Post your Gardening photos

[765489]

Post your gardening successes and failures

Happy with the tomatoes this year. A bit of leave curl due to heat stress but will do them no harm. Finding that red varieties of lettuce seem to be less prone to bolting than the green. I've done aubergines and fennel for the first time this year and have no idea what to do with them but interesting to see the way they grow. The black tomatoes taste like poison at the moment and remind me of the fruit that appears on some spuds after flowering stage. Seem to be taken in a long time to ripen.

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[kadman]

Thats a terrific looking tunnel arrangement.

[765489]

Thanks Kadman. I used to use it for growing bedding plants and pot plants a good few years ago for the markets and shop. 28 years old and not a bit of rust on it. Need to change the cover on it soon but am thinking of getting one which has straight sides and opens along the sides. Would make a big difference with the weather we've been having lately.

[765489]

Romanesco, first time growing this. Well worth adding a couple of these to your garden. These are delicious, flavour not as strong as broccoli or calabrese. Not sure if they are a cross between a cauliflower and a broccoli. Some of the heads come out like this others don't but are just as tasty.

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[490808]

Never thought the flavour of Romanesco was anything that special, but for anyone that likes Broccoli its well worth growing.

Aubergines = Brinjal pickle - yum (if your into spicy food) - the Indian version of what to do with too many green tomatoes.

[765489]

Never thought the flavour of Romanesco was anything that special, but for anyone that likes Broccoli its well worth growing.

Aubergines = Brinjal pickle - yum (if your into spicy food) - the Indian version of what to do with too many green tomatoes.

I've given a friend of mine a couple of Aubergines as I've no idea what to do with them... she said she was going to do something Indian with them and drop some of it up to myself and oulfella can't wait to see what's done with them

[490808]

Also Ratatouille which is superb when you can make it with all your own Aubergines, courgettes, peppers, tomatoes and onions, but tbh don't think we've ever managed to make it with 100% our own grown veg.

Also a great veg to roast https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/roas ... bles_34554

Edit> Just read that recipe you can double or quadruple up on any veg that you have a lot of and I wouldn't rush to get the artichoke hearts if all you are doing is looking for a recipe to use up garden produce. You can throw sweet potato and squash in as well if you like. Wife always adds lumps of Mozzarella. Its roast veg roast em if you got em.

[765489]

Also Ratatouille which is superb when you can make it with all your own Aubergines, courgettes, peppers, tomatoes and onions, but tbh don't think we've ever managed to make it with 100% our own grown veg.

Also a great veg to roast https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/recipes/roas ... bles_34554

Edit> Just read that recipe you can double or quadruple up on any veg that you have a lot of and I wouldn't rush to get the artichoke hearts if all you are doing is looking for a recipe to use up garden produce. You can throw sweet potato and squash in as well if you like. Wife always adds lumps of Mozzarella. Its roast veg roast em if you got em.

Sounds good just saw this. I've grown artichokes before but they ended up in a vase on the window sill

[490808]

RE: Black Tomatoes

Never grown or tasted them so looked them up online and came across this https://farmtojar.com/heirloom-tomato-v ... -to-color/ which had some interesting info (possibly only American varieties).

[765489]

RE: Black Tomatoes

Never grown or tasted them so looked them up online and came across this https://farmtojar.com/heirloom-tomato-v ... -to-color/ which had some interesting info (possibly only American varieties).

That's interesting. The black ones I have have a acid but sweet aftertaste. They aren't fully ripe yet. Eating them half ripe if like eating an unripe gooseberry. Never grown these before but will update with taste and variety. The plants themselves are very impressive, good healthy leaves and vigor.

I have yellows too but they taste bland. Full of water no bite in them.

[silverbirch]

Looks like our first tomatoes of the season will be ready for picking over the next couple of days (boring old red variety!). They were grown outside in pots.

[765489]

Boring but probably taste nicer than some of the ones I've down silverbirch... I made the mistake of putting in a load of plants of a yellow variety and only 3 or 4 of the moneymaker variety and find the yellow ones ya may as well be eating a ball of water... no taste in them... the moneymaker variety are much nicer and will be putting more of them down next year.

