Advice for a hopeless gardener

[ForgeCorvus]

Meanwhile, A shout out to this week's charity shop purchase: 'The Student Cookbook' Student type recipes rest well with my prepper store cupboard.

Looking forward to Jenny approved student recipes

[jennyjj01]

Meanwhile, A shout out to this week's charity shop purchase: 'The Student Cookbook' Student type recipes rest well with my prepper store cupboard.

Looking forward to Jenny approved student recipes

I'm already poring over the book looking for recipes to adapt. This particular cookbook ( at £1.50 ) is one of the best all-rounders I've found. It's a bit heavy on use of fresh ingredients, rather than tins, but hey oh, we all need a bit of veg and sometimes my TooGoodToGo bags yield a random bag of veg, in need of a home.

Speaking of Veg needing a home: I must dehydrate some tomatoes and onions after taking the trouble to grow them.

[jennyjj01]

Chuffed that I just acquired 5 plastic dustbins for a tenner, which I've just run amok on with the drill to make 5 mini compost bins. Weirdly satisfying drilling dozens of holes.

Tomorrow, weather permitting, I'm going to decant my big compost heap into them.

Gardeners, is my thinking sound or am I ruining a perfectly good compost heap by breaking it up into 80L tubs? I understand how big is good for getting the heat going, but without a lid, my heap is just a frozen over pile.

And that was today's allotment chore. Even this didn't go quite to plan: My open heap easily FILLED my 5 dustbins, so so much for the idea of getting rotation.

I'm quite pleased with how this composting is working out. Easily 500 litres of almost mature compost from ingredients blagged over 9 months.

I'm HOPEFUL that having decanted into these dustbins, that I can leave them alone ( apart from watering ) and that I'll have usable compost next year.

Below is a before and after. You can see why I was concerned that the new ingredients were not getting mixed in well, making any mature compost contaminated by new ingredients.

Second photo shows how much cafe waste I get in just three weeks, in the barrow!

[jennyjj01]

Setting down my Growing NY resolutions.

It's that time of year when I look at the allotment as a blank canvas again. This time last year I was just about to take on the jungle and I had a false start, where I swapped my couch infested jungle for a better, but marestail infested plot.

Last year, I barely cultivated a quarter of it, but it rewarded me with a sack of spuds and a sack of onions and a few bowls of berries. Next year, I WILL hit the ground running or I'll have you guys to answer to:-

The gooseberry bush is going!. I didn't like the few it produced. I'll gift it to any plot neighbour.
The strawberries were a huge disappointment. I'm going to cull and replant to a small area, but nurture them.
Raspberries..... Hmmmm they were a legacy. To be scaled back. TBH, I only kept them so I could call that bed 'cultivated'

Spuds and Onions: I'm going to go BIG. Going to try to get two big crops of spuds. I have some preserved seed spuds still surviving from this years crop. As well as those, two bags of 15p Lidl spuds (Elland) set aside for chitting. Lidl spuds did well this year, but they were a small variety. Yes Jenny=Tightwad

Carrots and peas. I'm really mad at myself failing with those. MUST DO BETTER. Stacks of seeds bought. I'm going to do the gutter pipe trick with peas.

Tomatoes. Did OK this year till blight showed up. Next year, I'm going under glass, big-time. I WILL sow at THE RIGHT TIME, and I WILL care for the little bu66ers.

I've allocated 2 days next week for digging over, weather permitting. The weeds have been subdued and suppressed and I'm going to keep it that way "Hoe Hoe Hoe". The whole site is looking abandoned and my plot now looks relatively tended. I think I was lucky to get through site checks, this year, by cultivating just a minimum. New Year's resolution is to knuckle down. Hold me to it. Chase me. Insist on reports and pics.

So..... Right now I'm not asking for specific advice, though all advice is welcome.
I'm asking that the growers amongst you, keep me on my toes.

[GillyBee]

Raspberries can get "old" and stop producing much due to accumulated virus diseases and the like. This may be why your legacy raspberries were poor. You may get a better crop by planting some new healthy plants elsewhere in the plot. And they don't take much work so help keep a section of the plot "cultivated".

[jennyjj01]

Raspberries can get "old" and stop producing much due to accumulated virus diseases and the like. This may be why your legacy raspberries were poor. You may get a better crop by planting some new healthy plants elsewhere in the plot. And they don't take much work so help keep a section of the plot "cultivated".

Thanks. These are certainly old stock, they were there before the previous tenant and he had them 5 years. They cropped in Autumn, but it wasn't a good crop. I'm not that keen on raspberries and my tasting panel said the raspberry muffins were rubbish. They were. I was also put off a bit by the insect to fruit ratio.

The strawberries got overgrown by weeds and cropped very poorly. Broad beans, spuds and onions prospered on my neglect, so they suit my style
Next priority is removing perennial weed roots off site to my brown bin before the council start charging, at which point brown bin will get retired.

Off now to research allotment calendars and 'lazy gardening'

[GillyBee]

Mine are healthy but dont like my alkaline soil - despite heaps of manure each year Which is a shame as my mob go mad for them & adore raspberry jam. Meanwhile growing salad is a waste of effort. I can grow it easy enough but no-one wants to eat it and it goes to waste. My perennial variegated kale is looking good. It was a bit sorry when first planted out but now is several feet tall and looking happy enough I can test it out. And if the mob don't much like it, it will just sit there getting bigger & more decorative in case of no greens or money one day.
Same rules as for prepping. "Grow what you eat and eat what you grow."

[jennyjj01]

Same rules as for prepping. "Grow what you eat and eat what you grow."

Best advice ever!
I can grow shard and courgette till they come out of my ears, but much just goes to waste.
This year, it's going to be onions, spuds, tomatoes if i can, peas, runner beans and rhubarb. Everything else will be experimental. If I could get self sufficient in tomatoes and onions, I'd feel it was all worth while.

[Allex]

Last year I grew carrots in a large plant tub (dustbin better) and put bought compost to the rim. Dotted individual seeds around say three cm apart then put 60cm sticks in the side wrapping fleece around to stop carrot fly and did very well. Nice clean carrots with no bugs or slugs. Cost a bit though for the lousy compost we get dealt with nowadays. Got some from the open ground but needed work to clean up and made soup plus the occasional carrot cake.

For brassicas I will be concentrating on brussels, Nero and cabbage. Forget cauli, they need too much nutrient to grow well.

[jennyjj01]

Reporting my failure:-
I thought I'd give you a laugh at my expense.

Cress: Simplest microgreen to grow. Ideal candidate for hydroponics. Kids can do it.
Pathetic and abject failure image below.

I didn't watch the growing guides on YouTube.
I sowed it too thinly?
I drowned it? Then I covered it with clingfilm.
The tissue substrate was not suitable? and grew almost as much black mould as cress.

If I'm to survive post apocalypse, then I need to buck my ideas up.

Meanwhile, back at the windowsill, I have grown two levitating cloves of garlic. I sat them in a bit of compost and like triffids they took root. The roots are like little legs and the cloves have lifted themselves out of the compost. I think they want me to play hydroponics with them.