Hi Debs, I’m not an expert but I’ve always found with my strawberries that it is virtually impossible to kill them off. They do die back over winter so I would suggest that you pin down the runners where you want them to grow next year, preferably leave them on the original plant, then next spring when they’re coming back nicely you can cut them from the original plant once little green leaves are appearing.
SS I think it is probably too late now for salad things, unless you have a greenhouse? I find Mr Fothergills is a good site it will tell you what seeds you can buy for the winter, like you say probably cabbages and the like. I order about January time for the current year. Radishes are very easy to grow so I don’t think you would do much harm if you tried some seeds now.
SS it’s not too late for things like lettuce, rocket etc. Mixed salad leaves are nice too, as you can just pick the leaves off as and when you want them. I’m also growing pak choi, which grows quickly and I’ve just planted Florence fennel. You may get pepper plants from a garden centre.
Dawn, I was at Wisley about a month ago, admiring your bonsai!
Debs, I would cut the runners off if this is the first year. They take a lot of energy from the plant, which will mean fewer strawberries. Once the plants get a bit older, you will probably want to keep the runners to replace the old plants.
I picked a huge colander full of salad leaves last night - red curly lettuce, rocket, baby spinach and little gem. I washed and dried it all and there was so much I gave half to the elderly lady next door. I also give her vegetables and rhubarb. I’m going to make a tart with some rhubarb later, yummy with vanilla ice cream for dessert.
Rhubarb is also nice if lightly stewed (without sugar) then added to a strawberry or raspberry jelly. I am finding fruity jellies like this are nice when my appetite isn’t that good with chemo. Anyone got any nice suggestions for things to make with blackcurrants and redcurrants (that doesn’t take too much preparation?)
scottiedog
If you freeze currants then top and tail when frozen its much easier and quicker!Made summer pudding this weekend with mixture of currants,strawberries and raspberries.
Use honey instead of sugar-make baked egg custard with honey or better still junket! Use raw blackcurrants with just a drizzle of honey!
A friend of mine makes fridge redcurrant preserve-will try to get the recipe from her.
Easy alternative to crumble -fruit,water,honey topped with ground almonds cook till friut is done.
Thank god for the garden or I think I would go crazy,I am also a flower arranger(I have had such a lot of support from my flower club)-very theraputic I only hope I am fit enough in October for the Flower Festival I have been ‘volunteered’ for! Car
Hi all! Yes Peacock - we were doing chemo together last year. Seems like an age ago until you start discussing it with someone - then it all seems like yesterday…
Just got back from a week in Lanzarote to find my garden has taken a bit of a battering from rain - eberything tall is laying sideways! The tomatoes also seem to have had a massive growth spurt and haven’t been pinched out, so no trusses yet on the later planted ones, nor the outdoor ones really, but the plants I put in in March are laden.
Had a meal for 4 this week of broad beans, peas, courgette, carrot thinnings and spuds. Very proud! As I said though, I’ve got a lot in but not a lot of each thing - I’ll pick the best things for next year and do more. Will probably have to make another raised bed - can’t do that until I know where the chickens are going though!
I gardened all through my chemo with gloves and long sleeves on. It hadn’t occured to me to not turn the compost etc… so I did… I was fairly infection free throughout despite having TAC - only had a problem once when i picked up a cough and was hospitalised for 6 days!
I never get many currants - but when I do I make a coulis with them - boil with icing sugar and a little water then put trough a dieve. Fab with ice cream!
thanks for strawberry advice!!
looking at all yr posts i wish I had a bigger garden!!
Maybe i shall have to get an allotment!
Keep gardening girls, love debs xxx
Just had to jump in and say that I totally love gardening and it has, without a doubt, helped me through all my treatment (dx May 2007)
I remember sitting in our beautiful summer house (ex display from Dobbies, bargain!!) just before my mastectomy and being at total peace. I felt incredibly lucky to have a garden that I knew would help to heal me.
I too have raised beds but I can’t grow veg to save my life! mind you the top soil that we ordered was total rubbish, just about pure clay so I’ve been improving it steadily but the caterpillars had a field day with my brassicas, the wee monsters.
I think gardening is amazing because it evolves all the time. Every year we say we’ll relax this year and enjoy the garden but every year we seem to have another project! this year it’s taking down a huge conifer and putting in a patio and developing a play area for our daughter. Next year, who knows?
Oh and the best thing we’ve ever bought has to be our greenhouse, what a miracle that is seeing minute seeds growing into fab plants, I still can’t get my head round that! I grew foxgloves this year from seed and I couldn’t believe how small the seeds were, like dust. I ended up with about 170 plants, blimey!
