Growing your own - is it worth it?

[greenilex]

But Draco, can’t you forgive even a sneaky bully if he has a glorious voice?

[gradus]

While we are undecided about an electric fence, the badgers have found the strawberries and walked all over them. The strawberries are still green and hard. How did they know what they were? I have put up a cane-and-wire fence but I have little hope of saving the crop. I just hope that they won’t find my carrots.

I'd add the optional machine gun towers to the electric fence - about the only way you'll stop them.

[vinteuil]

Sneaky bullies, most blackbirds and they deserve a bit of come-uppance!

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But Draco, can’t you forgive even a sneaky bully if he has a glorious voice?

... at the right time, your blackbird has a lovely voice.

We now seem to have a blackbird who has chosen a perch outside our bedroom window, and who likes starting off at 3 AM.
I usually get up at 5:30. I do not appreciate being wakened at 3:00...



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[HighlandDougie]

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... at the right time, your blackbird has a lovely voice.

We now seem to have a blackbird who has chosen a perch outside our bedroom window, and who likes starting off at 3 AM.
I usually get up at 5:30. I do not appreciate being wakened at 3:00...



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You could just lie there and either think about the melodic beauty of a blackbird's song (and how the world would be a much worse place without it) or "channel" Olivier Messiaen and think how you might transcribe it for, say, a small-but-perfectly formed keyboard instrument du 18ème siècle. I have at least three pairs of blackbirds nesting (and warring) in my garden - I can hear one singing its heart out as I type - and I cannot get cross at the fact that they eat all the cherries and, later in the year, the persimmons (they are welcome to the olives, though). While I am sure that I would feel very differently if I were trying to grow vegetables and ground-level fruit like strawberries, I rather like having a resident badger, who gets to eat the mirabelles which litter the garden in July and which would otherwise rot.

[gradus]

Just received an email from the IoW Garlic Farm offering 'green garlic' from the South of France at £2.50per bulb and it's not a joke, at least not intended.

[doversoul1]

Just received an email from the IoW Garlic Farm offering 'green garlic' from the South of France at £2.50per bulb and it's not a joke, at least not intended.

https://www.plated.com/morsel/green-garlic-used/

I though pea shoots were as silly as foodies could go.

I fortified the strawberry patch with more canes, metal pegs and string. Last night the ****s just dug their way in. I could add more canes but then how am I going to pick them? If any fruit will left for us when hey are actually ripe, that is.

[oddoneout]

https://www.plated.com/morsel/green-garlic-used/
I though pea shoots were as silly as foodies could go.

I fortified the strawberry patch with more canes, metal pegs and string. Last night the ****s just dug their way in. I could add more canes but then how am I going to pick them? If any fruit will left for us when hey are actually ripe, that is.

Away from foodies and supermarkets pea shoots have a lot going for them. I have used them for some 5 years now as part of my mentoring work getting people to'grow your own'. They are the ideal answer to the 'I don't have a garden', 'it's the wrong time of year' excuses, and thanks to the big seeds are useful for growing activities with institutionalised care home residents. Minimal materials needed;compost isn't essential,( I've grown them on paper from my shredder), a clean plastic or other container(drainage holes not essential), cheap bag of dried peas from shop, and somewhere with a bit of light(sunny windowsill not necessary and can be unhelpful in summer)
Keeping badgers away from something they are determined to get at is a major undertaking. Have you considered growing them above ground like the pick your own outfits increasingly do? Or hanging baskets? An old table with growbags on top would probably suffice - also easier to keep slugs away, although obviously the downside is watering.

[gradus]

It's very close to a drought here, a real East Anglian summer and I'm having to water daily to keep things alive. Not that I've skimped on muck, compost and hoeing - really dust-mulching - unfortunately there ain't no substitute for H2O. Outdoor toms are enjoying it but spuds look feeble and whoever said that you don't need to water potatoes until they flower obviously never told the commercial growers who have been watering for at least a month and are seeing splendidly flowered early crops not much more than 70 days from planting. Autumn garlic has done fairly well but spring planted is making heavy weather of it.

[gurnemanz]

Odd weather. Not much rain and not that warm but one really good recent thunderstorm gave a decent drenching. An advantage of heavy clay is that once plants get roots down they can find moisture . Spuds, runner beans and courgettes looking OK without watering.

[Lat-Literal]

The earth is very dry.

[doversoul1]

Quite a lot of pods on the peas. I marked the point between the peas and the mangetout but didn’t mark which was which. Bother.

Watering is a major job at the moment. The pumpkins seem to need no end of water but I have given up watering the strawberries. Hanging baskets or electric wire next year.

oddoneout
Re: French garlic. I assume one clove grow one shoot. Does it mean you need a bulb to make one reasonable bunch?

