Gardens and gardening 2025

A few recent clips of the allotment xx

All looking healthy and well Eddie, quite a lot of produce growing  

Tvman x

Thanks my friend, a lot of mouths to feed.

You might be wondering where's the onions?, sadly the alium leaf minor moved in 4 years ago, and growing them isn't worth all the effort, how is the lovely lady and of course yourselfyou've both had a good day.

Love Eddie and Evie xx

Hi Eddie, Mrs Tvman is slowly recovering from her fall, just below her knee is the most painful area. She phoned our GP surgery and she was advised to ring a small local hospital to get an x-ray. The hospital in question will see people in their a&e but you need to ring and book an appointment first, which she did and was given a time to attend. So we headed off an hour later and arrived in around 20 minutes, rang the buzzer to get in and an hour later we left, after having had an x-ray and seen a consultant. He was concerned that she may have chipped the top of the fibia but no, just heavy bruising, thankfully. Lots of rest, stay off her feet as much as possible and raise her legs. 

I'm sure you're aware of preventative measures to keep the miner flies at bay but as you say, it's time consuming. Onions, garlic, leeks and shallots are all at risk although do I see a photo of leeks or garlic growing that are subject to attack by the little blighters? Everything looking well in the allotment Eddie. 

Tvman x 

Morning Tvman, love your better safe than sorry philosophy, and getting a Xray done and seeing a Dr to be absolutely sure Mrs T's knee was bruising only, still very sore, but thankfully nothing worse, hey my friend in my nursing/healthcare days we used RICE, rest, ice-packs, compression " light," and elevation.

Aye I tried allsorts to keep the pests off my onions, I'm 100% organic so no chemicals. I'm mostly raised beds, and even, preparing the soil, putting a few inches of old chicken bedding down, setting it alight and then flooding the soil and immediately covering it with 2 layers of weed suppressing, with a enviromesh closh covering it too, and planting when the leaf minor was supposed to be inactive, my yeilds fell every year, so the time, cost, and increasingly the effort, meant it wasn't worth it.

You saw leeks, they have a flat leaf, unlike onions which the leaf minor needs to lay its eggs in, Bs.

love Eddie and family xx 

Hi Eddie, that's good info about RICE, we have flexible, (for want of a better word, things!) that we keep at the bottom of our freezer that can be wrapped around the leg or arm to try to get swelling down but trying to get Mrs Tvman to get off her feet is a different matter. I'm afraid it's so much easier said than done. She gets bored and thinks she should be doing something else which is commendable I suppose. The fall happened at the wrong time as we said we would begin to paint the exterior walls of our bungalow at the beginning of the month of June. Also, the rain has hardly stopped since the beginning of June. There's a lot of preparation to be done on the walls before we can start the painting!

Just a wee thing about the allium leaf miner, according to the RHS website, leeks can also be attacked by the dreaded allium leaf miner. Their website states: "Allium leaf miner can feed on leeks, onion, chives, shallots and garlic. The larvae feed within the leaves, the initial feeding damage can be followed by secondary rots making the crop inedible."

I'm so fortunate to have avoided the wee beastie so far. Although I don't grow the Kelsae onions now, if my giant onions had been attacked when I was winning so many prizes in my competitive days, I would have been devastated. When you have a display of 3 or more giant onions, it's a real stop and look moment when people are filing down the veg aisles. I used to be asked what they taste like and it was so tempting to reply "a banana" but I was too respectful. 

Keep gardening Eddie and I hope you can one day eliminate the attacks of the allium leaf miner. 

Tvman x

A banana 

Hi my friend, remind your lovely lady, rest is an important part of recovery and often the tortoise beats the hare. Also there are a few knee exercises that can be done sitting down or laying in bed.

That's great news leaf minor hasn't reached you, and hopefully never will, I think all the rain you have is a big part of that, as the only organic treatment after the little buggers have taken a hold, is to blast the onions, using the hose with the  rose function to try and get some water into the holes they burrow and drown them.

Hey I grew all my onions from seed, so much more choice, and Kelsae, with Bedfordshire Champion were my favourites, and I also eat the leafs.

love Eddie and family xx 

Sorry your wife hurt herself tvman, do try and talk some sense into her to rest and recover otherwise the whole thing will just take longer. I'm not going to get into technical discussions about insects but your allotments look just fine

Took a few photos of my plot today 

Cucumber plant 

Aubergine plant 

Some sweetcorn for transplanting with others just popping up 

A row of tomatoes in the greenhouse 

Another row of tomatoes in the greenhouse 

A bed of garlic and onions 

A bed of strawberries 

A few mangetout plants 

A few broad bean plants 

A bed of potato plants with some strawberry plants on the right hand side 

Another bed of potatoes 

Some parsnip plants 

That's all for now folks, more to follow another day 

Tvman x