So where's this summer, then, eh?

It's the 10th of June 2009 and the weatherpeople predicted a hot summer for us, better than the previous two years. I'm looking out of the window and it's grey and cold and raining. Oh well, 'twas ever thus, I 'spose. Still miserable though.

I have been down to the allotment quite a lot lately but keep forgetting to take the camera. Nearly forgot yesterday as well but remembered at the last second so here's an update of what's happening. Please bear in mind that the weeds and I are in a battle but the situation's not really as bad as the pictures make it look - honest!

First off, where I grew the chillies and herbs last year - in a small bed right in front of the shed - I am now growing cottage garden plants specifically for the bees. There are two small Lavender hedges which are blooming nicely, three Foxgloves (only 2 of which have flowered) and I've recently put in an Aster, a Sedum, a dark maroon double Aquilegia and a Potentilla. The two different kinds of Sorrel that were there had overrun the bed so I dug them up completely (they're members of the Dock family and are just as invasive, plus we weren't eating them). The Garlic Chives that were also there I dug up and have brought home to put in a pot in the garden. I figured it was more sensible to have the herbs nearer the kitchen rather than a 10 minute walk away, so I also now have coriander, lemon thyme and basil growing in pots at home.



Because the outdoor tomatoes were hit by blight last year I've decided to keep them in the plastic-
house this year and see if it makes any difference. I'm also growing tomatoes from seeds that I collected from a small vine-type called Vittoria which I particularly like from Sainsburys. No idea if they're 'special' in any way, like they have to be grown in a specific environment or they're sterile or something, but I did look for the seeds on the intertubes and couldn't find them, so this is a bit of an experiment. I just scooped some out of a tomato, spread them on a piece of kitchen paper and let them dry for a day or so before tearing off the bits of paper and planting them direct in pots. It's worked a treat so far and we'll just have to see if any fruits develop. Also I'm growing chillies and red peppers in the plastic-house this year as well. The red peppers didn't really work outside last year and I didn't grow chillies at all even though I use crushed dried ones in cooking all the time. The chilllies and the herbs (basil and organo specifically) I will dry and crush. It'll be interesting to see how much I can get from a few plants because dried herbs in glass jars cost a fortune in the supermarkets.

So, then, this is now the view from the shed looking down the allotment. As you can see, there's been some progress.

At the bottom of the picture you can see the two rows of potatoes (and their associated weeds!) which are looking very healthy indeed. I earthed them up twice and left it at that. It probably won't be too long before we'll start digging up the first earlies. I think, next year, I'll try International Kidney which is the godawful retail name for Jersey Royal new potatoes. Presumably, only those potatoes actually grown on Jersey can be called Jersey Royals (it's that EU law thing), so even though the seed potatoes are Jersey Royals, because you're not growing them on Jersey, they have to be called something else, hence International Kidney.

Anyway, in a bit more detail then, for those that can be bothered ploughing through my drivel, this is the beginning of the squash and courgette patch. The top right of the picture is the first of my bog-standard ordinary green courgette plants to go in (there are another 3 or so in the plastic-house, not quite big enough yet). The other three are the 'Summer Squash Early White Bush Scallop', or pattypan squash as they're known in America, I believe. There's a picture of them on my post below of 15 May 2009.



This is the Sweetcorn patch. I'm growing the same variety (in fact, from the same packet of seeds) as last year, 'Applause'. They're a bit wee at the moment which is a little bemusing. In fact quite a few of my seedlings are a bit 'behind' everyone else's even though I sowed them at the right time. Hopefully they'll all catch up over the next few months. There are, I think, 13 sweetcorn plants which will give us far more cobs than we actually need - I'll try and get my act together this year and cook, strip and freeze some cobs.

Towards the top of the picture, you can make out the 7 Dwarf Yellow French Beans 'Rocquencourt' (again, there's a picture on the 15 May post below). Germination of these was a bit patchy so I've got some more sown in the plastic-house to augment these when they get bigger.



