Early September

These are dwarf french beans "Pongo". They are a late variety and I put the seeds into the ground in early July. The seeds were several years old, by the way, but I had kept them in the 'fridge. Now look at them 8 weeks later! I will definately be using these again. We are picking beans from them now. Still picking sweet corn. The late potoes came up in mid-August and they look good and we had a good yield, a whole sackful. We have left the cabbages (red and savoy) in the gound - seems to be the best place to store them. The runner beans are still producing. I transplanted in some spring cabbage and purple sprouting broccoli, which will be ready next year. And the really good news is that the second planting of cauliflowers has just started to produce - here's a picture of one taken through the netting it lives under. We should get 9 out of the 11 I put in. Two have bolted - I think they got a bit dry.

The places where nothing is growing have been sown with green manure Phacaelia. Should be up by end November and then I'll turn it onto the ground before it flowers.

End of July

So here we are in the middle of Summer. Some of the crop has been picked, eaten or frozen. Here's some of what's still going.

Sweet corn - 30 plants in total in two locations. Should be ready for picking in about two weeks.

Red cabbage - 12 of them. This is one of the smaller ones. There's also some savoy cabbage doing well. All the cauliflowers were picked - delicious !

Onions out to dry. These did well this year, though we lost about 10% through some nasty root rot. We have red onions too. The garlic is not doing too well - must have got something wrong - gotta read the book !

Cucumber. This one is on the allotty, in a cold frame, and we have another back home in the greenhouse. Both are growing well, but this one is the best. Already had two giant cucumbers from it and it's still going strong. They are very tasty - sweeter than the shop ones.

Courgette. What can you say about them ? They go on and on producing vast numbers of fruit. They seem to be resistant to all of the usual bugs which smite the other stuff and look after themselves. We have some yellow (zuchini) ones growing too.

End of May report

And here you see the first stuff we picked and ate for 2009

Juicy

Strawbs

The picture was taken about a week before this blog entry. These strawberries were absolutely delicious. These were the first few to ripen so we decided to eat them before the bugs / birds / other beasts got to them. Since then we have had many, many more, all as good as these first few. And there's more to come.

We also had some radish - we picked those just after the strawberries, but they more or less grow themselves, so nowhere near as exciting as the strawberries.

Since the last report I have planted out squash and courgettes and red cabbage and chinese cabbage. Trish has planted out chard and spinach. I have mangetout peas all ready to plant out. It's rained for the last three days which is why they are not in the gound yet. And I planted directly into the ground some dwarf french beans. Still waiting for those to show - should be along any day soon ! I'm still waiting for a whole bunch of plants to arrive - delivery in May they told me. Well, there are a few more days left yet.

On the maintenance front I finished the last of the repairs to one of the raised beds. Hopefully, now no more repair work to do this year.

Everything else is looking good. The broad beans are now 3 foot+ high and all in flower so we should be picking those within a couple of weeks. The caulis and savoy cabbage continue to develop. Peas are now half way up their frame as are the runner beans. The sweet corn have started to grow. They usually take a couple of weeks after planting out to settle down and this year is no exception.


Finally another picture showing the peas, halfway up their frames, and in the foreground our first earlies potatoes( the two rows at the left) and the second earlies potatoes.

The stake at right has 9 sunflowers planted around it, so if all goes well we will have a great centerpiece around August.

Don't forget to check out the allotty page on our website : http://www.tumbleweeds.me.uk/allotment.htm

Another report soon - things are moving quickly now !

April comes to an end

Last report for April. What's happened this month ? Well, a lot of repair work to the raised beds. They are now 7 years old and some of them are beginning to rot away. I have patched most of them, but next year I think we'll have to re-make many of them. Moral of this story: wood and soil do not go well together. No matter how much preservative you put on, the woodlice will chew at the wood and eat it. There's one more bed to repair which I will do next week.

Trish has now put her peas, runner beans and sweet peas in. There's some Little Gem lettuce too. All the earlier plantings are looking good - and the cauliflowers and savoy cabbages (always a bit twitchy) are looking very healthy. I'm just keeping my fingers crossed for the club root to stay away.

I put two more rows of spuds in - that's all the spuds planted for 2009. The first earlies, which I put in about 6 weeks ago are now beginning to show.

We have a big new "civil engineering" project nearly completed. I have got so peed off with the pigeons (and other birds) eating everything that's not under netting that I decided to make a walk-in cage. It's nearly finished -- just got to put the net over, which we'll do early May, then it will be ready for cauliflowers, cabbage, broccoli, sprouts, courgettes and black kale which will be coming from the nursery in about a weeks time. Pictures when it's all done. We dug up a big patch of flowers to make room for the cage. In these credit crunch times, things you can eat are more important than things you can look at.

