Growing your own - is it worth it?

[teamsaint]

Anybody got any good tips for growing aubergines please ?

We have got some going from seed, Black Beauty and Bonica they seem quite healthy, but quite slow growing.



Incidentally ,
Last weekend I made a sort of basic copy of this, to sit on a windowsill as a second stage for plants.
Very easy and cheap, really pleased with it.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Bathroom-Storage-Natural-Bamboo/dp/B00JF6KNZC/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Kitchen+shelf+over+tap&qid=1588351298&sr=8-2

[MrGongGong]

Anybody got any good tips for growing aubergines please ?

We have got some going from seed, Black Beauty and Bonica they seem quite healthy, but quite slow growing.



Incidentally ,
Last weekend I made a sort of basic copy of this, to sit on a windowsill as a second stage for plants.
Very easy and cheap, really pleased with it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Bat...8351298&sr=8-2

Do you have a greenhouse ?

[teamsaint]

Do you have a greenhouse ?

Just a little mini one. But we like it .....

Edit...I dont think you can have a big mini greenhouse though .

[ardcarp]

That Monsanto lot get everywhere don't they?

Aggrochemicals.

[oddoneout]

Anybody got any good tips for growing aubergines please ?

We have got some going from seed, Black Beauty and Bonica they seem quite healthy, but quite slow growing.



Incidentally ,
Last weekend I made a sort of basic copy of this, to sit on a windowsill as a second stage for plants.
Very easy and cheap, really pleased with it.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Bat...8351298&sr=8-2

I've grown them - or tried to - at various times but never had that much success, even with the small fruited ones which are supposed to be more successful in this country. The closest I came was when I had a proper greenhouse to give them protection at the beginning and end of the season and was able to pick up a couple of 'reduced to clear' 'Black Beauty' plants from a garden centre. They grew well and I had a couple of (rather small) fruit off each. The plants were quite decorative so they were on display on the patio during high summer. I think the main thing is that they need warmth over quite a long growing season to do well.
This has some useful advice https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-y...les/aubergines

[teamsaint]

I've grown them - or tried to - at various times but never had that much success, even with the small fruited ones which are supposed to be more successful in this country. The closest I came was when I had a proper greenhouse to give them protection at the beginning and end of the season and was able to pick up a couple of 'reduced to clear' 'Black Beauty' plants from a garden centre. They grew well and I had a couple of (rather small) fruit off each. The plants were quite decorative so they were on display on the patio during high summer. I think the main thing is that they need warmth over quite a long growing season to do well.
This has some useful advice https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-y...les/aubergines

Thanks. Sounds like plenty of warmth is the key thing.

My peas have just germinated, and I wasn’t all that optimisitic given where I sowed them.

[gradus]

Re aubergines, I think it's getting very late to sow now so would buy plants. I find they grow well in 10inch pots in the greenhouse and I've known them do well outdoors in warm summers hereabouts (Sth.Suffolk). Keep an eye open for red spider mite though.
Peas doing ok here to but I've had to cover them with enviromesh to stop the pigeons nibbling the leaves.

[ardcarp]

Runner beans. Growing your own...is it worth it? Yes, if only for the pleasure of putting up the beansticks. (Not the digging though.)

[oddoneout]

Runner beans. Growing your own...is it worth it? Yes, if only for the pleasure of putting up the beansticks. (Not the digging though.)

I see you've had to be creative with shorter canes! Constructing the runner supports on the allotment was always a major undertaking as the site was so exposed. By the end of the season most had a lean and the odd one would collapse after a September storm - they would usually be left, if not in the way or on top of something else, as the beans would keep coming. This year in my garden I had problems getting the canes in as the ground was hard with the dry weather but a bit of sturdy pipe and a sledgehammer to make pilot holes eventually go the job done. I do 2 parallel upright rows braced at the end these days to grow a mix of runner and French beans and tall peas, as I only need a few plants of each for my needs so the extra strength of the A frame isn't needed. Some pea plants(Heritage Seed Library variety so not many seeds to risk) are already in the ground but the weather is still a tad too challenging for the French beans seedlings(again HSL variety) and the runners are just germinated so still inside yet. A selection of salad items are now doing well with the recent rain and cooler conditions. I've marked out a small bed into rough squares to help with successional sowing to try and ensure continuity. Again, as I only need small quantities it works quite well and looks decorative as well, with a variety of leaf shapes and colours making a patchwork against the soil. A pair of fine bladed scissors will be used shortly to thin out seedlings - saves disturbing the roots of the plants remaining - which will go into a salad.