This is the Mange Tout Wigwam. There is a mixture of shop bought and home sown plants here. The germination rate of the seeds I did myself was atrocious, as low as 25%, so when I saw some healthy looking plants for sale at a local B&Q, I thought I might as well get them and add them to the few I've managed to grow. Hopefully now there'll be some sugar snap peas later in the year.

I find it goes against the grain with me to buy ready growing seedlings/plants from the garden centre. To me, a major part of allomenteering is that you grow the plant yourself from seed. I've had to concede that, sometimes, supplementing your own seedlings with shop bought ones may be the sensible option, especially if the slugs get your seedlings and it's too late to sow a new batch - your only option is to head to the garden centre. But I intend to avoid doing this as much as possible.


Next to the Mange Tout wigwam are the two Climbing French Bean wigwams. This is the Cobra variety that did so unbelievably well for me last year. Fingers crossed I get a bumper crop again this year.



The weird white structure beyond the bean wigwams is this year's attempt at a brassica cage although, to be honest, it looks a bit more like a Tate Modern installation. I got so unbelievably pissed off last year with constantly picking cabbage white caterpillers off the broccoli, sprouts and cabbage that this year I've invested in some very fine insect mesh in which the holes are so small that apparently they will even keep white fly and carrot fly out. We'll see. However, never being one to get it right first time, I planted out some shop bought organic calabrese plants (see my comments above) that were half price before I put the mesh over and found that it's too narrow to go over all the plants! And by the time I'd got round to putting the mesh out, the Calabrese were very happily established and growing away merrily so I didn't think it was a good idea to dig up and transplant the two that are left, one on each side, that don't fit. I've added some Savoy Cabbage seedlings as well and there are at least 10 sprout plants and half a dozen each of Kale and Red Cabbage to go in as well. As I plant more, I'll unroll the mesh and we'll see how well it works.

Unfortunately, it looks like the Broad Beans have been completely mullah'd by the blackfly. There were 18 plants there that were very happy and, up until about 2 weeks ago, had nary a blackfly upon them. I only grow them for The Husband and, luckily, he was quite understanding that we may not get so much as a single pod on any of the plants this year. Don't think I'll bother again.




I have two rows of Carrots which are doing quite well. Last year I started them off in pots and then transplanted them into the allotment. I now know this is wrong - they don't like it and it causes them to grow many additional limbs. You have to sow the seed directly where you want them to grow. So I did that this year - two rows so far but more to come. I'm trying a variety called 'Resista' which is, as the name suggests, supposed to be resistant to Carrot Fly. I put string lines down and sowed along the line, leaving the string in place. This means I can then identify the seedlings when they come up. (Picture was taken just after The Husband had kindly strimmed the grass down for me, and the bits of grass fly all over the place).

We have the beginnings of this year's lettuce hedge as well. I'm growing Salad Bowl, Lollo Rossa and, this year, Little Gem. Where I've put them this season they get some shade during the day from next door's shed so we'll see if it makes a difference, although they didn't seem to mind being in full sun (what we had of it) last year. I'm doing proper successional planting this year so the biggest ones nearest the camera have been in the ground longest. The smaller ones near the top have only just gone in. There are more coming along in the plastic-house.




Onto the fruit, then. We've had getting on for nearly a kilo of strawberries from the plants, with plenty more to come. The birds don't seem to bother with the soft fruit, which is a blessing because it means I don't have to net it off. I'm growing a couple of varieties of strawberries this year, Elsanta and Aromel, and now we're just waiting on the Blueberries, which are swelling up beautifully. I have pampered them somewhat - they each live in their own little bed of ericaceous compost, get fed with azalea/rhododendron feed and only watered with rain water. The berries are getting large but not turning blue yet, hopefully that'll happen as the summer progresses.

