Gardening?

Tidal_wear · Gardening?

Just wondered if any of you do anything in the garden or polytunnel?I did my apprenticeship at Houghall agricultural college for three years in floriculture and Horticulture,I have grown loads of exotic plants to be honest and used a variety of mediums from coir to Hydroponics,these tomatoes are on a drip fed line.I am lucky because one of my wifes degrees is agri based so we share common interests :smt014

fish

that lotsold on the vine are worth a mint! :smt001

oh yes nearly forgot,i grew these sprouts last year...............

Tidal_wear

Sprouts :smt008 We were actually discussing a project last night,we have access to a farm,very cheap labour force,and contacts in various governmental offices,my wife was involved in a large scale farmers co-operative selling small farmers crops to an organic buyer in Hong Kong.As for the tomatoes,she spent back breaking hours making sure those drip feeds were unblocked and in place,I used to call her tomato woman :smt001

steve

i see fish has been down to the local allotments one night

fish

yep! ive got two allotments! those butes weighed in at 22lb each!

Tidal_wear

I will try and find some pics of my banana trees :smt012 Got about five different types.

Tidal_wear

Thought you might like these banana shots,they are on their was to be made into dry banana chips for export................ :smt014

Snap Cap

You know technically a banana tree is not a tree, its a herb! Just thought i'd add that. :smt019

fish

big herb! big rizlas! :smt008

Tidal_wear

You can actually smoke the scrapings from dried banana skins Fish,and they are mildly hallucinogenic :smt008

fish

stop it! theres a blue dog sitting on my head.....down boy ...fly my pretty's....................... :smt017

Tidal_wear

LSD flashbacks from your mis-spent youth

:smt008

Snap Cap

Tidal_wear

The easiest was down fish is to.
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JUMP :smt005

Tidal_wear

Corn was ready just after christmas,so everyone jumped in and picked...................

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Tidal_wear

Goldie was on quality control,small cobs because its only a native variety...........

Tidal_wear

Normally takes 2-3 days for the corn to thoroughly sun-dry(bet you never learnt that from HFW

).

Tidal_wear

Corn being laid out,theres another pic,I was actually taking a snap of the roosters around the edge of the field,but you can see the corn in the background.................

fish

wish we had weather good enough to dry stuff! if you tried that here itd piss down 1 hour befor it was ready!

Tidal_wear

Even when it rains there mate its still warm...............But it dries up real quick,put a pair of saturated jeans on the line,within 2 hours they are bone-dry

steve

do they get many problems with pests and vermin with all that corn laying about?

Tidal_wear

None whatsoever mate

It dries very,very quickly,I have seen racks of small sprat sized fish on the beach wind and sun dry totally dessicated in a day.Not a drop of moisture................

confused

Last year i made some raised beds at the local school,using some old decking that was being tossed out , i made them 4ft x4ft, and about 1ft high, we were short of top soil to fill them so i suggested that they start composting for future years ,plenty shredded paper ,fruit,and leaves being available on site ,and a ready source of pigeon droppings from the local pigeon racing club who struggle to get rid of the stuff, in the short term to let the kids see some stuff growing i filled a couple of the raised beds with leaves ,etc but put plastic bottles with the tops and bottoms cut of in the beds and filled the bottles with old grow bags and soil mixed, thinking well if this does'nt work it's not the end of the world . i had some of the most even sized carrots and parsnips i've ever grown, so this year the plan is i've made carboard tubes about 4ins round and 9ins long, and i'm starting them of early in the greenhouse, and i'll just let the carboard rot away in the ground, has anyone ever tryed this or am i the only bampot, who has daft ideas? i just love when something goes right and the kids are involved.

fish

bogroll iners have been long saught by veg men for starting off plants ,usually stuff like brassicas and sweetcorns. showmen trying for the longest carrot or parsnip do grow in tubes too,usually guttering put togeter and held with tape,ive seen carrots over 5 feet long grown this way.

Tidal_wear

Gardening on a larger scale maybe,but I am helping a friend set up an experimental netfim type drip irrigation system on half an acre next week

moocher

just out of interest is there going to be a section on the forum for us self sufficiency dreamers that want to grow veg have poultry/rabbits etc.

