The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Growing => Vegetables => Topic started by: Bert on May 16, 2012, 07:48:17 am
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So I see lot of photos on this vegetable sub section of the forum of lot of veg all growing beautifully ( Normally always doing better than anything I'm producing ::) ) and I was wondering how does every one else have there veg gardens layed out ?
Here is mine ( I wish I just work here)
(http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/bobhastie/IMG_4130.jpg)
(http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/bobhastie/smallholder/IMG_4119.jpg)
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This is how I would like mine to be. In actual fact I have raised beds in different parts of the garden due to lots of small walls being there when we moved in.
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I don't have raised beds, just lovely rows of veggies - if I can get them in the ground that is ::) I am now using weed suppressing fabric to help with the weeds so it doesn't look so pretty. In the tunnel I don't have beds either so I end up with a lovely jungle in a good year. I don't like bare soil or unproductive areas of grass in my veg garden.
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Would this be a good online show?
Bert, what are the tall corner posts with cross-wires for?
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A very sorry brown patch of mud at present :-[
Might actually get something planted in it this weekend if the weather improves
Mandy :pig:
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Would this be a good online show?
Bert, what are the tall corner posts with cross-wires for?
Online show sounds good to me :thumbsup: (you would have to explain how it all works, I don't get it I'm not very bright ??? )
I'm glad you mentioned the posts with cross wires Dan, I haven't got any idea, constructed by my predecessor. I would like to grow something edible and permanent up them but don't know what. So if any one has any suggestions let me know. Don't forget it's a little wetter, breezier and cooler on the west coast of Scotland so no grapes ;D
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"what does my vegetable patch look like?"
.... Untidy!!
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Poor - we had a frost 2 days ago followed by afternoon temperatures in the mid 20s. My courgettes are dead and the spuds that we doing well all got hit by the frost. No fruit has set on the fruit trees and I have yet to plant out tomatoes or peppers. What a rubbish year. Garlic looks good though.
I dare not share any photos as compared to this time last year the veg patch looks terrible.
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Starting to look good (well I think so) I'll ask OH to put pics on (Hes I T savie Im not)
I put my toms in this morning (with my fingers crossed) Have only one section that is not designated yet But Im sure something will fill it soon!
1st row: (nearest the pond) blueberries,raspberries, rhubarb and blackcurrants.
2nd row: gourds, space, future sweet corn and spuds
3rd row: future brasiccas(if they germinate this time!) mangetout, and peas
4th row: Feeding roots, carrots, onions, garlic, leeks/salad crops And peas along one side
5th row filling up slowly with root crops in rows for sucsession. Beetroot, turnip, radish mangolds, spinach, pasnips and sweede.
6th row: bean frame(waiting) Broad beans, Strawberries
last row: butternut squash courgettes, tiny space, toms.
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A few pics from our patch today:
First one is the legume rotation in the 'raised bed area'. Here we've got 18 beds, 5m x 1.3m each, half with peas and half broad beans.
Next up is the fifth of the 'raised bed' areas which is the 'everything else' rotation. This is further down our plot where we ploughed, hence the slightly 'earthly' look. The first six beds are done and planted with spinach (covered with nets) and we put down six more beds today which we'll no doubt fill up tomorrow.
Third piccy is the 'spud field', part of a four-fold rotation planned at the bottom end of our patch, looking pretty sorry for mid May though - I blame the wet and cold!
Final pic is our large greenhouse, the polytunnel is just as full so hopefully weather is mild and dry enough now for us to start moving these outside, there's no room to walk in there any more!
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Wow benkt -you must eat a lot of spinach ! :D
I guess that you exchange or sell the beans,peas,spinach and spuds as 8 rows of each is an awful lot for a veg patch.
planted a few melons out today as the forecast is for warmer weather.
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Yes, we do veg boxes for the 16 member families of our community farm. Its our first year scaling up from allotment to a couple of acres of market garden so only time will tell if we've planted far too much or not nearly enough!
Would love to do melons successfully one day though, might have to move first though!
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Good luck with providing for others Benkt and hope the large scale production turns out well. The real challenge is for those who have to process/cook/freeze/bottle/chutney/pickle or curry all thet you produce ;D .
I have planted spuds on a big scale this year as we have 2 young pigs and a large cellar to fill but have otherwise cut ack on stuff or painfully sowed half a dozen brassicas in succesion. Processing 28 cauliflowers was no fun last year.
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Mine has just dried out, I have veg seeds coming on in the pollytunnel with the hope that in the not to distant future I will get them planted out ;D
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i would mostly like to annouce that there are now veg in my veg garden, finally got my spuds in last weekend only a month late! Now just to keep the flamin' rabbits and pigeons out!
Mandy :pig:
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Can you not approach DEFRA and get some rabbit baits. Keep Alpacas and that keeps your birds away. Put bird netting over your vegie patch..... If fine enough will keep the cabbage white butterfly out as well.
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The veg garden is completely surrounded by chicken wire dug in several inches and covered with fine mesh but something has still got in and decimated one strawberry plant, snapped some beans off and dug out a cabbage so checking for holes but cannot find any so mystified!
