Garden Society September

Mon 12 Sep 2011, 19:59

I think Mr Don is wrong - generally pruning pushes plants into growing more green growth. It could be a good idea to remove leaves to help the circulation of air and thus cut down the risk of blight on outdoor tomatoes.

You can hang your squash from nets if you want to keep them off wet ground but it's not really necessary.

Mon 12 Sep 2011, 09:27

Re squash - no I didn't. Clearly this is where I've gone wrong - I can barely get into my vegetable patch for the darned thing. As for canes - I wondered whether the fruits would be too heavy to hang in the air?

On a related matter - Monty Don again gave the advice on removing tomato leaves at this time of year to help the fruit ripen. I always thought this was to let the light through even though tomatoes ripen with warmth not light (hence putting them in drawers to ripen) But the blessed Monty said the plants would then put their energy into the fruit not the leaves. But I thought the leaves helped the plants - the photosynthesis helping to feed the plants not consuming energy. Any botanists out there?

Sun 11 Sep 2011, 21:41

Did you stop your squash plant Geoff? like tomatoes, they need side shoots taking out and stopping once a few fruits have formed. I, too trained mine over a wigwam having seen Monty do it and they look good and take less space.

Mon 5 Sep 2011, 07:18

(Non-ASCII characters - probably meant to be UTF-8 dashes or somesuch. I've just had a look and put in a check to convert them to something proper, but in general I'd suggest people type directly into the box rather than copy-and-pasting from Word or similar. Further discussion should go in the admin board to avoid distracting from the garden thread -- Richard)

Mon 5 Sep 2011, 00:33

rain '�" driest Richard what are these'�" I keep seeing in Firefox and Chrome???

Sun 4 Sep 2011, 10:26

Well it's harvest time. And some welcome rain '?" driest period for years and my runner beans are suffering. The squash '?" previously referred to in these postings '?" has gone rampant covering half of the vegetable plot but not many fruit '?" a common problem with butternut squash I believe. But I noticed Monty Don had trained his up a wigwam of stout sticks. Will try that next year.
Don't forget the Garden Society Annual Show on Saturday 10 September. Members already have the details in their schedule but non-members are welcome to exhibit in the morning and/or come along in the afternoon and there will be "mini-schedules" available in the Pharmacy, the Post office, the Corner House and at the Station shortly.