[CelticRambler]

Not much to look at, at first glance:



... but these are my "Christmas" potatoes, earthed up yesterday having only been sown on the 8th July. Yep, not even three weeks ago.

This is the first crop to go into this terrace of a new, hopefully drought-resistant vegetable bed that I've been building for several months. The terrace above (out of shot, to the left) has a crop of "early" potatoes - planted the same day - that replaced a line of peas. There's a big hole just visible on the right which will eventually become the lower and lowest terraces to make six in total.

The soil is very fertile, but desperately hard to work on account of its really high clay content (that's what came out of the hole - being used to make a hard surface for pathways through the garden, and as a mortar for some retaining walls) so the spuds, the weeds, the grass clippings you might spot in the drills, and a barn full of hay are all being used to help improve it.

[765489]

I've started work on an apple orchard I'm putting in. First phase completed. This involved chosing the site, cultivation of site and seeding. The grasses are all native Irish grass varieties along with birds foot trefoil, yarrow, cowparsley, red clover and some other herbs I can't think of at the moment. Bumble bees and hover flies are going to be important in this. I plan to use little or no sprays and instead go for an integrated pest management solution. There are a lot of tillage weeds in it at present such as the dreaded red shank but these should more or less disappear next season. Happy how it's turned out so far.

Next phase is deciding on apple varieties, root stocks etc. Plan to use mostly irish heritage apple varieties. 6 varieties in total but varieties not fully decided yet. I can put six lines of 10 trees in it spaced 4/5 metres apart with 5 metres between rows. The creosoted fencing ignore as these will be used elsewhere. Two stakes per tree, going to use high tensile horse mesh rather than chicken wire as its rigid and I can make a flap at the bottom for weeding etc.

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[CelticRambler]

I've started work on an apple orchard I'm putting in. First phase completed. This involved chosing the site, cultivation of site and seeding. The grasses are all native Irish grass varieties along with birds foot trefoil, yarrow, cowparsley, red clover and some other herbs I can't think of at the moment. Bumble bees and hover flies are going to be important in this. I plan to use little or no sprays and instead go for an integrated pest management solution.

Great idea - you're (more or less!) following in my boot-prints! The previous owner of my land (still a neighbour, and owner of just about all that I can see in every direction ... ) had gone to great trouble to "clean it up" prior to sale. He has a thing for sterile landscapes. Anyhow, I promptly dirtied it up again with a new orchard (apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches) and apart from this year's wacky weather messing up the germination and budding of everything, it's been mostly very satisfying.

Except for a worsening infestation of coddling moth. The little feckers can strip a whole pear-tree of its leaves in the space of a weekend, and I've now lost several crops of apples (we're taking maybe 200kg per season) because where the moths damage the fruit with a little exit hole, the wasps and hornets use it as an excuse to excavate all the rest. I had thought that after a few years some useful predator would have moved in and started keeping the moth population in check, but nope - doesn't look like it.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next year, seeing as there's no fruit at all for the moths/larvae to live in this year, and I'll be taking advantage of that (very soon) to give the apples a good hard pruning to give them a more man-on-mower-friendly shape.

[765489]

Great idea - you're (more or less!) following in my boot-prints! The previous owner of my land (still a neighbour, and owner of just about all that I can see in every direction ... ) had gone to great trouble to "clean it up" prior to sale. He has a thing for sterile landscapes. Anyhow, I promptly dirtied it up again with a new orchard (apples, pears, cherries, plums, peaches) and apart from this year's wacky weather messing up the germination and budding of everything, it's been mostly very satisfying.

Except for a worsening infestation of coddling moth. The little feckers can strip a whole pear-tree of its leaves in the space of a weekend, and I've now lost several crops of apples (we're taking maybe 200kg per season) because where the moths damage the fruit with a little exit hole, the wasps and hornets use it as an excuse to excavate all the rest. I had thought that after a few years some useful predator would have moved in and started keeping the moth population in check, but nope - doesn't look like it.

It'll be interesting to see what happens next year, seeing as there's no fruit at all for the moths/larvae to live in this year, and I'll be taking advantage of that (very soon) to give the apples a good hard pruning to give them a more man-on-mower-friendly shape.