Don't like putting bait down as we have a dog and the pigs free range a lot!
mandy :pig:
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We have just had a couple of days of good rain following on from ages of hot drought - boy the weeds are loving it ::) ::) :'( So my veg garden looks lusciously green but not from the crops.
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Despite saying I am cutting back on veg I have now expanded the veg plot! All the fruit trees got hit by a late frost so we will need more veg for the pigs. Our old neighbour has come up trumps and her son ploughed a few more lines for me to plant spuds, swedes and parsnips. Another neighbour ran his tractor over a patch of land we have ( so we now have plenty of hay to gather) and I planted 10 pumpkins. Harvesting lettuce and everything has caught up after the cold wet spell we had. Ruddy hot agin today!!
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Well ours is just looking like brown earth with three sorry looking blackcurrant bushes and three experimental courgettes plonked int the middle of the field.
We had our middle field ploughed over last autumn and haven't really got around to doing anything else.
Polytunnel is looking good though.
We need to do the rabbit fencing in the field before we venture to grow anything.
I was thinking about what I could perhaps start now for winter.
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all the brassicas sq.
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My vegie patch is fenced only to keep out my chooks....NO wild rabbits round here, I do see the odd hare though.
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No rabbits here either and our resident mole drowned when we emptied a 1000 litre water tank into his patch during a storm. Mice ( Lerot and Loir) are our pests and I often have patches in lines of seeds thanks to the earthworking.
Veg looks good and my melons have flowers on them.
I am making liquid feed for the toms etc by soaking fossilised manure blocks in buckets of water and then diluting the brown fluid before feeding that to the toms, peppers and anything else I can see.
Weeding today after a night of rain.
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Just come back from 10 wet days in the UK. The weather here has been quite wet too but the sun inbetween has been hot ...so...the vege patch has grown!!! Ummm I thought i had kept on top of the weeds it looked OK before we left. A couple of days work out there weeding again me thinks!!!!
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10 days away Mel - you will have some catching up with the weeds.
We are have just picked carrots, beetroot, a cabbage and our first new potatoes ! A joint of our own pork is roasting away.
I will be digging the garlic up on the 22nd June but had a peek today - looks just like the Toulouse Garlic i bought off the market and planted on Dec 22nd.
Any produce yet ? :innocent:
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The photos I posted at the start of this thread are so out of date. Everything has grown so much. I've been picking a few turnips, had some baby carrots, strawberry's, spinach, chard, lots of spring onion, salad leaves, radish. not to much longer (hopefully next week) and I will have my first spuds, courgettes, beetroot,shallots peas and broad beans :thumbsup:
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:'( I feel sooooo inadequate.
Post a piccie, Bert, and I can dream.
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few turnips, had some baby carrots, strawberry's, spinach, chard, lots of spring onion, salad leaves, radish. not to much longer (hopefully next week) and I will have my first spuds, courgettes, beetroot,shallots peas and broad beans (http://www.accidentalsmallholder.net/forum/Smileys/default/thumbsup.gif)
Ha!! two can show off on this thread ;D ;D
We've got docks, thistles, creeping buttercup, nettles and grass plus a couple of empty spaces where the courgettes once were but got eaten by slugs. The transplanted raspberries didn't make the move and the blackcurrant bushes we "liberated" from a garden centre certainy won't be bearing fruit any time soon.
All in all - a successful haul so far :-J :-J
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Ahhhh ..... SQ .... now I feel better.
We could blame the unfavourable growing conditions in Mid Wales.
And yes, positive thinking .... I, too, have managed to grow lots and lots of the same type of valuable flora .... obviously species that do well in our micro-climate. ::) ;D
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Here is an up dated photo of my veg garden. Hope you can see a difference. Also a photo of the poly tunnel and one of the cloche .
(http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/bobhastie/smallholder/IMG_7984.jpg)
(http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/bobhastie/smallholder/IMG_7989.jpg)
(http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w57/bobhastie/smallholder/IMG_7996.jpg)
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Oh its beautiful!
I won't posting any photos of my little patch *hides in shame* I still have so much to learn!
Dans - I'm doing well at growing Dock though.
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bert, thats my idea of heaven, 100%.
i would have a dozen night lines in that loch.....
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Not a patch on Berts place, but this is our veggie patch - or should I say, our potager as we are in France.
We made all the raised beds from old oak floorboards taken out of the house we are renovating (too far gone to use in the house), and finished all the beds, fencing, and gravelling just before the snows set in for winter.
(http://inlinethumb35.webshots.com/51170/2856748260107323202S500x500Q85.jpg)
This is a photo taken yesterday, with the beds full and the all veggies growing really well, including the pumpkin at the front making a bid for freedom!
(http://inlinethumb19.webshots.com/49234/2660279460107323202S500x500Q85.jpg)
I'm very proud as this is the first veggie garden I have had and the first year I have grown anything from seed.
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ok that is also amazing. I really need to improve my patch!
Dans
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Wow galtezza your veg patch is stunning :thumbsup: . Wish my pumpkins looked like that.