[oddoneout]

Quite a lot of pods on the peas. I marked the point between the peas and the mangetout but didn’t mark which was which. Bother.

Watering is a major job at the moment. The pumpkins seem to need no end of water but I have given up watering the strawberries. Hanging baskets or electric wire next year.

oddoneout
Re: French garlic. I assume one clove grow one shoot. Does it mean you need a bulb to make one reasonable bunch?

What variety of mangetout are you growing? The kinds with the big flat pods(such as Carouby) are easily distinguished from ordinary shelling peas, if you're growing a sugarsnap type that will be more difficult to distinguish, although the fleshiness of the pod can be quite obvious when compared with a shelling pea. Otherwise it'll be a case of trial and error, but shelling peas will generally produce noticeable signs of a full pod of interior seeds whereas the mangetout tend to be a bit backward in showing seed swellings - not surprising really as they've been bred for tender pods rather than seeds.
Not sure about your French garlic query as I don't think I have made any reference to same - but happy to be corrected! However I can volunteer the fact that one clove planted in autumn will produce a single green top part(similar to a leek) beneath which will be a garlic 'bulb'(ie collection of cloves - confusing terminology) at maturity the following year, in the same way that shallots will split from a single set planted to produce a cluster. Garlic cloves in storage that start to sprout can be allowed to continue to do so - either 'dry' or by being potted up - to produce green shoots akin to the top of a spring onion, but tasting of garlic. The clove bit will not by that stage, in my experience at least, develop further( or rather to any useful culinary end, it may survive to produce a skinny attempt at a cluster) as it's being used as a food source for 'flower and seed' mode by that time, acting like a biennial.

[gradus]

What variety of mangetout are you growing? The kinds with the big flat pods(such as Carouby) are easily distinguished from ordinary shelling peas, if you're growing a sugarsnap type that will be more difficult to distinguish, although the fleshiness of the pod can be quite obvious when compared with a shelling pea. Otherwise it'll be a case of trial and error, but shelling peas will generally produce noticeable signs of a full pod of interior seeds whereas the mangetout tend to be a bit backward in showing seed swellings - not surprising really as they've been bred for tender pods rather than seeds.
Not sure about your French garlic query as I don't think I have made any reference to same - but happy to be corrected! However I can volunteer the fact that one clove planted in autumn will produce a single green top part(similar to a leek) beneath which will be a garlic 'bulb'(ie collection of cloves - confusing terminology) at maturity the following year, in the same way that shallots will split from a single set planted to produce a cluster. Garlic cloves in storage that start to sprout can be allowed to continue to do so - either 'dry' or by being potted up - to produce green shoots akin to the top of a spring onion, but tasting of garlic. The clove bit will not by that stage, in my experience at least, develop further( or rather to any useful culinary end, it may survive to produce a skinny attempt at a cluster) as it's being used as a food source for 'flower and seed' mode by that time, acting like a biennial.

Garlic cloves separated from a garlic bulb and planted grow into garlic bulbs and so on. Not aware that French garlic is any different but there are hard and soft neck garlics that grow differently although ultimately producing a garlic bulb. I generally find that I get heavier crops from soft neck but others may have different results.

[doversoul1]

Re: French garlic
My confusion is based on this article, if this is in fact the same as French Garlic

https://www.plated.com/morsel/green-garlic-used/

This shows bunches of green tops rather like spring onions. I assume that each clove produces one stem, and in order to obtain a bunch, you need a bulb, which doesn’t seem to be a terrible economical way of reproduction. Or have I got something wrong somewhere?

As for the peas, I now have so many empty and used seed packages that I cannot decide which I used this spring. I am hoping that they will be more recognisable in a few days’ time. I really must organise things better.

[gradus]

Re: French garlic
My confusion is based on this article, if this is in fact the same as French Garlic

https://www.plated.com/morsel/green-garlic-used/

This shows bunches of green tops rather like spring onions. I assume that each clove produces one stem, and in order to obtain a bunch, you need a bulb, which doesn’t seem to be a terrible economical way of reproduction. Or have I got something wrong somewhere?

As for the peas, I now have so many empty and used seed packages that I cannot decide which I used this spring. I am hoping that they will be more recognisable in a few days’ time. I really must organise things better.

Ah, now I see. The pic shows bunches of young garlic ie cloves that have started to grow but are yet to produce bulbs. Up to now I'd always thought of green garlic as fresh bulbs still with green necks and not having been dried in store but now I know better. I'd have thought that green garlic might be an uneconomic crop for the home gardener given that each 'scallion' represents a whole garlic bulb. Perhaps if one grows loads of garlic but easier ways to get fresh garlic flavour would be to use wild garlic, garlic chives or later in the season the scapes (flower spikes) from hardneck and elephant garlic.