Ac Baker

The tomato plants you so kindly posted me me, were noticeably yellow and purple by the time I got them in the ground.

My soil of course is quite different from yours, being a 100 year old allotments site in central England.

I think I've mentioned that I've been mulching them with dandelion leaves, nettles and compost, as well as watering them daily.

They've all greened up really beautifully now in my soil despite the heatwave.

So hopefully that's good news regarding the plants themselves!

A lot of people in this part of the world are struggling.  The heatwave is due to ease on Saturday, thankfully.  

We've been managed to water the tomatoes and pumpkins every day, and they're looking pretty good.

We're getting a lot of donated 'past their best' vegetables and fruits from the local greengrocer, because it's so hot and they're not lasting.  But I'm pleased to say that some of the produce is still usable straight away by an experienced kitchen expert. So the Mutual Aid kitchen have had some spinach greens, some cauliflower, some aubergines, some courgettes on top of the redistributed produce the central food project have been able to supply.  There's never enough variety of vegetables otherwise!  (The rest goes for compost for later in the year).

Signing off to cool my head .. !!

Great question.

The general feeling seems to be, you can't be sure until the plants are quite well-grown ..

Bush tomatoes "often" flower at the end of their side stems, then stop growing more leaves at a height of 3-5ft.  

Vining tomatoes "often" continue putting on more leaves beyond flowers, and can grow twice as tall/long if there's no frost to stop them.

So, only time will tell ..

We've had another good week.  Decent rain, mostly overnights, with warm drier days.  Most of the potatoes are doing well (first & second earlies, and main crop). The various tomatoes are coming along: I think we have about six varieties all donated plants.  But the latter need more feeding I think, so I've tried mulching with freshly cut nettles.

The Carlin peas & broad beans are doing well too, apart from the introduced grey squirrels eating the beans!

But! We have a severe heatwave starting tomorrow by our standards, with most of the days next week in the low to mid 30s C.  Not good for cool climate crops such as potatoes.  Sigh.

Is that in your garden?  We have lots of red, orange & purple poppies if various types on our allotments just now.

Huzzah! I need to finish mounding up mine.

I've had mixed experiences with compost tumblers.

On the one hand, I'm Disabled, so trying to turn compost unaid isn't great for me.

But I've been disappointed by the flimsey-ness of compost tumblers sold to "hobbyists" for home composting.

Now I've been offered the chance to get funds for a good quality compost tumbler for our community allotment.

I'm in the middle of England: anyone reading know of durable compost tumbler designs for this climate? Our coldest winters rarely reach -10 C. Our hottest summers now reach +40 C. We get either droughts & floods most years now.

Thank you.

Thank you.  There's a lot of stuff I feel is too much to say to almost anyone .. argh.

(Besides gardening therapy, I have had some good counselling experiences: where you trust your counsellor, you get out things rattling around in your head, knowing they have professional support too.)

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We got the word out a little further today, and it was fun too.

We had a little article in a couple of local magazines recently.  This intrigued a couple of neighbours, who got together about half-a-dozen people who wanted a visit.

So I did the tour today, with some context about how we're 'cloding the loop' for local veg & fruit growing & sharing, plus some history, plant chat, Q&A etc.  Lots of fun, and really good initial feedback too.

Better still, our visitors went & enthused to their friends.  So I may be doing another run of the tour in a couple of weeks time.

Best of all, a couple of the visitors are interested in finding out about getting actively involved.  Fingers crossed!

Although it was very difficult to germinate from saved seed, I'm having better results with transplanted local hop clover (also, I think, a Medicago).

It's gone through the winter well, and is now well grown & flowering for me.

I'm also seeing decent results with locally collected red & white clover seed as an overwinter cover crop.

So I'm hoping to expand the beds I'm using them in, this year

Corn salad is working well as a combined crop & winter cover for me too.

Polycultures & year-round or self-seeding cover crops are my current way of thinking.