I've been chopping ( literally ) and changing fruit trees in the existing orchard that I have over the last 10 years... it's pitiful looking. I've only 2 trees that I originally got left ( Katy and Discovery ) Made the mistake first off of getting varieties that are not suited to my local climate so eventually copped on and started looking for good Irish varieties. I've had the peaches and cherries but I got rid of them as the peach trees didn't seem to do well and had a lot of peach curl I think it's called. The cherries are a waste of time here due to the birds getting there first. The pears I have, again I originally went with conference. Now some people like hard pears but I like them soft... they were like rocks so I changed these and got a variety called Beth which is an early maturing variety. But two of them snapped at the root stocks Didn't stake them properly.

I have never seen an instance of codling moth damage where I am, touch wood But I do have pear midge fly. Plum saw fly can be another pest but what I've been doing on that is giving it a tight mowing under the plum trees, the circumference of the tree crown as this seems to disrupt them someway... also plums with bubbles on them I tend to fire them as far away as possible from the plum tree. The codling moth I need to look into further, as that sounds horrendous... you may need to bite the bullet and go with some chemical control even if it's just to bring it down to a level where you can then apply more environmentally friendly solutions ? I think you can get a codling moth trap, this attracts either the male or female and you wait three days after the moth is trapped and spray.. again I haven't looked at any of this in detail.

Meadow management is another thing I need to get my head around. I will not be cutting it till late in the year... possibly September so this will be essentially mulched back once a year. But obviously keeping around the base of the trees clean. I've access to a small MF 35 and topper from my neighbour but am thinking a walk behind two wheeled flail mower would be a better option as it will get in to all the nucks and crannies easier. But they are expensive enough.

I'm gonna try and see if I can visit a commercial orchard later in the year to see if I can get some tips and see the set ups...

[CelticRambler]

We really need a gardening forum with threads for plant ID, veg growing, lawns and general chat .

Patience - we'll get one! We've only just planted the seeds!

[kadman]

Two wheeled powered strimmer is great for cleaning up high grass next to trees. And we use it more often that the ride on mower as we
find it does the job quicker.

[CelticRambler]

The pears I have, again I originally went with conference. Now some people like hard pears but I like them soft... they were like rocks so I changed these ...

Conference is a cooking pear! Steamed for a bit, then sautéd in a little bit of butter with cinnamon - melt-in-your mouth softness that would have you planting twice as many!

[dawg]

Conference is a cooking pear! ...

Well,
um,
Yes.
But when they are ripe they can be very nice to eat uncooked

NCD, just let them ripen. ( Anyone who doubts this could buy some in a supermarket and try them when they are ripe )

[490808]

Well,
um,
Yes.
But when they are ripe they can be very nice to eat uncooked

NCD, just let them ripen. ( Anyone who doubts this could buy some in a supermarket and try them when they are ripe )

Only problem is they are ripe one day and starting to go rotten the next. You've no way of knowing when that one day that they are perfect will be.

[765489]

All this talk of pears would love a good bottle of Pear cider now

I'd a big rant typed out about the quality of certified commercial seed versus some of the shite vegetable seed I purchased off a well known Irish seed company. I deleted it as life is too short for this stuff and in the end it was my own fault for not going with the commercial seed company as the relationship with them goes back to my father's time.

Never again. Seed is cheap for a reason -> Low germination rates and shite quality.

[765489]

Two boxes of vegetables bartered for 8 cans of rockshore cider today. Was a good day.

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[765489]

Cleared off some courgettes that were getting like marrows to keep the plants productive. I can't get rid of these quick enough. The local vet will be getting tomatoes tomorrow, I'll be stashing a few courgettes in the end of the bag unbeknownst to him.

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[765489]

A veg bag containing aubergines, various tomatoes, beetroot, red shallots & courgettes for friend. I'm getting great satisfaction put of this gardening lark this year.

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The only two apple trees that have done well this year. Very reliable croppers, Katy and Discovery. There's another variety called Blood of the Boyne which has a couple that l hope make it through as its one of the varieties that I'm hoping to add to my orchard.

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Hope this all comes out right