Six on Saturday – August 25th

I don’t think the weather knows if it’s meant to still be summer, or if it’s autumn – at the moment it’s 14C and raining….
Anyhow, welcome to my Six on Saturday

  1. …. “I won’t bother taking the ball of twine to the allotment, there’s nothing to tie back”…

…next time, I’m going to take the twine with me to tie up that blackberry before I trip over it!

2. The strawberries are approving of the more seasonal weather – even “disaster land” has revived in places! I need to untangle a lot of the runners for Just add Cream and Snow White, and sort out the escapee that seems to have sneaked out through the net…

Top raised bed – newest strawberries and chives
“Disaster Land” which seems to be looking quite healthy in places!
Fancy Strawberries – I need to untangle all those runners…
Strawberry Escapee…

3. We’ve finally had some success with the radishes – admittedly not as many as we should have, given how they’re meant to be “easy to grow”. If only the Florence Fennel would show signs of growth now (that’s meant to be a line next to the radishes)…

Oops – think we should’ve picked the radish on the right a week ago at least!

4. I will admit I’ve been neglecting my flower patch – I sprinkled a few nasturtium seeds earlier in the year and it was watered in the hot weather, but other than that it’s been left to fend for itself. It seems to be doing well though, and the penstemon survived my brutal ‘pruning’ after the snow we had in March!

5. We know there have been badgers spotted in the allotment site for a while, but I’ve always been confused why the badgers didn’t seem interested in the ants (apparently ants are a badger’s favourite food…)…
Well wonder no more, they’ve dug into the ant hills on the allotment path, and stripped it of ants completely!

I’ll be digging some of that soil off and using it elsewhere on the plot – that’s nice and fine, instead of my clay-like soil in other parts of the plot!

6. In my hope to make the raspberries easier to pick, I started thinning some of the plants – they grow semi-wild, so I’ve been letting them grow as they want… only trouble is that doesn’t leave me a path through the middle to pick any!

Raspberry jungle
Raspberry jungle

I’ve got bare soil in places (yay!), but that’s given me an idea for next time I work on the allotment – I’m going to try hoeing the ground under the raspberries to see if I can clear the dead leaves and also loosen the soil that the grubs are in. If the badgers are hungry for ants, they might take a liking to those pesky grubs too!

mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm raspberries (plus a few strawberries still)

Don’t forget to check out the Propagator’s Six on Saturday  and read through the comments section for more blogs to check out!

6 thoughts on “Six on Saturday – August 25th”

    1. It probably sounds daft, but the first year we did nothing to make a path through the berries, and lost quite a lot of fruit that we couldn’t reach! Since then I’ve tried to keep a random pathway through there, but I have to keep up with maintaining it, otherwise the berries grow back!

  1. I’ve only got a tiny garden so only grow some raseberries, strawberries and a blueberry. Those raspberry’s are definitely liking their location, hope you can find a way into pick more. My strawberries are sick as it’s been way too warm in here in Manchester – ~Hope the badgers keep on top of the ant problem too 🙂 love Bec –
    p.s. my six on sat is from the farm, village and Chesterfield as we’re away for the weekend.

    1. Yeah, I think the heat was what killed off a lot of my original strawberry plants. How much attention do blueberries need (I’ve never tried growing them)?

  2. Your strawberry sagas always make me smile. You always pay such good attention to them & your photos today show that’s paid off. When I grow strawberries, I only pay attention to them when there’s fruit. For the rest of the time, it’s like your nasturtiums – do or die on your own. Now my corn patch is another thing altogether. Funny, how we tend to focus on certain plants/crops. I’ve learned an appreciation for strawberries from your enthusiasm. As to the berry situation, I prune the wands that’ve already born fruit to encourage the new growth for next year, because that’s where the fruit grows. Mine were early fruiters, but I think w/the autumn ones, you do it in February w/your other shrubs that bloom in late summer. Certainly makes things more manageable, although whatever lives in berry bushes may disagree w/you.

    1. hehe if only you could see the reality of how little attention those strawberries tend to get! Earlier in the year they got weeded when you couldn’t see the leaves for the weeds.

      *nods* if the fruit grows on the new raspberry stems (so it fruits on this year’s growth) then they’re autumn fruiting ones (at least according to “Raspberry Reg” who gave us most of the info when we started out on the plot – he told us to cut down the stems once they’ve finished fruiting), as summer fruiting raspberries fruit on last year’s growth (like my blackberry does). But just to confuse things, my autumn raspberries tend to produce a little fruit in early August (still in ‘summer raspberry’ territory) before they do the main crop from September!

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