Advice for a hopeless gardener

[jennyjj01]

Jenny; That sounds more like scab than blight. You can just cut it off and eat the rest but it may not be worthwhile for small spuds. It is worst in dry soil or if you have alkaline soil.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/disease/potato-scabs
Watering consistently is always the challenge for container veg. I have just come back from a long weekend to see that all my Trombocino were wilting as the son in charge of watering hadn't noticed they were wilting... I think they have survived but it won't help the crop.

Yes. That looks like it. Here's one of mine.
I still chucked them, and decided not to compost them in case it would taint my composter.
I'm really rather cheesed off at nature for sending me tomato blight* last year and now this infection.

*My tomatoes finally gave a crop. About a dozen nicely formed, disease free fruits. Crimson Crush f1 hybrid, Blight resistant. stupidly expensive.

Scab:

[Frnc]

Investigated one of my spud plant containers. Here's a photograph of the contents. I kid you not:





Literally, not even one tiny flipping spudlet.

[jennyjj01]

Yayyyyy. Jenny The Farmer made some spuds!

I'm chuffed to bits.
It was towards the end of May that I sowed some manky Maris Piper spuds from the bottom of the veg basket. Four went into some new Coir compost and four went into the pre-used compost in a planter. They got just one feed of tomorite, and apart from a bit of water during the hot spell, they were seriously neglected.

The ones in the coir died back first, and in spite of a plateful of spuds, they got slung, because they had scab.
I've just pulled up the ones from the planter. i figured with dead foliage, they were hardly going to prosper.

RESULT: Just over a kilo of baby spuds. Average size just over 3cm diameter. Biggest about 6cm. Just one or two showing some minor scab symptoms.

Now, my questions....
Should I have left them to grow further, in spite of dead foliage? Or were they ready for harvest?

Are they OK to eat, unpeeled? I ask because some spuds can have indigestion causing fusel oil, and maybe Maris Piper are not meant to be eaten young.

I would really balk at the idea of paying garden centre price for seed potatoes, and I'm chuffed to bits that a few manky old spuds seem to have worked well as seeds.

Next time, I'm going to try to grow full sized spuds.

Meanwhile, back at bed 3..... I just harvested another big load of courgettes, fed up of them, so I gave them away. I decided to chop back the huge, overbearing foliage. Underneath them were a few died back pea pods, which I've collected seed peas from. I'm going to sow them in my freed up beds and planters as a compost crop. Does that sound right?

Investigated one of my spud plant containers. Here's a photograph of the contents. I kid you not:
Literally, not even one tiny flipping spudlet.

Frnc, Your photo never made it.

[Frnc]

My 'photo' was of the nonexisant spuds I grew. Or maybe they were invisible. Not even one tiny spud.

[jennyjj01]

My 'photo' was of the nonexisant spuds I grew. Or maybe they were invisible. Not even one tiny spud.

Ah! Got me!


Parsnips:.....

I was told to leave them in peace til October, But with heatwave, neglect and drought, most of the foliage has died.

Do I dig 'em up now? or can they be ok without leaves?

[Frnc]

This is how badly my gardening is going. I planted 5 spiky bushes at the far end where a low wall backs onto a car park. Noticed they were dying after the heat wave and that the tree and ivy is stopping most rain getting to them, so started watering them. Then I discovered a suspicious pile of leaves and fine loose soil. Right in the middle. I don't even have a cat!

[steptoe]

OK.

One of my big weaknesses is gardening. I am hopeless. I can even kill mint.

So suggestions please. Be gentle. How can I educate and improve. I have a typical modern garden ie smallish. Full sun on the back of the house

I have some container grown herbs. Attempts at container based strawberries provided food for birds and slugs only.

So Books? Websites. Advice for the horticulturally challenged please.

