What's everyone busy with now?

[Annpan]

We spent the weekend cutting down and burning more overgrown hedges (have spent 3 autumns here doing that now) But we were also able to just trim a hedge that is of the appropriate size and that was a nice feeling too.

Top tips I have worked out....

1. Get your fire started with plenty of dry twigs and leaves, but you can add freshly cut material in reasonable quantities.
2. Use a tarpaulin under the section of hedge you are trimming, all the trimmings fall on it then you just drag it along to the next section and start again. Tarps slide along the ground with ease and twigs don't get caught in them. Then when there is enough clippings, bundle them up and take it away - Minimal raking, minimal mess
3. Burn as you go - I had thought you should always leave prunings to dry before burning but I now disagree. In Scotland we just don't get enough long spells of dry weather to allow prunings to dry outside at this time of year. So I have decided that you absolutely need to burn as you go. Otherwise we end up with mountains of half rotten prunings kicking about for over 2 years.

[Mrs Moustoir]

My OH is digging over the veg patch at the moment (under my supervision ) and we might plant some overwintering broad beans later in the week. Yesterday, we picked the last of the squashes, courgettes and French beans, squished some more
apples for juice and potted up some herbs. We've had a really good year for apples. As we pruned our trees quite severely in winter 2007/8, we had few apples last autumn but this has been a bumper one. Like MMM, we've had some scabby apples - mainly from a golden delicious but most are OK.

I've also been planting up some tubs of mini daffs, tulips and muscari outside the front door. I love to see the spring bulbs poking their heads up during the winter - makes you feel that spring is coming.

[Merry]

I`m hacking down brambles at the mo. Every year I chop the b*ggers down and every year they flex their twigs and say, 'She must lurve us. She`s pruning us again.' I like them in their place and get good fruit from them but they try to colonise the whole allotment.

[Flo]

Being a bit of an older hand with three years and seven months on this allotment, I drew up the plans for rotation of crops mid summer while I could remember what I had planted where. I also now have a fair old idea now of what I like to eat, what the family that helps out likes to eat and what out of that list will grow on the plot that I have. So I bought most of the seeds for next season at knock down prices in sales late on last summer.

Today I've been busy making sure that the compost heaps are well covered for winter so that they go on rotting down ready for next year and planting out garlic. There's been a lot of clearing out of inherited plant pots that I will never use, short lengths of hose pipe, wire for fencing (on a plot with hedges all round? ....), leaky water butts and rotten timber. Rotten timber burns and goes on compost heaps. The plant pots went to the community allotment that sells off plants to raise funds and so requires many plant pots. The rest went to the community tip in the daughter and hubby's car. There's been the destruction of the contraption that was built to store things like plant pots - that was fun with my little Woolworths hammer. The sides are fine but the floor was rotten - even the woodworm had moved out - and the tops had given up as they were unattached and blew round the plot in high winds. So now the sides are marking out the working compost heap which is covered with the black plastic that came free from the son-in-law's magic garage.

There's digging over as the last of the summer crops come out, the harvesting of parsnips in the near future and composting to do when "stuff" turns up. Quiet end of the year for that though. But last Thursday someone turned up with a couple of barrow loads of grass that they had stacked away in a corner and hadn't had time to bring round for the compost heap as well as a nice bearer of cardboard to help the grass along to rot down.

There are tubs to wash out ready for next season. I hope to be able to sweep up a few more leaves before leaf fall ends so that I can stack them in one of the nearly cleared corners under the hedges to rot down for leaf mold. There's weeding to do even at this late date and green netting and canes to check for next season as well as tools to get sharpened (hedging shears mainly).

It's beginning to look like things are taking shape. For the first time in a long time. But who knows what else will turn up over the winter to keep me going.

[penny]

l want to finish off tidying the garden this wk,so very busy every afternoon.repoted yestered my 2 salad herb containers that l keep by back door, with the soil from old growbags that where in the greenhouse.today will cut out the fruited canes from my l blackberry bush that l grow through my rose hedge.lm trying to decied where to plant my dwarf 2 peach and a plum tree that l had in containers but just arnt doing well.making another sq foot raised plot at top garden.ordering for my own grden a redcurrent bush as l made raspberry and redcurrent brandy last year from daughters fruit and it was nector.drying of the white lady runner beans pods to give away.Then nk week will be making chutneys,pickle onions and last of the herbs for salad oils and jellies.

[Annpan]

Clearing out the poly tunnel today, just came in for a cuppa... I still have quite a few healthy looking tomato plants and my aubergine looks like it about to flower....
Next I am making a movable chicken run over 3 of the veg beds that I cleared of peas and lettuce at the weekend.

I guess it is just a good old clear up.

