Out in my little courtyard, the tropical moonvine (Ipomea alba) planted from saved seed has grown huge, billowing round the walls.  It's covered in 14cm night-opening flowers that smell incredible.  Also, I still have trachelospermum jasminoides in flower, wafting scent like crazy.  Best of all, my first ever flowers on my Hedychium coccineum/Ginger lily (Tara).  Around 1.60, soft apricot, scented like an angel after batheing.  And the bats are out.  It's heaven here tonight.