@Wozza … is it time to prune my plums now the fruit is done? i seem to remember you mentioned this is the time to do it, last year.
My Victoria plums here in N Brittany are still about two weeks off beinf ripe.
In our last house we did that. Ended up with all trees infected, so in hindsight I should have got rid of the first tree infected straight away.
Should be fine. General rule of thumb with plums, prune from the beginning of Summer till the middle of August.
Silver leaf fungal spores are more prolific in Autumn & Winter.
See above for how I grow them, lots of feeding and water needed for them and deep easy growing soil, probably because of the type of soil we have, I haven’t had as much success growing them in the ground.
@toryroo
Have you planted your garlic 
I planted mine this morning and onion sets too.
If not you still have plenty of time. Don’t forget the bigger the clove the bigger the bulbs.
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Thanks so much for thinking of me 
I need the prods! I bought 5kg from a local producer and he said to plant between 20 October and end November so sounds right as I think I’m further south than you.
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Wow 5kg is a lot of garlic to plant out.
I plant 2 varieties, pink and violet. I plant 60-70 cloves, so harvest enough for at least a garlic bulb a week for a year. I select the biggest cloves from the bulbs and eat the smaller ones.
Out of curiosity I’ve weighed what I have left from the 1kg I bought and have +/- 500grs left. The remaining bulbs I give to my neighbour to plant in her garden.
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This is how I prepared the garlic and onion bed this year…
Following on from beans. I applied compost and horse manure and watered / drenched. The weekend before planting I forked the soil (that part of the garden the soil pans and gets hard) and watered for two reasons 1 to have pliable soil (it’s been very dry here) and 2 to rejuvenate the mico organizams.
Planted in lines 4-5’´ between cloves and lines 1´ appart.
Do the same for onion and shallot sets but cover them with fleece when freezing cold.
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it is for eating too, local producer, no chemicals 5kg for €15, can’t go wrong! Need to find some recipes to use it up and will probably food process and freeze loads as well. Actually I still have probably 1 kg left of my own garlic too!
Will probably plant similar amounts to you. My big issue is lack of compost and poo!!! Thet might have to put up with organic pellets for now, soil’s pretty good where they are going. Do you straw mulch over winter?
We’ve been enjoying our green figs they are incredibly sweet and delicious. We’ve had about 20 figs from a tree planted last year so we’d like to plant another but not sure whether to get another common green fig tree or some other variety. Is there any significant difference in the taste or size of the crop?
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5kg for 15€ is a very good price here it’s more like 12€ a kg.
I don’t straw or cover the garlic over Winter, I do put fleece over the onion sets mainly to help protect from the wind / chill factor.
Don’t have compost with a garden the size you have, what do you do with the grass cuttings, the fallen leaves old flowers veg peelings, weeds cardboard coffee grounds tea leaves etc.
Let us know how you get on with the garlic, if planted in the next week or two you should start seeing the first leaves around Christmas.
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I’m a bit new to veg etc growing, but I’ve got the planters made (at the moment my garden isn’t suitable for in ground planting) and soil/compost stuff to go in them. I bought some garlic and onions yesterday, but wondering what depth of soil is needed for these. My planters are 40+ cm deep but I can make another one (20 cm deep) if that depth isn’t needed (and save a lot of soil).
You only need 8-12 inches of soil ideally for them.
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40cm is plenty deep enough as Griffin wrote.
I plant garlic about 1 and a half times the height of the clove in rows 4-5’’ apart the rows a foot apart.
Onions the same spacing if you want smallish ones, if you want large ones space 6-8’’ and the rows 18’'. Onions like to see the gardener when he/she walks through the garden gate, so the tops just sticking out of the ground when watered in. Check on your onions daily until the roots have developed as birds like to pull them up.
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This works better if you whiz 'em with a small amount of oil (vegetable, not engine 
) , freeze them in ice cube trays, wrap them individually in film and freeze them in a bag. I do the same with ginger. It’s great for making curries as you just take a cube of each and add them in.
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Two or three months ago we started popping a clove of garlic into every mole hole that appeared and covered the hole. Since then no more mole holes and lots of bunches of garlic coming up. Probably just a coincidence about the moles disappearing. Anyway we would like to have a proper bed of garlic which we’ve never grown before. Two questions. Is it a good area to separate and plant the cloves individually or should we plant the whole garlic? Secondly if we don’t harvest the garlic next year will the garlic just spread successfully.?
The cloves are planted individually about 2-3cm deep, 15cm apart, 30-40cm between rows. Preferably in light, fluffy, well-drained soil. It works well planting them in autumn here in the SW. If you don’t harvest them then yes, they’ll re-grow, but they won’t produce decent heads because of overcrowding.
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Thanks for that information. We don’t have any light fluffy soil after all that rain but no heavy clay so we should be okay. So we will need to replant every year. I understand that you should harvest when the leaves start to go yellow.
We had sun today for the first time in weeks so we weeded the ex potato patch (which now has about 10 good looking potato plants!) and planted 80 garlics! Also found a big butternut hiding in the grass, sadly 2 small splits, I’m guessing from all the rain.
A few questions:
The butternut will be OK to eat just not store I presume?
I need to pull all the tomatoes up. They were looking a bit bedraggled with some leaf curl all year, never worked out the cause. Can I compost them? Ditto zuchinnis, they had some powdery mildew at the end.
The potato plants, can I leave them in for now,? If yes when should I harvest?
I planted red onions and shallots last minute in the spring and didn’t water enough in the dry March ended up with quite a few that never grew. I kept them and most are still firm / good condition. Can I plant them now or waste of time?
@Wozza to answer your question from ages ago about shouldn’t we be able to make enough compost. I think so but I’m rubbish at it! I forget to turn / water ect so get very little! I’m currently trying the ‘henposting’ system but again been a bit slack over the summer at repiling everything. It went from rock hard to now being a sodden mess. Next dry day I’m going to see what I can dig out!
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Butternut will be fine, but won’t last long if split.
If compost heap gets hot enough should be fine, but otherwise ditch the bedraggled stiff,
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