Have to end with one of my most precious memories. My daughter and I grew sunflowers and I remember one beautiful sunny day sitting with her and taking out the seeds from the flowers for next year. I was diagnosed the next year and she was diagnosed with cancer as well 6 months to the day after me (thankfully she is a wee miracle and doing extremely well) Well we sowed those seeds and grew more sunflowers and I remember just being over the moon that they had germinated and in a way it was a symbolic thing as well, you know life goes on and all that. Sorry getting a bit heavy now! but I suppose what I mean is that nature is an incredibly healing thing, the circle of life and all that jazz!
Anyway I hope everyone is Ok and enjoying their little patches of heaven.
What a lovely story, it brought tears to my eyes to read about your daughter and hope she continues to do well. Sunflowers are beautiful, they are grown all over the place here in the SW of France, one year the birds managed to drop a sunflower seed from the bird table, and there we grew a beautiful sunflower, it was taller than my husband - 6 ft - and had a flower the size of a large dinner plate!
I’ve been hearing on the news about your awful weather ladies, we have the opposite here, its so dry. We haven’t had any rain for about 6 weeks, I think the last time it rained it was overnight but with temperatures of 40 deg the following day, the ground soaks it up pretty quick. Our water bill is going to be huge as we’ve had to water our plants and veggies almost every day.
Still picking the cucumbers every day, have found a recipe for cucumber chutney so that is what I plan to make next. The tomatoes have started to turn red and very nice they are too. Still picking the runner beans and curly kale, but the caterpillars have had a field day on the brassicas. I’ve read that paprika is a good deterrent so will try some of that. We have some very large gallia melons, but they’re still very green so I don’t think they are ready for picking just yet, despite the sunshine and warm weather.
I’m starting to think about next year’s allotment now, and wondering how on earth we can get rid of all the horrible rocks and stones we have which don’t do root veg much good. We’ve had some weird shaped carrots thats for sure.
Does anyone know how to cultivate a cutting from a fig tree?
How are you all getting on with your gardens?
Hope the rotten weather doesn’t get you down too much, I think we have it coming next week so I’ll be joining you.
M alottment has certainly helped to keep me sane, well sane-ish. Its somewhere to disappear for a bit of p&q, and I can talk to myself all I want!
The great fruit and veg are just a bonus
Julia
It was the village flower show last weekend and I decided to enter some veg. Potatoes, carrots, beetroot and cherry tomatoes. I got second place for all of them! Consistent, if nothing else.
I read in the paper the other day that sweetcorn loses lots of its vitamins when it’s boiled. They recommended baking it in its husks. I tried that this evening and it was fab Loads of flavour. So the rest of the crop will be baked I think.
Congratulations Salopets for reaching 2nd place, a prize is still a prize, did you get a present for reaching that?
I like the idea of baking the sweetcorn and when mine are finally ready will give them a go - do you wrap them in foil and just pop in the oven for a few minutes?
I’ve made a few jars of cucumber chutney, unusual but tasty, and we’ve had 2 of the melons, huge they were although not very sweet so maybe I picked them too soon.
I’ve just started off another lot of sugar snap peas so hopefully will get some more to put in the freezer. The runner beans seem to be stopping for some reason, not sure why.
Our sweetcorn isn’t quite ready yet, I picked one the other day with about 1/2 covered in corn, the problem with me and my veg is that when I pick them, I eat them raw! Not really the idea is it of trying to get the freezer filled with lots of veg to get us through the winter.
This week I’m going with a friend to pick sloes, to make sloe gin. I’ve lost my recipe so if anyone could remind me I’d appreciate it, otherwise I’ll be looking on the internet.
Since last writing we’ve had one day of rain, so its still very hot and next week is meant to be even hotter. Our water meter bill is going to be very high this year.
New here but just would like to say I agree so much with all of you who find the garden a peaceful and healing place (in the mind at the least!) - I’ve always liked gardening but have really got back to it this year with a new garden to tame and extend. The house is going to pot! But I’m sure I feel so much better when I spend lots of time propping up the tomatoes and eating the veg raw straight off the plants (washed!).
I’m growing a wisteria (from a pot) - will keep you posted I hope.
Next time I see the surgeon I’ll go have a looksee at your bonsai garden at Wisley Dawn. And stock up on cards in the shop. Daren’t go anywhere near the plant sales area tho!!
