Please add any offers you see, with Codes and Expiry dates as a lot of offers are short-term ones like Bank Holidays. Always useful if you want something heavy like onions or spuds or just one packet of seeds.

Mr Fothergill . Free P&P on online orders until midnight, Monday 31st August. Code F21EAUG
DT Brown      Free P&P on online orders until midnight, Monday 31st August. Code D21ESAVE

This is the first year growing this and it has quickly gone to the top of the To Grow list!
       
It is a big beef type with almost no pips and hardly any core, just firm, dense flesh - perfect sliced with some garlic, basil, oil & seasoning. The flavour is sweetish but with a good amount of tartness to make it savoury enough. I've only picked four so far so it hasn't been cooked, and to be honest is unlikely to be. It has a pretty pink blush and has not suffered from blight in quite the same way as the black krim, marmande & pineapple, but it has been very slow into production. But then almost all of my plants (this one included) were almost levelled by blight back in June so it is amazing to have fruit at all.

Ok so we are planning on updating the downstairs bathroom and we got into a heated debate earlier. Over the last few years we’ve seen a rise in Popularity of the shower toilet. The all in one Toilet bidet combo that cleans and dries without the need for paper or human intervention.

The rest of the household are appalled at the thought but, I remember their infancy back around the turn of the century and they are super cool these days. Controllable via an app or remote, automatic lid lifting as you near, integrated night lights, capable of sensing individuals for stored water temperature and cleaning patterns!, forced air at the rim to seal in odours, heated seats, and air drying that reduces in temperature the drier you get. They are the rolls Royce of toilets but,  missus keeled over when I said they were about £4K.

Its World Dog Day - so let's celebrate by finding out what sort of Dog you are. 

If it helps, I'm a Cross breed. 

https://www.bbcearth.com/blog?article=qu...og-are-you

Hello Folks

Was channel hopping last night and came across this show, up to series 3 now so I'm going to go back and start from the beginning.

Just wondered if anyone else had seen it as I really enjoyed it?

Also couldn't believe that lady had churned out 9 kids!!

I've been having a look on line for onion sets as the nearest Garden Centre  is miles away and it wouldn't be cost effective to purchase them that way.

As I like to grow quite a few over winter,  1lb (500g) of Senshyu and 1 lb (500g) of reds seemed an appropriate amount.

I have ordered these:-

https://www.onbuy.com/gb/1kg-mixed-autum...~p8115050/

and just wondered whether anyone had dealings with Onbuy as the the free delivery made this sound like a really good deal?

GardenOrganic have a series of weekly Blogs that I've just found. https://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/blogs
I especially liked Frugal gardening.
Worth a look, especially on a wet, windy day like today.

Another pretty pest - Geranium Bronze Butterfly/Brun des Pélargoniums! 

This beauty is a South African native and a pest of pelargoniums - the female lays her eggs in the flower buds and the caterpillars eat them, so although the plant is fine we don't get any flowers. No red gernaium flowers in France? c'est une catastrophe !

I'm overwintering and taking cuttings of my own plants rather than buying in any more to try and limit the population.

          

I found this interesting article about their arrival and likely survival in the UK HERE but I thnk we are proabably stuck with them down here.

Garden & Gossip Question Time - very loosely based on GQT

You, the "listeners" are invited to submit your gardening questions to the Panel (all of us) who will share their knowledge and experience and strange sense of humour in their answers. 
The listener will be asked to decide which answer was the most helpful.

Please submit your questions , with photos if helpful, below and the "Panel" will be pleased to help.
Thank you
G&G QTx

I've been having a nosey through some of the garden/allotment images and wondered when you were planning your spaces what was the driving factor when determining your size of beds. There's a huge mix, some with smaller beds and some with massive beds, some raised some just edged, some more free-flowing. 

I remember when I had my allotment, my paths were quite narrow only about 500mm wide, too narrow for a wheelbarrow for example. I had 12 beds, in the cross of St George, with a couple of extra vertical dissections on all 4 white corner squares, the red cross was paths. My beds were long about 14 metres in length and about 1.5 metres wide too wide to reach the centre when casting seeds, for example, so I had to trample the beds, and too long when I needed to fetch water. My plot was bordered by raised planters in an L section which were 500mm high, I did this to minimise weeding the path edges, but it also only gave me three access points as one end of the cross was against a fence. It was like being trapped in a maze!!.

I think I was influenced by my father a bit too much to be honest when I was setting it up as he thought raised beds were a bad idea he preferred open ground to turn over but, as I was set on beds as I wanted to break it down into manageable sections that I could recover bit by bit, he did, however, influence them being very long.

I always thought I didn't have enough pathways but, over the 300sqm plot I had 25.8% given up to paths, which really shocked me when I just worked it out, 1/4 of my growing space grew nothing but weeds. No wonder I seemed to spend some much time trying to tend the edges.

So what were your planning thoughts, and if you worked it out how much of your space is actually growing area? Do your best not to guess try and work it out, it's honestly really quite scary.