Growing your own veg

KMA

Member
Location
Dumfriesshire
2nd early tatties (Kestrel and Nicola) are in, have put all the tubs in a fruit cage for now until there's enough canopy to stop the f**king cats and birds attacking trashing them:mad: fortunately the 1st earlies have recovered strongly. 6" well rotted FYM, a tablespoon of tattie fertiliser sprinkled on then 4" of GP compost before putting the spud in to 4" deep.

All 3 of the horseradish bits I replanted after cropping are in leaf so hoping for a decent yield in this the 2nd year :hungry: need to find a decent recipe for the sauce though.

Propagator has 3 courgette (midnight), 6 lettuce (little gem) and 6 runner bean (3 Scarlet Emperor and 3 Snowdrift) in.

Have now definitely planted the last of the garlic (16 cloves of Red Duke), which I found lurking in the box that all the bulbs came in.
 

Kidds

Member
Horticulture
A spade full of soil on the polythene between each hoop (both sides) keeps the wind out. Most of the time anyway.
They are old pics, back then if you could get your strawberries to ripen a few weeks early you were quids in because there were non to be had from elsewhere. Nowadays you can have strawberries any time you like, you can go to the supermarket and buy them at Christmas if you like. No money to be made in all that work so we stopped many years back.
 

Osca

Member
Location
Tayside
My place is just above the rich soils of the valley floor and is mostly clay with gravelly pockets, I suppose. But the courgettes were very appreciative of well rotted horse sh!t and grew like something out of a sci-fi film.
 

Osca

Member
Location
Tayside
... so, what's wrong with sh!t? I wonder if the on-board moral guardian does the same with crap?

edited to say no, it doesn't, and I would have thought crap was marginally the more vulgar of the two expressions...

Still, a rose by any other name...
 

KMA

Member
Location
Dumfriesshire
Am I right in thinking courgettes have roughly the same requirements as tomatoes and therefore sheep-sh!t is the better option?

I know horse muck is supposed to best for roses but is that just because it used to easier to obtain in towns and cities before the combustion engine

Just wondering as I have access to sheep, cattle and horse muck and can't seem to find any info.
 

Treemover

Member
Location
Offaly
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Preparing ground for some earlies.
Plough is new, so trying to get boards to run clean, nearly there.
Bought a nice 5ft Cambridge roller which I run over ploughing.

Just have to hit this with the Howard rotovator and sow on next fine spell.
 

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Osca

Member
Location
Tayside
Horse muck may inadvertantly grow a nice crop of oats, depending on whether or not the horses were fed bruised oats. I don't think you would get that with a ruminant.
 

country_gal

Member
Livestock Farmer
my carrots got no bigger than an inch and I was devastated! Then I had a successful wee patch with spinach, potatoes, courgettes.....but the chickens managed to get in and had a field day! I hope to start from scratch again now that I have moved!
 

New Puritan

Member
Location
East Sussex
@KMA - I would say tomatoes and courgettes do have roughly similar requirements, and any muck you can get, especially if it's been rotted, is worth having. Though thanks @Old McDonald for your link! You are a mine of useful information.

@Treemover - do you cultivate immediately after ploughing? I've been told to leave it at least 10 days to get the grass to die off a bit, but I'd be very happy to learn this isn't necessary as it could speed things up for me.

I have a small allotment as I have no garden (I live in a town, but am also a tenant farmer on some land just outside the town where it's not feasible to live on-site). I've been messing about growing unusual vegetables as well as some staples there for 10 years and more. I've always found it's best to grow stuff I can harvest in a block - e.g. potatoes or pumpkins, rather than having to go there every day. It was experimenting growing lentils on my allotment that ultimately led me to growing them on the farm on a larger scale.

This does make me think that there must be a lot of people out there quietly growing things on allotments and gardens who could possibly provide very useful insights to commercial growers.

Thanks to everyone who has posted on this thread, it's all very interesting.
 

KMA

Member
Location
Dumfriesshire
I think it depends on what you want to grow, there's an argument for ploughing in the autumn and letting the snow and frost help break the sods down, also giving it a harrow then leaving it for a few days to let the weeds germinate before going over it again to kill them can help.
 

Stuart J

Member
Mixed Farmer
Location
UK
Just taken delivery of some garlic cloves for planting.
Given the time of year, should I put them in the fridge for a week? Reading online suggests they need a good period of cold to ensure decent bulb formation?
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

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Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

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As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
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