Tidal_wear

A neighbour climbed his mango tree and hand-wrapped EVERY SINGLE INDIVIDUAL FRUIT at its first sign of ripeness in newspaper attempting to foil fruit bats and insects

maximus

The extremes some people will go to. I've just started Gardening this year, I think more people should be encouraged to grow their own, afterall this goverment just want everything brought in from other countries so they can get the tax from it.

fossil

i heard that last year veg seeds outsold flower seeds for the first time since the war, it just goes to show how anybody if they want to can grow there own veg, and theres nothing better than sitting down to a meal knowing that everything on your plate you have either grown or shot or both, its a real hunter gatherer thing bringing food home to the table.

fish

our family actually grows 70% of our veg needs,its very hard work but when yer sat down at the table with a haunch of venison and all the veg from the plots its a good feeling,free food!
when i was on the dole i had a letter from the social fraud office,they stated that my allotments were an income as coz i grew veg that they had given me money to buy i was defrauding the state! well i wrote them a carefully worded letter by return of post and it went " go fcuk yerselves you twatts , theres millions of people growing veg ,see you in court if youve got the balls to turn up!! " . funnily that was the last we heard from them................

heres a few pics and words from my veg growing blog :

in mid february 3 rabbits ate all of my brassicas,24 curly kale , 24 calabreese , 12 sprouts and 12 cabbages. the rabbits themselves became meals! (see recipe section!).
the allotment provider wouldnt rabbit proof the plot so i had to do it at considerable cost,then it became apparent that the crops were still vulnerable from aerial attack by the blue mist. so now my plots are pest proof! incidentally the netting over the top pulls back like a big curtain.

nearly finished constructing my runner bean tunnel :

APRIL 23

today i picked up 10 rhubarb crowns from a fellow 'free-cycler',i set about planting them and hope fully will have a comercial sized patch next year!!
its a hard life farming ........especially with a trailer full of rhubarb!

MAY 15

plots are comming on well and my bean tunnel is taking shape with a ggod lot of beans showing .

the brassica's are going from strength to strength! ille be cropping soon.seen here are curly kale and brocoli.

of intrest are my recycled closhes! here they are over my peas,they came from a skip in frome and started their life as magazine racks in woolies!!!!

the spuds broad beans,fennel,swiss chard and fruits are doing well on plot 1 too.

JUNE 10th 2008

well the hot and wet spell has done wonders for the plots,for both weed and food alike!
this week saw us have our first meal from the new crops ,curly kale.and boy was it good,mopped up the mint sauce and gravy on the roast a treat!!
today saw us doing a bit of watering,here mrs fish gets in on the act!:

heres one of the curly kale plants,they have cirtainly benifitted from the crop rotation which has seen them making the most of the nitrogen nodules left in the soil from last years beans!

as have the broccoli which will be cropping in a week or so:

the spuds have flowered this week so ille be digging the first of them too in a fort-night:

broad beans are flowering and the first tiny pods are forming!! woohoooo!!

the bean tunnel is doing fine with the tallest bean at 40 inches:

the newest crops to appear this week are the single row of dwarf yellow podded french beans and the beetroots.

this year in order to prevent a glut of peas we have staggered the planting of rows by 3 weeks as you can see:

a new crop for this year:

and heres the other brassica cage,(from left) curly kale ,greyhound cabbages ,sprouts and at the front a nursery of purple sprouting for next spring,i hope to plant them out into their final position this week.

all in all a busy time had by the whole family,and we are starting to crop what we hope will be another bumper year .

24th JUNE 08

so heres the next installment of the plot blog,the weather has been cool of late and wet , but still the plot grows , both produce AND weed!.
the soft fruits are comming on a treat heres a few:

the vegies are doing well to we havebeen copping the curly kle now on a regular basis and are infact in surplus to a point where we will be able to sell some soon,the broccoli is just amazing producing heads of 1.5 lb a piece! and the cabbages are filling out well i envisage cropping them in 3-4 weeks.
the first of my lagumes are within a week of cropping ,the broads are doing so well , a testament to good soil prparation and manuring. :

the runner beans are now flowering and have exceeded 7 feet in height:

the peas are flowering too ,i sowed plenty to allow for loss , only problemis that i lost so few i now have too many plants , cropping will be as difficult as plentyfull :

the beetroots are making a good show , even though we have lost some to pests :

and the jerusalem artichoke forest is going from strength to strength :

we have been eating our own spuds for a week now, sadly the plants are only producing 5lb or so of tubers each.

went down the plots today fpr some vegies for tea and found the biggest broccoli heads ive ever seen! can anyone beat these??

its now near the end of july and we are cropping our veg big time! this evening we cropped our first peas and beetroot as well as another 20lb of broadbeans which will be bartered for cider tomorrow!earlier in the week we harvested the first of our courgettes too!

heres a few pics :

heres the courgettes,

the first of the boltardy variety of beetroot,

and tonights haul of 24lb of peas , and believe it or not its only 1/6 of the total crop to pick!

so it looks like a lot of work to do in a short time,another 50lb of broads at least to pick,not to mention the peas and the now ready to harvest runner beans!

jaws66

well fish what can I say thats one hell of veg patch and I thought we had some work to do in our garden well done mate it looks very very good hats off to you and your family

I will try and get our small garden up after I walked the dogs

maximus

Well done fish, that was a fantastic read. You've put me to shame, I daren't even post any pics of mine. This is my first time with a veg plot and I decided that a lot of it was too late to plant.

What fun it is though, I now have radish almost ready, beans at four feet, Dwarf beans just starting to flower and cabbage on the way oh and parsnips too.

Well Done.