LOOK AROUND

[rosebud]

Look around your allotment/garden.
What are you most proud of at this moment.
Be it vegtables OR flowers let us hear it,we all have something we would like to tell everyone about.  How well we have done or how big things have grown /something we haved saved from disaster.

[rosebud]

[Mrs Ava]

My sweetcorns.  I have never successfully grown corn on the cobs, but after everyones great advice on here, I not only have corns standing as tall as me now, but each one has at least 3 cobs on and they are looking amazing!

[Jesse]

I'm proud of my whole garden this year. It's amazing how a little effort can pay off with so much reward. I guess the plant I'm most proud of is the hydrangea that I grew from a cutting a few years ago. I took some prunings and, not being able to throw anything away without seeing if it will grow first, I stuck a piece into a pot of compost. This year for the first time the hydrangea is looking lovely and shrubby with lots of growth and full of gorgeous big flowers, so many that even after cutting some for the house it is still a blaze of colour. Oh and also the foxgloves, never been able to grow them but this year they are sprouting up all over the place (must be the weather), next year I hope to have a blaze of colourful foxgloves.

[ina]

My melons! Counted eight this morning (three big whoppers) on four plants in a poly tunnel. Never grew them before and just hope they will get ripe and are good to eat.

Actually the tomatoes are looking darn good too, there's a glut coming.

[Ozzy aka Pothead]

I love it I do... last year was the Cornflowers as well as broad beans and runners too, spuds are well tasty.. done a comparison with supermarket.... no contest... carrots delish... courgettes... out of this world... Marrows rock big time... but the this year its the lillies that have done me in, they are so beautiful.. as are my other plants but for ages I was wondering what they would look like... I avoided looking them up as I wanted to see them thru the eyes of a child,,, and they are fabbo... like a firework display they is.. they are reddy purple pinkish,, and loads of em,, they came as a free gift from T & M with me strawbs... which are comically called Maxim???????? anyways hats of to the lillies... and tomatoes in buckets cus they like it better... summer hasnt even arrived yet so i reckon we can grow well into October/Nov... sittingin the garden at dusk is beautiful.. this morning there was lovely mist/haze/fog.. was nice...

Oz

:-*

[Tenuse]

My peppers, I never thought they would be so easy to grow (despite a few problems getting fruit to set)! I have eaten one green and there is one full grown one which has just turned yellow, with at least 8 more definite and plenty more possible peppers to come!

Ten x

[CotswoldLass]

Right now......the new lawn areas grown from seed. One in the orchard, one a whole side of an island bed. Both areas used to be complete weed infested heaps! Very rewarding.

Toms on the way, latest row of peas looking good, various othere, but the grass just sets it all off! Love CLx

[Iain D]

Tricky one cos like Jesseveve, I'm really pleased with the whole garden this year but I was really proud of my potted potato success, really tasty and more to follow. I'm also happy that this year I can sit in my sitting room and look out on flowers (fennel, sweet peas, species dahlias, cosmos and cerinthe) instead of next doors' fence! Then there's the scent that knocks me out on a still evening (we do get them occassionally even here on the coast) from buddleia, regale lilies, petunias and nicotianas. Finally, I'm pleased that the bees are happy and buzzing madly in the cerinthe, stachys, borage and hyssop - I make a mental note to plant more bee friendly things next year.  I could go on but I'd better not!

Cheers, Iain

[Doris_Pinks]

For me it is my squash romping upwards! I love to grow them, and enjoy them in to the depths of winter. Have grown loads of different varies this year, and am amazed always at the speed they grow  :o, they are the first things I check when I visit the plot!

[tim]

Just to be different - I'm not counting my chickens till we've seen the total results of our efforts. = Tim

[Wicker]

My carrots - every carrot-fly free one of them and the corns (just hope they fulfil their promise!)  Actually it's been a pretty good year so far for the veggies and fruit but I do love my flowers and this year new to me are the delphiniums, wallflower and especially the hollyhocks which are hugh stately and gorgeous colours.  My all time fav of course are the sweet peas which are having an excellent year.

[Plocket]

Well I have tried to grow lettuces for the first time this year (I'm not a veg grower) - in a pot, and they are fantastic. Perpetual ones that you pick leaves off and they carry on. We have a tiny apple tree that we got earlier in the year, and it has three scrumptious looking apples ripening at this very moment. Our vine looks stunning and has a lot of fruit on it, but we grow it for looks rather than produce! I got rather keen on clematis a couple of years ago when given an "orange peel". I now have 9 different ones (no mean feat in my tiny garden!) and although the newest is constantly being attacked by slugs and snails I am always delighted by the different varieties. I guess I will stop here. Don't want to bore you all!

[Garden Manager]

Hard to pick one particular thing. All sdoing very well at the moment,it ALL makes me proud!

Perhaps its the bush tomatoes, grown for the first time in one of the veg beds and doing brilliantly after a shaky start (planted out a bit too early and struggled to get going at first). Or maybe its the lovely big (an delicious) cabbages. Or maybe the intercropping of the runner beans with lettuce.  Like i said its hard to choose!

[Moggle]

My toms, after months and months, they are finally ripening - and boy do they taste good. Loads and loads of em to come  :)

[Garden Manager]

Oh yes them too. Took ages to start ripening. But WELL worth the wait! Mmmm!  ;D

[ina]

Iain D said: "Then there's the scent that knocks me out on a still evening (we do get them occassionally even here on the coast) from buddleia, regale lilies, petunias and nicotianas."

You are talking scent in the evening? You haven't experienced scent untill you have smelled the mirabilis in the evening and early morning. You are the perfect candidate for a nice bunch of mirabilis plants.

[Toots]

The wild flowers,birds and wildlife that was not here before. ;D

[Sarah V Bertram]

sugar snap peas, six feet tall, and Tumberler toms on patio, nearly ripe but prolific - never grown Tumbler before. Yum yum can't wait.

[Val]

 :DAfter last year when everything was burnt to a crisp....although its heading that way again...it all looks good, but I'm mostly pleased with the lillies I planted in the border under the front room windows. The perfume wafts through the house, even up the stairs, its heady and heavenly. It faces west so with the evening sun on them they seem to release their scent just when we want them to.

[Spurdie]

Hi all,
I think this year has been filled with more perfume. The arch is smothered in pale pink roses with a lovely scent (can't tell you its name as it was grown from a wedding buttonhole flower). The rosa mundis are gorgeous just now and the sweet peas are finally beginning to flower. The clematis montana has gotten fed up with covering the second arch and taken off across the top of the himalayan honeysuckles. My lovage has grown to gigantic proportions this year (10 ft) - must be due to the wet year. Will save the seed for chutney.  :)