Anyone with an allotment?

BDW - do you want Courgette or Squash? I've a bunch of seedlings that will be thinned soon, happy to put into a small pot for you to plant out.

Pete - cheers for the offer of 'tater but it seems we are geographically impaired…

Right.

Snowy - whatchya got for me?
Big Red - you haz chiilis
Greasy - how much survived sluggageddon and do you have enough to spare?

looking for peas - have courgettes and beetroot to swap

chilis need a bit more of my caressing touch, biggy

I don't know if this is unusual but the chillis I grew from seed this year (and are only about 6 inches tall) have started to flower. Last year they were a good 12 inches, a lot more sturdy and flowered a fair bit later too. I don't know if this is because they are a new variety but have you experienced that before?

the weather is fucking with everthing. the nights are still cold, even on the days in the mid 20s.
normally, i'd plant seeds in mid march, then put them out when the min temp gets to about 10.
this year (and last year, too), the early seeds i planted went all leggy, because there was no sun and the later ones may be too late.

no sun=no growth
when did you plant your seeds?

Mid march (just like last year). I plant indoors and usually keep them there (as I found the ones outside wouldn't always got red whereas the indoor ones did). My plants from last year also flowered really early - April - and are producign some great looking chillis.

That said all other veg on my balcony has gone a tad odd too (with the exception of the garlic which is doing really well). Bloody global warming.

How has everybodies gardens/allotments come along with the very sunny past 5 weeks or so?

Ive had around a bucket full of strawberries, lots of lettuce, a few bunches of fenugreek & leaf beet.

Failed onions, carrots and pak choi. (just couldnt keep it moist enough)

But bean plants are coming along, plus I have lots of small courgettes fruiting and one largish gherkin, which I always find entertaining to look at.

get yourself down morrisons
buy a 5kg bag of maris piper
get the 5 biggest spuds and just plonk them in the ground
they'll take care of the seeding themselves
i chucked some out on the compost heap a month or so back and they are already in full leaf and growing
alternatively your local garden centre
poundshop

Not experienced with growing foods =)
Got any tips on what you need to do to help the fellas grow?
And how much growing space do you need to give each spud?

Got a lot of unused garden space and would love to grow my own veg.

As for spuds it's my understanding that it's a bit late for this year.... although I may be wrong http://www.rhs.org.uk/Gardening/Grow-Your-Own/Veg-A-to-Z/Potatoes

If anyone knows different please let me know as I've found a little bit of land near my that's rock hard and some spuds can really help break up the soil if I could do that over winter it'd be great.

That said you can grow some salad - lettuce etc - you'll get some leaves pretty quickly.

If you plan ahead you can grow some winter veg - brussels sprouts (early mid September for Xmas day crop) , garlic (plant November - ready April /May - about 6 months later), purple sprouting broccoli.

You can also do a lot of root crops too - leeks, beets, carrots, turnips, parships, radishes for a winter harvest.

Thanks for the info & link Olaf, very helpful.

Gave my Mum a fruit growing kit at Mothers Day, Strawberries and some other things I cana't rememember. Wish she grew them already, I think the season isn't right?

Strawberries are great to cover up any spare ground, every year around midsummer you will be over run with the best tasting strawberries you ever had. The plants just spread themselves and require no care other than putting a bit of chippings/straw underneath them to keep the slugs at bay.

Sometimes you get a second crop later in the year. Raspberries are also great in this way, but are basically the same as brambles so can spiral out of control and take over you or your neighbours garden if not kept in check.

I didn't grow pak choi, i did a different one, choi sum i think it was called, it was prolific (and still is) my lettuces are ace. my broad beans are nice (but there wasn't many), still waiting for tomatos. My first yellow courgettes were tasty last night, i've had a few nice peas. my peppers are still way off. onions are still tiny, what a waste of space and time. had some tiny raspberries.

^ second the strawberry comment. First year growing them this summer so only had two plants but the taste was unbelievable. Shows you how much they degrade once picked when you compare them to the best you can buy in the shops.

My pepper and chilli plants are doing really well, a foot high each now. Basil and parsley are chugging along, but the radishes never amounted to anything, and the carrot and onion seedlings got wiped out in a single hot day when I wasn't around to water them.

We've got carrots and beets. Third crop of salads, and the bloody sweetpeas have finally started to flower. Strawberries - the wild ones are good, but too easy to eat them all. Chillis are coming along slowly but surely, as are the pot toms. I've heaps of the last two spare for green fingered types...

Leeks - dead
Parsnips - dried to a shrivel
Sunflowers - all but one eaten by slugs. Bastards.

no luck with onions, pak choi doing well, beans,beets and courgettes good

My Peas are coming on good - main plants are 7-8 inches high now and supported by canes. I planted some more the other week and they only took a week to come up!, I only have a couple of radishes, and I left one too long, so it went woody - live and learn for next year!
Need to plant some more spinach as I fucked mine, well the squirrels fucked most of it.

strawberries tick not a lot but tasty and juicy
raspberries tick loads going on right now
salad leaf tick had a few rows of simple lettuce and some fancy ones grew well at first but have now gone to seed due to dry weather will dig up and sow another row or two
herbs thyme / bay / oregano / sage all doing well this year
garlic seems to have got lost under a bunch of weeds and have died away
potatoes tick quite a few plants growing in the compost heap and looking good
jersalem artichokes tick doing well currently had some boring weevils attack them last year hopefull they won't return this year
tomatoes not really doing well two plants looking a bit sad for themselves

and that is about that for this year

Well the garden's loved the rain.

Got a bumper crop of sweetpeas now, and have started cropping the stems to encourage new growth. Need to remember to collect some seed pods too before they tumble.

Carrots aren't growing massively, but the beetroot's getting close to eating. I've kept my bolted and now seeded first lettuce plants - I'm guessing I can just collect the seed pods and plant them again?

And Olaf's chillis are doing very well! Sadly I can't say the same thing about my leeks.

Same here, all the sun too. Tomatoes, basil, mint, courgettes, aubergines, broad beans, carrots, blueberries, taragon, lavender, salad leaves all doing really well. We've eaten some of the blueberries and they're yummy. Only thing not doing well are the token flowers (daisies?) we got for something non-foodie, they got frazzled in the sun and are dying I think.

Unfortunately our courgettes picked up black bean aphids (aka black fly) at some point and they have spread to our beans. Currently trying to deal with them organically. Any tips?

Watered down washing up liquid?

Tomatoes are almost here... :)

We're getting a good handful of runner beans and a few courgettes a day. Good radish & rocket too. Strawbs not doing quite so well.

@fox - I found black fly on one of my runner bean plants. We got the ladybirds on them and they've disappeared now.

(& washing up liquid and squashing them)

Watered down washing up liquid?

Soap is good, washing up liquid will damage plant.

Gardeners refer to "soft soap" which basically means hand soap/bubble bath or whatever.

I ended up using Bulgari shower gel in the end. Posh plants. Didn't manage to save the sweat peas from the ravaging, and now I'm slightly worried about infection of the seed pods.

Anyway, a hint of a frost this morning at 7 am ish. Olaf's chilli's are still doing marvellously. But the slugs ate the remaining beans whilst we were away last week. I'm considering an online purchase of some more winter / shrubbery plants if anyone wants to split?

Oh and for BRM: http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2010/aug/31/consider-chilli