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Cripes - that's alot of slug grit :-J ;D
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Would this be a good online show?
what about "the highest weed" competition? I'd win that one ;D :&>
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strong competition here though NFD ...
there's a nettle in my greenhouse that reaches the roof! I don't wear my gloves in there, so forget to shift it...
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Totally crap. My veg patch, that is. The photos are stunning. Mine is full of vigorous Jerusalem Artichokes and feeble peas. Rubbish. The chickens are to blame. :innocent:
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oh, I so know how you feel, Dizzy. Chickens are the downfall of veg plots! I'm constantly fighting with mine - I had a vision of making a film "the approach of the nightmare chickens" ;D ;D ! Sometimes one actually sits on my garden fork WHILST I am digging - hardly get anything done ! Awaiting delivery of plastic fence but don't have much hope this will help for good... :chook:
Fartichockes make tasty soup or are nice with a roast - best way to control them is to eat them ! And something for Rusty - they're good for diabetics :wave: :&>
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Love fartichoke soup too, NFD. Good job too, because the invasion is pretty impressive....! xxx
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What I like about Artiichockes is that they are available through the whole winter, no need of storage , just dig them up when needed (trouble is my memory, I forget about them ::) ) :innocent: :&>
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Hello Galtezza - thought I recognised your plot! I've been following the build on pistonheads and your blog. Yum yum, Emma
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Passoindale or the Somme. Complete wash out, only the spuds survived, nothing else got a chance to get established and now the heavy rain has 'done it in'.
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My hens can barely get to my plot for the weeds. I'm a definite contender for both 'the tallest weed' and 'the most weed species' ::) . My OH is pulling thistles from the pastures, I'm supposed to be doing the veg plot ones but am falling well behind.
There is a sickly row of broad beans, some summer brassicas, garlic and shallots, plus spuds, then the indoor stuff in the tunnel. It's enough to keep us going and there's always next year (DV). June seems to be the month when the weeds get the upper hand, and our soil is too wet to do anything about them. Trala - back to the spinning then :thumbsup:
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I will definitely try to take on some advice from here- cut the tallest and flowering weeds off soon rather than even making attempts at digging. Although I must admit it is a pleasure to see that the Goldfinches are eating seeds, dangling of the weeds! ;D :&>
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:innocent: my veg patch is a little more west-coast/highlands-style.....a little more rustic than a lot of these, but i will try to get photo's tomorrow.....
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My Veg plot is growing but I think the weeds are growing faster!!!
Northfieldduckling...I fence my plot with old netting from hay bales It deters the chooks (we dont get wild bunnies so its enough!)
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Lots of weeds this year,completely overgrown in areas and am trying to keep up with it but it is a losing battle,I need to spend a week in amongst my raised beds though is only just starting to dry out!
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me too, i cant keep up with the weeding, its making for some very nice compost tho!
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Our veg plot is doing Ok except for the potatoes.
I had to buy some seed spuds only to discover that half rotted ( probabley hit by the severe cold we had pre sale). So now for the interesting bit.
I planted my seed spuds near the area we had a bumper crop from last year. This years spuds are fine and they are doing fine - BUT - my old neighbour gave me a bucket of her seed spuds ( left over from last year) which I planted in 2 rows near my new crop. All of her plants are infested with collarado beetle and just a couple of mine have the buggers too. I read up on the beetle and it seems the larvae live in the soil and the adult flys little. Since my crop was clean last year I can only assume that the larvae also finds its way onto the very crop that their parents would have devasted last year.
Oh - I am unsure if we get carrot root fly but I planted mine bewteen rows of beetroot so as to shield the carrots from low flying carrot fly. Seems to have worked as the carrots are great.
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Lots of potatoes and onions doing well. My fruit patch along side though another matter - I decided to let it grow long and meadowy to encourage bee's and the like, sadly its encouraged chickens who now lay eggs under my gooseberry bush and its hurts crawling under there!
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me too, i cant keep up with the weeding, its making for some very nice compost tho!
lucky you, deepitw! I just seem to have dock, couch grass, buttercups and thinstles-all annoying rooty things which keep growing on the compost....only that many big tubs available here to drown the bl%%"y things - at least we're not drowning ourselves at the mo, feel do sorry for folk down south! :bouquet: :&>
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i too have all those weeds, the trick is to build a 'proper' heap rather than ust adding bits here and there, i make piles of the stuff im gonna compost then make a whole heap in one go then cover it up. ive got a compost thermometer and check the temperature daily, as long as it hits 150 deg f or more it will compost anything down. i mix those weeds up with grass, old straw bedding from the chooks, and paper and cardboard then water it in with sheep dag stew or any stinky water will do! then put a cap on of soil.
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Thanks for the tips, deepitw - as I have heaps everywhere at the mo it will be not much of a problem to make one out of it all - just choose a spot to put it ;D :&>
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the bigger the better! actually the optimum iirc is a 4ft cube with air access from the sides and something to insulate the top. if its not getting hot within a few hours or a day at the max, remix it and add more water, i splash a couple of buckets full on top of mine.
theres something really exciting about watching the temperature race up when youve got it mixed right, and it will compost in weeks not months.