[gradus]

Very unusually I'm if anything too far forward, with beans already growing and some Telegraph peas which can reach prodigious heights - for peas. I'm praying that frost doesn't strike.
I like the old-fashioned method of crossing canes about half way along their length so that the beans hang freely at the top instead of bunching as they can do when tied at the tops.
Just recently I've picked up on Charles Dowding's Youtube videos about no-dig methods. It strikes me that one needs a huge supply of compost to produce results like his but I think his methods are very convincing although I'm always a bit sceptical about the apparent ease of it all when one sees immaculate weed-free veg plots - Monty Don's garden can sometimes give the same impression of a horde of helpers waiting out of camera!

[ardcarp]

Two useful tips...thanks to both!

I like the old-fashioned method of crossing canes about half way along their length so that the beans hang freely at the top instead of bunching as they can do when tied at the tops.

A pair of fine bladed scissors will be used shortly to thin out seedlings - saves disturbing the roots of the plants remaining

I do dig by the way...a trench for the beans and plenty of compost. I'm sure some people manage 'no-dig', but it doesn't work for me.
We always plant our beans as late as possible, because we're usually away in early summer and given our very mild climate we continue to get crops in late Sept even October. Old habits die hard, even in lock-down.

As for putting up the sticks, it took me less than half an hour today. I'm afraid I use cable ties. But I never let bits of plastic get into the soil when putting up and taking down.

Monty Don's garden can sometimes give the same impression of a horde of helpers waiting out of camera!

[oddoneout]

Very unusually I'm if anything too far forward, with beans already growing and some Telegraph peas which can reach prodigious heights - for peas. I'm praying that frost doesn't strike.
I like the old-fashioned method of crossing canes about half way along their length so that the beans hang freely at the top instead of bunching as they can do when tied at the tops.
Just recently I've picked up on Charles Dowding's Youtube videos about no-dig methods. It strikes me that one needs a huge supply of compost to produce results like his but I think his methods are very convincing although I'm always a bit sceptical about the apparent ease of it all when one sees immaculate weed-free veg plots - Monty Don's garden can sometimes give the same impression of a horde of helpers waiting out of camera!

He does have access to enormous quantities of compost, so covering beds to a decent depth is possible. I don't know if it's in his current garden or on the previous one but his rank of bins was bigger than many people's gardens - I think there were something like 8 or 10 of them - and he gets rotted muck I believe from a nearby farmer. It also helps if you don't have things like horsetail and ground elder, or close neighbours with weedy plots. I ended up doing no-dig on my allotment plot partly because I couldn't dig it all and also because the soil was sandy silt which really didn't benefit from frequent and/or major disturbance. I didn't have raised beds for various reasons,just marked them out on the flat. It worked pretty well, and would have done even better if I had had much more compost.

[ardcarp]

Had a quick look at a couple of 'no-dig' websites. As you say, it seems to need vast quantities of compost. OK for smallish beds I suppose. What I don't quite understand that if you continue piling on a 15cm layer of compost year on year, surely you're going to need a step-ladder before long?

[oddoneout]

The rate at which the bed heights increase isn't directly related to the depth of material applied to the surface as it gets broken down and incorporated into the soil, but yes the height will increase. I've not read of instances where that has become a problem, but I imagine it would be easily dealt with!
What I find more puzzling is that there is quite a body of work relating to the amount of material that is needed to keep the soil in good health and productive which says that regularly applying large quantities of organic matter isn't necessary and may in some instances be undesirable, either because it's wasteful or because there may be problems of imbalances of nutrients. To a certain extent I suppose it will depend on what the soil is being expected to deliver in terms of crop quantities. Charles Dowding supplies salads in volume to customers and so the 'exported' nutrients are presumably at a higher level than in a domestic setting.

[gradus]

Had a quick look at a couple of 'no-dig' websites. As you say, it seems to need vast quantities of compost. OK for smallish beds I suppose. What I don't quite understand that if you continue piling on a 15cm layer of compost year on year, surely you're going to need a step-ladder before long?

I seem to remember reading that in 18th century France (Paris area I think) phenomenally large amounts of manure were applied to land growing fruit and veg with correspondingly huge yields over several croppings a year but the effect on the land was to raise the level, to such an extent that the leases contained clauses requiring a departing tenant to restore the level to that at the start of the lease.