I'm also taking up some of the black material Trish laid down a couple of years ago to supress the weeds on the paths and replacing it with paving slabs. Our next door neighbours (at home) had a pile ( 44 to be exact) of slabs they did not want, so I have ferried them down to the allotty and have started to lay them. Keeps the weeds down a reat and good to walk on. Pictures when it's all finished.

At home I have sweet corn ready to plant out - probably do that next week. The squash have just germinated in the propagator, but the dwarf french beans seem very reticent - no show yet after two weeks. I'll give 'em another week then if nothing has happened, it will be plan B - throw them away and get some from the nursery.

I also have a lot of sunflowers which have just germinated. We usually scatter a few around, but last year we didn't get round to it. So a special effor this year ! They will be planted out in about two weeks time.

We should be through this big bulge of effort in a week or so, then we can relax a bit - there'll be "just" the routine weeding and tidying up to do

April update (what happened to March ??)

I haven't yet quite managed to do a post every week as I promised I would . Mind you - not a lot has been happening that you can look at since February. But here we are at the beginning of April and there's been quite a few changes.

For the first time I'm trying to grow strawberries. These were put in last Autumn and they are looking pretty good so far. There are two dozen more like this, so soon it should be big juicy berries to look at. The straw is supposed to dissuade the slugs, protect from frost and prevent the berries touching the ground.

Another newcomer for 2009 is shallotts. Don't know why we haven't grown these in the past. These are called "Pikant" and were put in at the beginning of March. At the same time I also put in some red onions, white onions and some garlic. They're also coming along great. We were a little late last year with our onions and the weather was freaky, so we didn't do too well. So fingers crossed for onions, shallots and garlic !

These little fellas are 10 day old turnips. I grew them, accidentally, for the first time last year. They were supposed to be carrots, but I got the seed mixed up and ended up with turnips. But they were delicious. We picked them when they were still quite small - after about 8 weeks growth - and were pleasantly suprised by the taste. So lets hope I can repeat the accidental success from 2008 ! There's also parsnips, carrotts, and radish and I'll be putting some swedes in, in about 4 weeks time.

Another of my favourites is broad beans. Theses were put in at the beginning of March and are looking good so far - though as you can see something has already started to nibble the leaves ! Last year the broad beans were doing really well until about 3 weeks before picking, then they all got some horrible big brown spots on the leaves and expired. Other folks on the allotty had the same problem. I notice that this year some folks have protected their broad beans by putting them inside of tent made from "Agrilan" which is a very fine mesh net. I have done the same with some of mine so we'll see what difference it makes.

We've also got cauliflowers, savoy cabbage, broad beans, beetroot and peas. They are all under Agrilan netting at the moment and a bit hard to see until they get a bigger, so no indivual photos yet. I've also got two long rows of early potatoes, but they are not showing yet. This general view is from the shed. Front right are the cauliflowers, under the fine mesh net. Next to them are onions and on the far left are the radishes, parsnips and some more turnips. The next bed, running the width of the picture is empty at the moment, but will soon have dwarf french beans. Beyond that onions and empty beds awaiting courgettes. The little rectangular frame is the carrot box and beyond that broad beans and cabbages.

What it's all about - sort of

I have given up trying to keep the allotment page on our web site up to date. . You have to be at home where the PC with the software and access to your web host is. Then it takes time to fire up the HTML editor. You need a photo edito to at least set the size of the pictures. And there's the problem of getting everything to look right on the page. Just adding a few lines and a picture can take 45 minutes. I think that's why the good intentions never lasted past the first week !

So for 2009 a new initiative - put the Allotment news in a blog. Now I can add stuff from anywhere I can get onto the web. The blog software automatically sizes the pictures. And it looks great, with the rounded corners and complementary colours - woo hoo!

Well - the proof of the pudding etc..etc... Wish me luck as I go public and predict that now I'll be able to keep this Allotment blog up to date.

January and all's well

There's a break in the January rain, so just time to strim the grass on the paths and check that everything is in order. There's a few mangy parsnips under the blue hoops (right) and a bit of pigeon-chewed chard in the foreground.

The weeds are still on holiday and the black sheets are helping to keep them suppressed. The carrot box (left) is empty. Upper left I have just given the vine a good prune. Elsewhere we have a few small sprouts and the remains of some broccolli and cabbage which the birds have eaten off after the wind lifted the netting.

But it's not all doom and gloom. There was a couple of bottles of Sol Mexican beer in the shed left over from 2008, so I celebrated the start of a new Allotty year by pulling the cap off one and drinking it.

The main job now is done at home - ordering the seeds and plants for 2009. See what I can find which the slugs won't eat and the birds won't nibble. There must be something !