This year growing potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, aubergine, pepper, squash, loadsa parsley, calabrese, french beans, chard, peas, carrots, beetroot, spinach, cabbage, lettuce, garlic. Am trying a tumeric root which hasn’t shown as many signs of life as the one I didn’t plant!! Am intending to have a go at things like lentils as am always intrigued when I sprout grains, what they’d look like fully grown.
What is anybody planning to plant now, to go through winter?
Congratulations Salopets on your 2nd place - presumably you garden when forced off the ski-slopes by the warm wweather?!
Wow Letty what a lot of veg, I’m very impressed! I’m trying celeriac this year for the first time, does anyone know if I can leave that in over Winter?
Also does anyone have a successful method for dealing with slugs? I’m using slug pellets at the moment but I’m not very comfortable with them really.
I cooked the sweetcorn for about 25 minutes in the oven, peacock. You don’t need foil if you keep the husks on. Cucumber chutney sounds interesting.
I was forced off the ski slopes when I broke my shoulder/tore rotator cuff about 3 years ago. It’s as good as it’s going to be now, so maybe next year… Although I’m going to have to achieve increased energy levels first!
I’m going to have the first of the sprouts later. A bit early, but they’re ready, so they’ve got to be eaten.
Hi all, my allotment became my sanctuary after being diagnosed with recurrence in 2005 (first in 1999). We grow loads of different veg. and we have fruit trees and bushes in our garden. I think it is therapeutic with tasty edible outcome. As for slugs (yuck) we’ve tried a few things but beer traps proved quite successful and caterpillars! they stripped our kale! we’re thinking of trying garlic spray, not sure how to make it up but will ask OH, he read it somewhere. We are thinking of planting onions and cabbage over winter and some spuds which we hope will be ready for Xmas. Oh what a lovely thread, Jan
dear auntie dawn I need a wisteria that flowers as I have one that’s been growing for 15 years and not a single flower on it in all that time, what am I doing wrong? It was grafted and cost a small fortune so I’m most upset.
As for gardening as therapy, the great writer Voltaire wrote Candide and in it someone is seeking purpose in life and as far as I can see from the people he meets along his way, there’s not much to it, someone who keeps going on about everything being for the best in the best possible of worlds ends up with syphilis eating away the end of his nose.
any way the final part of the book involves going to see a very wise man who is pottering away in his garden. He reveals the secret of life - one must tend one’s garden
Mole, a nice quote. I too love wisteria, the smell is so nice and attracts lovely bees and butterflys. We don’t have one yet, but hopefully next year.
The caterpillars have virtually shredded all the cabbage, broccoli and sprouts! I’ve been spraying with a biological spray but it doesn’t seem to have helped. The kale is the only thing they haven’t yet attacked!
I decided to pick some brussel tops and cabbage and get to them before the caterpillars, they were really nice but I’m not sure much more will grow now. I’ve just started off some more caulis, cabbage and sprouts in the hope that it will stay warm enough here to spur them on until the winter. We’ll see.
As for slugs, I’ve heard the beer theory is quite good, but OH is very relucant to waste his beer on slugs, so havent yet tried, I’ve heard that paprika is also good although haven’t tried this either. I tend to stick to slug pellets.
We’ve had some sweetcorn and it was lovely, really sweet and juicy. Have picked some and saved for Christmas too as our son will be with us and I’ve promised him!
Cucumbers still coming strong, as are melons - but runner beans seem to be slowing up a bit.
We had some rain yesterday, but the forecast now is set for good again so will be back to watering.
Saved some seeds from the petunias for next year when dead heading, we need to get some colour in our garden now for next year.
Caterpillars? I picked off hundreds of them last year. This year I constructed a cage around my brassicas, using fine mesh netting and I haven’t had any. I watch the cabbage whites fluttering desperately against the netting and chuckle to myself:) Cruel, I know, but they can lay their eggs on someone else’s plants!
GGrrrr those awful cabbage whites, This year was the first year Ive ever attempted to grow veg, (I posted earlier in the thread for advice) I made up 4 raised beds and filled them with brassicas, carrots and salad.Obviously , as a beginner, I didnt realise that the huge amount of white butterflies around my beds would cause such destruction, I thought they were cute!!!I looked up on the net about the little yellow eggs I found, but by the time I’d tried to get them off, the caterpillars on the other leaves ate them down to the spine, I now darent go near the beds as there are swarms of wasps picking off the caterpillars.I wish I’d known about the nets.
Neverthless I would like to try again,I was thinking of getting a greenhouse, is it possible to grow brassicas in a greenhouse, or do they need to be outdoors?
SS