Gardening

Without knowing the scale of it we are guessing, but if you can hire a guy with a mini digger he could probably make short work of shifting the material then spreading it back out once the sheet is laid.

Earlier this year i used some ā€˜Landtex Landscape Fabric’ which is fairly strong but permeable. Used here for plum slate, very easy DIY job, the 10cm deep weigh of slate holds it down well. This sheeting can be used for all kinds of top covers.

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Is that a second log shed?

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no it’s the one an only :wood:

The plan is to also replace the old concrete path with pavings… eventually.
The plum slate in front of the shed is the lowest point in my garden (which is situated on a hill) so it will serve as a soak away at times of prolonged rain fall.

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It looks different to older pictures somehow - maybe the angle. Is there still a kitty corner?

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The open side of the shed faces the south, and that bit of blue carpet you see on the pallet is Edda’s sun lounger.

Plus sheltered inside she has a fully airtecĀ® insulated penthouse suite-box with four poster bed, drinks cabinet, television, and scratching post :black_cat:

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Indeed, scale. We are talking about 80m2 of ground that has a mixture of large rocks and gravel impacted about a foot deep. I certainly would not be able to do it in a day, Maybe a strip at a time.

@Debs That’s a very tidy job. I’m sure sifting the existing gravel for debris wasn’t much fun. That’s also a nice square strip to work on. When I did the rockery yesterday I was dealing with an irregular triangle patch that had several drain risers coming out and a tree with supports shafts in a tripod, So I had to make do with lots of intersecting overlapping patches of mulch sheet and even with the mulch sheers sold with it, to say it resisted being cut was an understatement.

Everything hurts today. :joy:

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Well, the blight has arrived, just when we’re due a few sunny days :worried:

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That look fabulous, Debs. I wish I had that good stock.

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Tomatoes slow to ripen this year and still many left on the plants. Going to be a lot of wastage.

As tomatoes ripen they start by changing from pale green to a darker green.
From the time they have changed to the darker shade of green they can be harvested and will ripen indoors if kept somewhere warm. A ripe banana in the vicinity will help to ripen them as they produce ethylene which speeds-up the ripening process.
Those that are still pale green will not ripen, but you can use them for chutney.

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[quote="Brown_Owl, post:2933, topic:8373, full:trueā€]
Tomatoes slow to ripen this year and still many left on the plants. Going to be a lot of wastage.
[/quote]

The cherry varieties have been excellent apart from one I put in a basket a bit too late but is still reasonably healthy.

The normal tomatoes seemed to be doing well until mid August then a couple of weeks of rain, little sun, and more torrential rain caused so many to develop loads of minute cracks or split. I moved a load of pots under a large garden parasol to keep the rain off but the damage was done.

The blight has taken hold in the recent cold and every 12-24 hours I’m finding another plant with new black sections on stems. :worried:

As late blight is systemic I suspect most of the unripe fruit I’ve harvested in the last day or so will succumb no matter how good they look after picking.

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The most important species on the planet, on my sunflower.

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I’ve been ripening indoors for weeks and it’s worked pretty well.

The shame is the largest tomatoes were just starting to ripen, but we had torrential rain which overwatered them resulting in many hairline cracks so even if they ripen they don’t look that appealing.

The blight has arrive in the past couple of days and I’ve never figured out the best way to ripen ones which superficially look ok as most will just get affected as I assume the fungus has already reached the fruit in sufficient quantity to destroy it once picked. Is it best to cut a healthy looking though potentially infected truss off or remove individual tomatoes, or remove a truss then remove individual tomatoes? If separating into individual tomatoes should we remove or leave the stalk on? Again, I’m not sure it really matters as the damage has probably been done by the time leaf stalks or main stems show focal dark patches.

Perhaps I’d have more success with a soufflĆ©!

The fruits from blighted plants are generally OK.
Just looking at them will show if they’re OK.
Any fruits that look OK on a blighted truss will be OK.

That’s the method I use. I even cut out bits that are damaged and use the rest.
All the OK fruits from blighted plants I use for cooking.
I wouldn’t eat them raw.

That’s not generally been my experience in recent years but maybe I’ve waited too long to pick them - rarely got blight when we originally moved here but always hits in Autumn now, but normally later on.

I can harvest a truss and they look fine but as they progress and ripen they start to get the wrinkly discoloured appearance to the skin, even if the stalks which dry out look ok.

I’ve always assumed that by the time you see the fungus on a main stem or leaf stem the fungus has travelled to the fruit with no way to tell by the naked eye.

I’m really talking about fruit which have only started to ripen not ripe tomatoes.

I usually put fruits to ripen in different rooms/areas separating them into ones I think will be ok and those I’m more suspicious will have been affected.

I may have misread - so you don’t try and ripen them further just use for cooking/chutney etc staight away before allowing any latent infection to show itself?

I don’t make chutney.
Any that are obviously blighted I throw away.
If others look OK and are ripe, I’ll freeze them for cooking in the future.

If there are trusses on healthy plants that are worth keeping and they have started to ripen (i.e. they’re no longer pale green) then I’ll cut the entire truss and leave somewhere warm to ripen.
They’re not as good as those ripened on the plant, but they’re OK for cooking.

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Today I’ve binned quite a few of my cherry tomatoes as they are green and will not ripen in the green house. I seem to have had thousands of small, poorly formed but few decent cherry tomatoes.
Not been a good years for tomatoes compared to recent times. Seem to be at least two weeks behind last year.
The grow bags didn’t appear to hold water to the same degree as past years. Might be me but water seemed to go straight through them which might explain the undersized tomatoes.
I might mix my own compost next year.
The large ā€œBig Daddyā€ tomatoes outside look to be finally ripening thanks to autumn sunshine.

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The compost we buy is pretty poor, garden centres lobbied government to allow them to continue using peat. Even using more feed growbags seemed inadequate……we bought a couple of Lidl vegetable troughs. More soil etc, well worth the money imo……but plenty of feed and water.

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I don’t usually enjoy watch gardening programs, but I enjoyed this one.

50 Minute documentary follows the master gardeners chasing perfection at the Adachi Museum of Art and the Katsura Imperial Villa.

Warning.
No celebrity or fair weather gardeners featured. Just grumpy over worked hardcore gardeners. :grinning: