Non alpines: other types of gardening: growing veg.etc for instance

[Brian Ellis]

Lesley you have raised a smile here 

[arillady]

Be extra careful Lesley about planting roses where roses have grown before as the new roses will not like it as far as I know.

[Brian Ellis]

Be extra careful Lesley about planting roses where roses have grown before as the new roses will not like it as far as I know.

You could always try the wine boxes Lesley!

[Lesley Cox]

Have to get through the contents first Brian. Thanks for that note Pat, I have heard that ground has a sort of rose "sickness" after old plants are lifted and that new ones shouldn't be planted in the same place. Does anyone know what causes this problem or in fact what the actual problem is anyway? I don't plan to have many roses among the TBs, ratio of maybe 3 to about 12 or 14 if my measuring on graph paper is more or less accurate.

[Alan_b]

Lesley, you have to let go whoa whoa whoa whoa ...

[fermi de Sousa]

Our winter crop of "Black Kale" has an unusual companion planting - Coriander (Coriandrum sativum) has come up from self-sown seeds from an earlier crop.
Not sure how they'd go together in a stir-fry though!
cheers
fermi

[Roma]

I have one plant of 'Black Kale' planted late summer last year and showing no sign of flowering.  I think it looks like a sculpture.

[Roma]

My beans are doing very well this year (with some rabbit protection).  I grow the runners mainly for the flowers.  Beans are an added bonus. They are not setting very well.  I noticed the keels seemed deformed and found them to be infested with pollen beetles.
Dwarf bean 'Purple Tepee' is setting well so I should have plenty French beans (which I prefer anyway).  The warm weather and rain is certainly suiting them.

[Lesley Cox]

Black kale is a very popular plant at Otago Farmers' Market. A few years ago someone brought some rather tentatively and answered lots of questions about it but now it's the first to sell out among the several vendors who bring it. There's never enough. Try it with the coriander Fermi and report back. Roger is planting some this year.

[robg]

I've only just discovered this thread, and my apologies to all the contributors but I haven't read it all through so my comments on this year's vegetable gardening in this part of Scotland may well have already been made.

After last year's worst summer in the 40 years I've gardened here just west of Edinburgh, this year is just about making up for it.  My wife and I are about to go on strike deep-freezing all the things that have ripened and cropped in large large quantities - we are furiously giving away courgettes, cabbages, beans, lettuces, handfuls of rocket and so on.  Nothing must go to waste !

And my two hives have produced 120lbs of honey.   Woo- ya !

After last summer, plans have been put in place to install a 20' by 12' polytunnel - am I going to need it I ask myself ?

Garden plants have been a bit mixed with a number suffering from the lack of water.  Curiously the sweet peas haven't done particularly well.

Rob

[Chuck]

I also have one Black Kale in the US. It had a big aphid problem in the summer but they are all gone now. Quite a tasty plant

[fermi de Sousa]

Black kale is a very popular plant at Otago Farmers' Market.... Try it with the coriander Fermi and report back.

Hi Lesley,
Will cooked it up with coriander for a chicken stir-fry and it worked quite well.
Years ago (over 40!) my dad was given some Chard from some Dutch friends - it was a bit different to Silverbeet (AKA Swiss Chard) and we always just called it Dutch Chard. A couple of years ago we finally "lost" it as no seedlings came up in our garden or dad's. Last spring we got a couple of tiny seedlings of something called "Perpetual Spinach" and guess what? It was our old friend, Dutch Chard! I won't post a pic of it as the top leaves have been frosted so it looks shocking but hopefully with spring it will recover. With luck we'll be able to keep it going from seed this time.
It's smaller growing than Silverbeet and the stems are green and don't get tough like Silverbeet stems do, so you can use the whole leaf in cooking.
cheers
fermi

[Diane Whitehead]

After about 60 years of growing purple vegetables that turned green when cooked,
I have at last learned the secret to keeping them purple.

A member of a vegetable growers' forum explained that the purple colour is water
soluble.  I should have had an Aha! moment  every time I removed the cooked
green vegetables from the purple cooking water, but I was always too busy getting
everything onto the table to pay attention.

So this summer I have been serving purple beans, purple snap peas, purple cauliflower,
by doing one of two things:  stir fry in oil or microwave the bare vegetables.

Meals are so much more colourful now.

[fermi de Sousa]

That's interesting, Diane!
I'll have to try it when we get around to planting the purple beans this year!
cheers
fermi

[vanozzi]

Planted out all my water chestnuts today.Quite easy using an old bathtub.