The raspberry canes are establishing themselves so we won't get much (if any) fruit from them this year. The raspberries that I grew last year (and then moved to their new location in the fruit patch) have come through again (you can see them near the top of the lettuce picture). Obviously I wasn't thorough enough when digging them out and I hadn't appreciated that they are as invasive as brambles. Oh well. The Husband persuaded me to leave them there but I think I may be storing up trouble for myself in future years. I've also discovered rogue potato plants growing where I'd missed digging them up last year. Must ensure I get them all this year otherwise I'll eventually end up with an entire plot full of potatoes!

The blackcurrant bushes have established nicely, as you can see from the picture. The goose- berries have also. We have to wait until next year to get fruit from either of these plants but that's okay. Between the blackcurrants and the black plastic are the raspberries. The black plastic is going to stay there now until next year, hopefully it will kill off the grass underneath it so I can start cultivating a bit more land.

So, that's about it for now. I'll do another update later on in the season when things are looking really good, and I'll try and remember to weigh everything I harvest this year and do a price comparison as I think it'll be interesting (if a little nerdy....)

The Comedy Vegetable Parade!!!

I've been meaning to get down to the plopment for the last few days but always managed to talk myself out of it, knowwhaddimean? Anyway, decided I wanted to have red cabbage and apple as a side dish for Sunday lunch which meant that, quite reasonably, I had to go the allotment to pick some! Plus (rather excitingly - and alarmingly - but excitingly) snow is predicted across the UK within the next few days so if I wanted to start clearing some of the plot before spring, I pretty much had to go NOW.

So now that our Saturday and Sunday mornings are no longer in thrall to the tyranny of the weekend papers, I decided to head off down the road - and I'm jolly glad I did. Even as I write this, as the afternoon is sliding into early evening, it's still beautiful out there - blue skies with that hazy pink at the horizon.

I decided that it was time the leggy carrots and parsnips gave up their comfy beds as the space is going to be needed for something else, so out they came.

Honest to God - will you just LOOK at these freaks of nature? Far too many legs and carrot fly tunnels. The parsnips have a woody core as well. Oh well, I decided the parsnips can go into the dalek bin to make next year's compost but the carrots can be washed and then be fed to some grateful horses that I know.

I now know why they grew so many limbs. Turns out it's not such a good idea to grow them each in an individual pot then transplant the seedlings into their final place when they're big enough. For some reason they just don't like it and start sprouting new arms and legs like crazy. What I should have done was just plant the seeds where they were going to grow and then thin them out accordingly. This I will do in the coming growing season and see if it works. If it doesn't then I'm not going to bother again, especially as carrots are so cheap in the shops. I realise, for an allotmenteer, that this is almost heresy but I'm nothing if not realistic. Of course, having said all this, the taste of homegrown carrots is really quite astonishing so it is worth pursuing. Parsnips, though, hmmm. Not sure. We don't eat anything like as many of them as we do carrots, but perhaps I'll give them one more go...

One thing I did finally manage to get round to recently was drawing the plan for next season - I can't seem to insert a word document here so, sorry, no picture of it. But there's rotation!! And I'm putting this year's brassicas where last year's sweetcorn was so well-rotted horse manure was applied. This is the first time I've added the manure that I collected last spring and summer from the stables where I ride, and what lovely stuff it's turned into. I hope it does the trick.

While I was forking about in the poo corral I heard a rustling in the bushes at the other side of the site from me. I stopped to see what it was and saw the most beautiful fox having a sit down and a yawn in the sun. It was about 30-40 feet away from me and didn't seem all that bothered! It moved into some thicker undergrowth to one side and curled up for a sleep. I continued with what I was doing, then decided I would do my best to take a photo. I got as close as I could but didn't want to startle it. My new camera has a really good zoom but I don't have a tripod so please forgive me the dodgy focusing but at least I got a reasonable picture of it's ear and half-opened eyes! You can click on all the pictures to make them bigger.


I only hope that the new Chicken Palace, which is coming along well and now has proper netting (if that's the right word) to keep the predators like lovely Mr/Ms Fox out. I don't know when the little dinosaurs are arriving as I'm not taking part in the project, but I'm looking forward to their arrival all the same.