Appin

We are all hopeless gardeners to start any help i can pass your welcome to ,if you like herbs and or want to get a head start on growing i use hydroponic gardens you can get some great ones back in the day they were basic thes new ones are so easy , i am growing lots of herbs in them get them nice size then plant in to pots , book wise there are so many but the best book i started with john seymours self sufficentcy was well worth a read , they explain from having 5 acres down to garden size .
If you are stuck please shout i will do my best to help , may be a list of what you would liek to grow , also growing in containers has risks like vine weezil a real pain in the bum , but have you made the beds and if so what did you fill them with i filled all my rasied bed bottom 6 inchs with horse manure then i filled with good grade compost and now any pots from the polytunnel or greenhouse once finished get recycled to the compost bin but i break all the loose off over the raised bed to top them up also try digging in the top 6 inchs chicken pellet , also do you have covers for the beds , the best way to do the covers is plasict pipe the plumbing type the underground pipe make a half hoop over the bed and if the bed is wood like mine just drill holes in the top seat part and slip the pipe in then just throw net over , if you need ideas let me know i can show you photos of what i mean

[jennyjj01]

Well, I'm discovering that I've probably cocked up with the composter.

It's a science that escapes me. I can't even make things rot properly

I think my compost is poorly Or I'm expecting too much.

It's in two 300L plastic rectangular plastic composters that have just about reached full.

Today, I had the bright idea of turning them over and seeing how the end product might be coming along. And I'm disappointed. Composter #1 has been getting fed for almost exactly a year, so I dug down and shovelled it out onto a tarp. But it'd still largely grey.green and clearly made up of lots of grass clippings. It wasn't till I was 8 inches or so from the bottom, that it looked much like brown, rich composty soil.
Over the last 12 months, it's had a mix of grass cuttings, corrugated cardboard bits, shredded paper and autumn leaves from last year, plus some already rotted leaves. There was a brief spell in July, where it got to temperature, but not now, About the only life in there is a few chitted spuds It's been 'watered' pretty much daily. It never did get any horse poop or similar.

Should it really look mostly like grass clippings (like matted hair, not slimey) ? Pretty much all of the leaves and cardboard has totally rotted down. But damn this grass.

Was I silly to try to turn it over today?

How should I give it a boost in the hope of actually using some next year?

Or have I got my time perspectives all wrong.

I'd really love to use some next year.

Meanwhile, over in a corner, I accidentally made what seems like good liquid feed. I'd negligently left an old trug full of mostly grass cuttings catching the rain. But that trug had had a big split fixed with duct tape. it leaked like a sieve. When I picked it up to move it, it absolutely peed out with 'rich black 'juice' It was sat on a big tray which caught about a pint of the juice. I swear I accidentally made my own concentrated liquid fertiliser. I'm going to try doing it again on purpose.

[jansman]

Home brewed compost needs turning regularly. Ideally you need three points. One you fill,when full,turn it into the next,and you can start filling the first again. Then move second to third,etc. It also needs a mix of ingredients. You can’t just make it from grass clippings for instance.

Ours get kitchen waste,garden waste,lots of Bocking 14 Comfrey, straw and rabbit/ hen droppings,and next doors grass too. I don’t have a lawn- it’s a waste of energy to *me*.

[jennyjj01]

Home brewed compost needs turning regularly. Ideally you need three points. One you fill,when full,turn it into the next,and you can start filling the first again. Then move second to third,etc. It also needs a mix of ingredients. You can’t just make it from grass clippings for instance.

Ours get kitchen waste,garden waste,lots of Bocking 14 Comfrey, straw and rabbit/ hen droppings,and next doors grass too. I don’t have a lawn- it’s a waste of energy to *me*.

Thanks Jansman.

Experts recommend that your compost should be turned at least three times a week. However, turning should be limited to once a week as soon as your compost begins to mature.

Beggar that! The form of the bins doesn't make that easy.
But you confirm I was ok to turn it now.

It's probably 5:1:1 grass:browns:other which is a bit too heavy on Grass. One had far more dead leaves go into it and fared better. I'm amazed how the cardboard disintegrated.

So today I emptied one. Turned the other into it, and turned the first lot into the second. Along the way, I layered in a few trugs of dropped leaves. Got a lot more air into it and added some water.

Feel a bit conspicuous harvesting dropped leaves from the street, where we have some big trees. Plus I blag next doors grass clippings when I can. it's treasure. What kinds of fool fill the brown bin?