Selfsufficientish.com

Our broad beans are over now Flo, but we have carrots coming out of our ears, well maybe not literally. Trying 2 new varieties of carrot this year and they are both good enough to grow again next year. Tomatoes are a bit of a disaster, all got blight due to 2 months of damp humid days. Other than th...

Has anybody noticed a lack of butterflies this year? I know I shouldn't celebrate the fact but there have been no Cabbage White or Tortoiseshell butterflies down here this year. How do I know? Because my Brussels sprout plants are now about 3 feet tall and have no caterpillars whatsoever. Other year...

Just got back from my FIRST outing since March 16th.
Nothing exciting, just a 6 monthly doctors appointment for fasting blood samples, but not only outside the gate but all the 10 miles to town and back.
I think I need to lie down now.

Sounds a bit like a Medlar, although it's been many, many years since I saw one. They used to grow wild in hedges where I grew up in Kent.
Never tried the fruit but they were very pretty in bloom.

Those are probably nuts that have been shed by the tree for various reasons, i.e. not edible. I'm pretty sure that walnuts are ready in September, not July. When they fall off the tree then, the green husks are split or totally fallen off. The ones for pickling are picked about now and the whole nut...

Not really seed but still relevant. I trimmed my shallots this morning after languishing on a rack in the greenhouse for a couple of weeks to ripen. They are amazing and cheap vegetables. I have been saving this variety (Longor) for at least 10 years. I planted 15 late last autumn and today I trimme...

Hi there WGA, welcome back, nice to see you again.

No.
But a good plan is to move their run to different places over your garden so they naturally fertilise the soil for you.
Especially good to let them run over your vegetable garden in winter to remove pests and manure the soil equally all over in one go.

I have Monbretia in two corners of my garden. Neither do they seem to take over You're lucky Ina. Here they spread very easily by the top corm breaking off in the wind and immediately taking root, or by the millions of seeds that they produce. It will certainly thrive anywhere with a mild moist cli...

Sorry, I have no idea.
It's a weed here and not many people try to find treatments for weed diseases.
It also affects bracken and probably spreads from one to the other.

Yes I agree with Weedo, it's Monbretia. I'ts rampant here in West Cork filling roadside ditches and anywhere else it can get a foothold. It does look attractive though both in flower and when the fresh leaves emerge in early spring, although not so much in late summer and autumn as it suffers badly ...

Just got around to looking up pineapple growing, an apparently they take 6 months from flowering to ripening.
So ready sometime in October.

Well worth growing for a quick crop

Saved seed onions.jpg Spot the difference :lol: Also rather maddening. I tried the white onion the other day, mainly because it had a flower stem that I hadn't noticed before, and needed to use it before the stem hardened. Well ... it is one of the non-tear ones, as in no problems slicing it, and i...

I have just discovered a disadvantage of saving seed. I harvested my onions yesterday and realised that I have 2 distinctly different varieties, the golden brown skinned of the original and about 20% white skinned ones. Apart from the outer skin colour they are still identical, but one flower that I...

For some unfathomable reason our shopping bill has gone way down. Since we self isolated on the 16th of March, our granddaughter has done our shopping and (of course) just bought the stuff on the list. But our weekly bill has at least halved, but we are still eating and drinking exactly the same as ...