[red]

we've been a bit bad with the veg patches.. and the weeds have moved in. it was just nice to finally have a little time off after a frantic summer, but we shall pay for it.
Still picking sweetcorn and courgettes, still taking caterpillars off the psb ... but have been directing our efforts towards wood cutting.

still time to get back to the veg patches. will take down the last of the bean poles this arvo

[grahamhobbs]

thanks to Oddsox, sowing peas for the polytunnel on the office window sill (don't sow direct because of mice), after work going to grab a cauli. and salad from the lottie. Will be planting garlic, broad beans and winter lettuces this weekend. Perhaps will taste our first celeriac as well, had been waiting for frost (someone said I should) but can't wait any longer. There's some new nettle shoots (where they had been cut down) so will probably go for some celeriac and nettle soup, one of our favorites.
Put all our pumpkins and butternuts in the greenhouse ('till the frosts come) to really ripen, very good crop this year.
Our Calabrese Sakura has been giving a steady flow of shoots since they first headed up in 1st week of July, that's over 3 months. In fact, recent rains have given them a spurt and therefore picked a large load Sunday. Anyone else had good results with other varieties?

[Millymollymandy]

I've run out of space indoors as I've got a fridge full of French beans and sweetcorn and lettuce (big frost forecast for tomorrow night), windowsills full of pumpkins and walnuts drying, dining table covered in runner bean pods drying, plus sweet chestnuts and greenish toms, kitchen table covered in greenish toms and various herb and flower seeds in various bowls....

Got some tree surgeons coming to quote over the next few days for taking down some tall dead (potentially dangerous) alders and going to get a quote on taking down several enormous sycamores to see whether it is worth it pricewise compared to buying in firewood. We can manage to chop down small trees but these are way too big and dangerous for us to tackle, but would keep us warm for several years!

[red]

Got some tree surgeons coming to quote over the next few days for taking down some tall dead (potentially dangerous) alders and going to get a quote on taking down several enormous sycamores to see whether it is worth it pricewise compared to buying in firewood. We can manage to chop down small trees but these are way too big and dangerous for us to tackle, but would keep us warm for several years!

are you like us? do you look at an old/diseased/ ivy clad/ overgrown tree and say 'look at the logs in that!'

[Millymollymandy]

Oh yes! And I don't feel bad chopping down healthy sycamore because we've got loads of them and they grow at a rate of knots! We're semi pollarding the ones in the chicken run and every 2 - 3 years we'll get some good branches off the trees. Funny how some trees grow quickly and others don't seem to grow at all (my young rowan and purple sycamore just sit there and haven't grown an inch in 5 years and they are ones that I want to grow!).

[becks77]

Busy roasting chestnuts and making foraged mushrooms into stroganoff yumm!

[Millymollymandy]

Got some tree surgeons coming to quote over the next few days for taking down some tall dead (potentially dangerous) alders and going to get a quote on taking down several enormous sycamores to see whether it is worth it pricewise compared to buying in firewood. We can manage to chop down small trees but these are way too big and dangerous for us to tackle, but would keep us warm for several years!

God this was really a rather scary coincidence..... OK so guy comes round, looks at the stand of dead alders and says yes they are splitting apart at the roots so need to come down blah blah blah.... that was in the morning, in the afternoon we went to the village to do a few things, come back and.......4 of them have fallen down!!! And most amazingly, in the one and only little passage where they didn't land on either my walnuts, the little road to two houses, neighbour's barn roof or his sheep! One was a tall one which hit my fence on the other side of the orchard but it was so rotten it broke itself up into nice metre long lengths and didn't do more than bend the sheep wire fence.

So I guess that has saved us a bit of money! Just hope to god the other 5 don't fall because they are all leaning in the wrong direction i.e. towards the above mentioned things. Eeks.

Other good thing is he said it will be cheaper for us if they leave the wood on site and chop it into lengths (not split though) than having to take it away and dispose of it. We like that!

And even better, stump grinders have finally made it to France (they didn't exist 8 years ago and nobody had ever heard of them).

[Odsox]

I'm busy rebuilding my greenhouse.
I built it in a hurry 14 years ago from 2nd rate timber that I bought at an auction, never got round to painting it properly, no wood preservative, so unsurprisingly it rotted a bit over the years.
I dismantled it earlier in the year, got nearly all the glass out intact, with the intention of slowly rebuilding it over the long dry summer ... hah !!
At last this month has cooperated and I am well on the way to getting at least some of it in place and hopefully getting it completed by early spring.
All the timbers have been (or will be) given two coats of preservative, a coat of primer then undercoat and finally two coats of gloss, with the intention that this time it will outlast me.

It's also a big experiment as I am going to convert the front two thirds to hydroponics, with three 18 foot long troughs that will work on the ebb & flood system.
Exciting stuff.

[Green Aura]

I'm just going out to clear some of the polytunnel and stick some spuds in - might not be ready for christmas though

Might also have a go at peas - the trouble up here is the lack of light, but it's worth a try.