Weeding – Top Hoeing!

Weeding is a pain of any gardener but a necessity. Allowing weeds to grow in your garden or plots only reduces the nutrients that you wish to go into your plants. Although there has been a recent ‘save the weeds’ talk going on recently and we do seem to have a new found love for stinging nettle soup and shots – have any of you ever tried it? – Fully recommend as its stronger than wheatgrass!

For persistent little weeds, patience is key to beat them. You will never truly be able to 100% stop weeds in an area as there are so many external sources, which weeds arrive – wind, birds, mammals are the most common.

Disturbing or turning soil exposes dormant weed seeds in the soil and causes blooms of weeks in freshly dug areas. To combat these, simple keep digging over the area or use weed suppressant matting for a number of weeks after preparing a new bed.


As I mentioned in an earlier post, a good way to kill these weeds is to quickly pull out / top any and leave them on the soil. After turning a new area, I will hoe the area every week to knock any weed sprouting up over. These will rot down and just add the nutrients they have used back into the soil, weakening established sub-soil roots until they eventually die.


You just have to keep doing this, try to keep on top of the weeds so that none have the chance to go to seed. If they do, instead of cut and drop, remove as much as possible and submerge the cuttings in water – do not shake it around too much when removing as you will spray seed everywhere. After a few weeks in a bucket, use the liquid as a feed for your plants…unless hot composting, do not add weeds with seeds to your compost piles – unless you want more weeds, of course!

____________________________________________________________________

DOANG

Mystery seeds

We have some seeds that we found and have NO idea what on Earth they could be…

Anyone have any idea?

The mystery seeds!

Growing Okra

‘Slimy’, ‘bitter’, ‘absolutely gross’.

Okra is a vegetable that has mixed reviews from people – a bit like Marmite- you either love it or hate it!

In our case at home- we all absolutely love this vegetable. From young children, our grandmother made okra irresistible and this year we thought we would give this a grow.

It’s the first year we have ever grown Okra and we are now on week 9 and are pretty happy with how they are starting to come along.

From reviews online and reading RHS (https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/grow-your-own/vegetables/okra) around 4/5 plants should be sufficient for a family – I think we have grown around 30 plants – mainly because we were unsure if they would even grow in the U.K.!

To our pleasant surprise, they have grown wonderfully inside our conservatory but we have transplanted some in the garden and at the allotment and we have had a much slower growth along with loosing a few fellows along the way.

The seedlings at around week 3/4 – all kept inside!

Very early on – as soon as we had seedlings, I found that we had some unusual transparent tiny eggs – thousands of them! No idea what they are but every time you touch the underside of the leaves you get a very strange ‘jelly ball’ experience…we are thinking it could be ant eggs as apparently they are big fans of Okra plants but who knows! Crossing our fingers and hoping they don’t annihilate the okra once it gets bigger!

So far, they’ve been a simple grow- quick to sprout and turn into strong little seedlings. We are planning to keep a few in pots and then we have transplanted the rest in two separate areas – one in the garden and one at the allotment.

We will keep this post updated with how we get on but as it stands we are on approximate week 9 (25th May 2020) – the plants that have been kept inside in pots are doing the best and have started to get their first little flowers!

First little okra flower buds have appeared!

D.O.A.N.G