I ventured over the allotments today and sat and watched a pair of great tits measuring one of my three nest boxes, must have flown in and out a dozen times, no nest building materials being carried yet.

Last year I had two occupied by great tits and the other by a pair of blue tits.  I love watching them.

48 red roses for the 48 years we spent together.       Took them to her grave and spent some time with Helen. 

Strange how certain things affect you more than others. When we were courting she sent me a Valentines card with a little poem, summat about kisses and making  a miss a misses?. I took that as a hint and proposed to her! 

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I have no greenhouse experience, but am aware that some tomato varieties will be much happier/more likely to ripen in a greenhouse than outside. I have ended up with seeds from more than 20 varieties of tomato (mostly sent by you guys!) There's no way that I can grow them all this year, but I'd like to give quite a few a go so need to start planning now.

To help me, I wonder if anyone can tell me which of these would really only be worth growing in a greenhouse? I've left out the ones I know are micro-dwarfs as I know they will do fine in a sunny window.

Alicante
Atomic grape
Blush
Buffalo Horn
Cherry Tomato Mix
EM Champion
Gaillardia
Galina
Golden Grape 
Mat-Su Express
Malachite Box
Maskotka
Matt's Hornett
Northern Lights
Orange banana
Orange jazz
Oregon Spring 
Red Veranda 
Tigerella - this is very old seed so getting sown this year no matter what.


The reason I ask is that I want to get the tomatoes that will end up in the greenhouse into the propagator today, but I have a huge amount of work stuff on and don't have the time to research each tomato variety right now. Hoping the hive mind can help me out!

A couple of mine have gone bad, they were all in a net bag outside in the coal house, what am I doing wrong?

They were touching flesh against flesh.

Seedling widger thingy.

I am planning to transplant some toms growing under lights indoors. To save them getting chilled I  brought all the kit indoors, filled pots, label and widger, etc.  

Now I'm sure we all have a favourite thingy to help seedlings out of their comfy little pot into a bigger hopefully comfier pot, what's yours?  Mine was a pencil thin plastic widger with a slender fork at one end and just a rounded end on the other, until it broke.  I can't find a like for like replacement so I put up with various conical ended and forked widgers but I do miss my favourite. In addition I have an 8" sock knitting needle (pokey stick point at both ends) to rease roots etc, it's very useful.

Happy Birthday Young man!!
Hope all your dreams come true today

Just wondering what makes you different to other, possibly more normal, people?

Am I the only one who has 3 Baby Changing Tables, 2 Baby Baths, a Cot and a child's Playhouse in their garden but doesn't know one end of a baby from the other?

I currently have a rather sad looking compost pile. I'm going to be adding kitchen scraps until I get my wormery back, but I'm worried about them blowing around. I'd definitely like some walls/compost bays sooner rather than later.

I have lots of wood from fitted wardrobes I've taken apart, but it's coated MDF from the late 70s/early 80s so suspect it shouldn't be anywhere near compost for veggies. There's also some random bits of wood in the greenhouse that don't look like they've been coated in anything, but I don't know their provenance. Finally, there's my fence from the bottom of the garden which is semi-rotten and mostly blown down. It needs removing regardless, but some of the wood might hold up for a year or two if repurposed into a compost bin. Except that's probably been treated too...

Would you use any of this wood? If not, what would you use to construct a compost bin? I'd prefer to avoid the dalek style bins if possible. Given current prices, it could get quite expensive to buy enough wood to make bins and I don't have a source for pallets.

What have you all used? What would you recommend?

Goes against all my principles of using fresh food, but have to say some interesting recipes to try from store cupboard produce.!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/collections/c..._with_tins

I have a few apple trees that I was pruning last week.most were OK to prune. These 2 though have produce a lot of long thinnish shoots. How would others go about pruning these 2?

A James Grieve that had very large apples this year.

   

And a lord Derby, not as bad.