I must admit this weather is really getting me down. I try to be positive but it’s more like autumn than summer out there. Still, I’ve got the greenhouses and the polytunnel where I can play work really hard.
Outside the slugs and snails are winning. Under the bay tree, which needs a trim, there are some strawberry plants. They’re doing very well and producing some lovely large berries. As soon as they ripe and ready, along come the snails and by the morning there’s half a strawberry.
More Strawberries Propagating in the Polytunnel
That’s despite pelleting. All the slug pellets go overnight as well. Those snails slide off to die somewhere and along come their mates to eat the strawberries.
At least the strawberries in hanging baskets in the polytunnel are generally pest-free. We can’t have hanging baskets outside here – we tried but it’s too windy. One actually looped the loop!
Some of the strawberry plants in the polytunnel are ageing so I took those baskets down and potted the runners. The rest have the runners snipped off so the plant doesn’t waste its energies.
Squash Planted
Squash planted through weed suppressing membrane
Laid a weed membrane down with planting holes over the super-rich soil in the walled vegetable garden. Planted the squash out – once again, a little late but it’s still chilly. Just 6ºC the other night out there!
Beans Struggling
The climbing beans in the tunnel and the runner beans outside are struggling. It’s not surprising when I look at the maximum-minimum thermometer. The other night it dropped to 8.7ºC inside the polytunnel. That means the outside air temperature must have fallen to about 6ºC. In July. They even had a frost warning for inland rural areas of Wales a few days ago.
Cucumber in Experimental Wicking Pot in the Vitavia Greenhouse
Cucumber in Wicking Pot
This cucumber is in a wicking pot. Inside the pot is a strip of capillary matting that goes down into the box reservoir below. The capillary matting draws water up into the pot. This one was made as an experiment a couple of years ago, Happily, I know it works a treat.
Calabrese
On the plus side, harvested a trug full of calabrese. Great fresh but the surplus freezes well. I’d planned on planting another 8 plants after these were harvested. They’d been started and were in rootrainers in the greenhouse doing very well until Sammy snail came along and ate them.
Still, should have some secondary sprigs on the plants where the heads were harvested. Enough for another couple of meals, with luck.
Parsnips
Normally I would sow parsnips in March or April maybe as late as May but that’s pushing it. I did sow a bed back in April but between weather and pests I’ve lost my entire parsnip crop.
So I’ve sowed the remainder of a packet of parsnips White Gem in the barrel segment beds in the polytunnel. I figure the warmer, more sheltered conditions in there will bring them along faster than outside and I may, with luck, get a small crop of immature parsnips this side of Christmas.
It’s probably not going to work but I’ve little to lose. The seeds aren’t going to be any good next season. Parsnip seeds have a very short lifespan.
Leeks
Leeks Following Potatoes in the Polytunnel
Still in the polytunnel, planted out 64 leeks in the deep bed that had potatoes earlier. They went in at 15cm or 6” spacing each way. There’s slow release fertiliser added to the soil and I’ll feed them weekly so hoping for a reasonable crop.
Lettuce and Cucumber
Lettuce in front of Cucumber in the Polytunnel
The greenhouse cucumbers seem to have some disease so planted a cucumber in the polytunnel with a terrace for it to climb. It’s in a shallow bottomless pot to stop the top of the soil getting wet and rotting off the stalk. A common cucumber problem.In front of the cucumber, planted out 5 Little Gem lettuce Normally lettuce, being a plant that doesn’t like strong sun and too much heat, is not planted undercover in summer but this year the weather is more like winter than summer.
Garlic and Elephant Garlic
Garlic and Elephant Garlic
I like elephant garlic, it’s large cloves go well with many dishes when roasted. The flavour is mild without the sting of true garlic. Unfortunately, I’m keener on elephant garlic than Val so I’ve just grown a few this year.
You can see the size difference between elephant and true garlic in the photo – the ordinary garlic left in picture shows the size difference.
Elephant Garlic Bulblets at the bottom of the bulbs.
Attached to the bottom of the bulbs there are a number of small bulblets. These will, with luck, grow on to produce a solid full bulb next year. That bulb, left in the ground, will grow on the following year to produce a full size elephant garlic with the bulb made from large cloves. I’ve potted them up for now.
Hi John thanks for your most recent update; you really do make the difference; keeping me informed and giving me things to think about. I am sorry to hear of your strawberry, parsnip and squash difficulties. I am experiencing most of the same issues as you are, here on my allotment in Dorset! We’re all in it together this year.
Everything is out of kilter and the slugs and snails are here too in huge numbers!
I don’t expect this is a new tip but I can say it’s worth repeating. I decided to mince up a garlic glove and spread around the base of a chewed up dahlia where garlic drench hadn’t helped keep snails away.
I now have 3 promising flower buds!
Based on that I bought the biggest pot of garlic granules from the supermarket; I sprinkle about a quarter teaspoonful around a plant I want left off the snails’ menu and it’s working for several days in a row before replenishing depending on the rain.
I’m taking heart in the new potatoes, a handful of tasty peas I’ve had and some very slowly growing carrots.
Plus 3 dahlia buds. Enjoy your gardening every one.
This year I put woodchip under the strawberries and netted them against birds. I still had slight damage, mostly to ones around the edge of the patch by snails and a little from woodlice. I left the damaged ones in situ with the logic that the slugs and snails follow their trail back to the feeding place and picking while slightly under ripe if I could. On the veg beds this year I have used a combination of yeast traps with four holes poked through 1 litre ice cream tubs and lidded early in the season and then repeated with a sprinkling of ferric phosphate pellets.
Two Broccoli heads have been damaged by a snail, but for the amount of rain we have had that is very little. The head of broccoli was rubbed with salt and placed upside down in water to rid it of slime and other detritus.
The green beans went in late and are still climbing up the supports without any sign of blossom as yet. Two of the butternut squash have been attacked and the other three are making slow progress but I have hopes now that better weather will produce some growth and fruit. Raspberries are doing well and I have some plums and have had some cherries this year, so have the birds.
Thank you for inspiring me to continue. I am a new plot holder (only took my plot on in March) and inherited what I believe is a typical plot full of dandelions, couch grass and other weeds. I have cultivated part of it and my high is that I have harvested some strawberries and potatoes. I also may get a harvest of beans, calabrese and shallots. My low is red ants, in my compost and large nests appear under anything that I cover to cultivate later.
Hi Julie
Some years back I knelt to cultivate a bed. It was summer and hot so I was in shorts. Didn’t realise I was kneeling in a lot of red ants until they started attacking my vulnerabilities! Ran for the privacy of my shed where I could remove the shorts and pants, shake out the ants and brush them off. Luckily nobody was looking through the shed window or they’d have been scarred for life 🙂
Keep at it – it gets easier!