As these cold winter evenings give such beautiful night skies, I thought I'd finish with a picture that I took last night. I think that's a planet hanging underneath the moon, but can't be sure. Perhaps it's Venus which is usually the brightest planet in the night sky... anyway, enjoy.

More of the same, really....

Well, it kinda shames me to say it but, for today's posting, you may as well read the last one on 6 January. It's far too cold and wet to get out to do serious allotmenteering (at least as far as I'm concerned it is). So The Husband and I just popped down there today to check that everything was in one piece and hanging on in there.

First thing I noticed was the berludy pigeons have been ransacking my purple sprouting broccoli big seedlings/ small plantlets that have been overwintering. Now, I suppose I really do only have myself to blame but, for some unknown reason, perhaps I thought the flying rats might just overlook my bountiful juicy brassicas during the coldest, hungriest depths of winter and leave them alone. 'Well, duh...' I hear you all scorn in unison. So, yes, they've been hammered but, to be honest, I'm not really that bothered. I planted these new seedlings before I'd started harvesting the previous crop of PSB and, you know what, I wasn't exactly bowled over by it. I mean, it's nice enough, sure, but I think I really do prefer the big, old-fashioned single-headed green Calabrese (the stuff labelled 'Broccoli' in the supermarkets). The pigeons are welcome to it. Actually, I'll just dig the lot up when I come to clear the plot of the remaining crops in the next few weeks. And at least know that I won't bother with PSB again. Another lesson learned.

What else? All the onions and garlic are fine and look much the same as they did earlier in the month. The Chard has now gone over so will come out of the ground. The broad beans are about an inch high and a couple of inches wide so it looks like they may come good this spring. There are still squid-like carrots and parsnips in the ground which I will excavate and see if anything can be used. The long plastic cloche (it looks like a miniature polytunnel) covering my winter salad leaves had blown over again leaving the plants exposed but they seemed to be fine. The leeks don't look to have grown any bigger, so I think it's time to stop waiting for them to actually do something and start eating them. The red cabbage is looking distinctly sad. All the outer leaves appear to have vanished (probably down some pigeon's gullet) and the burgundy globes of the tightly packed inner leaves definitely look as if they've been hit by frost. I've decided that I'll harvest them this week, salvage what I can of them and turn them into Red Cabbage Ragout (about the only thing you can make with red cabbage - it's yummy and has onions, cinnamon and cooking apples in it too). They look pretty small in the picture, next to the (also pigeon pecked) brussel sprouts and, in all honesty, they are a bit but never mind, although they were small, they did actually grow and I grew them from seed so I'm pretty chuffed all round.

The fruit garden is exactly as it was on 6 January, so we just have to wait until spring really hits us before seeing any changes there I expect.

So, this week I need to actively start thinking about what I'm going to grow this year and where I'm going to put it, rotation-wise. L8rs....

November? Or July?

This weather is seriously messed up. It's the middle of November and I've turned my central heating off! It was over 15 degrees Centigrade outside here yesterday (for those who work on old money or live in the colonies, that's about 60 degrees Fahrenheit), and warm enough inside to have the windows open. We've got buds forming on the Beech tree outside our house before it's even lost all its leaves! It's Madness, I tell you....

Ancient Gardening Wisdom says that you can still plant new stuff into the ground in November because the soil is still just about warm enough for a decent root system to form before the cold really settles in - no kidding?!? This year I could probably plant pineapples outside right now and they'd take! Okay, that's a bit of an exaggeration but I'm taking the opportunity anyway to transfer all the rooted strawberry runners that I took off my tubbed-up strawberry plants this summer into the new fruit garden bit up at the allotment. There are 42 plants to go in (so far I've done 21) plus I've got another 10 or so plants of a different variety to be delivered at some point. The picture shows the ones I've put in. They're a bit measly at the moment but I'm hoping they'll fill out next summer.

Actually, thinking about it, I've got quite a lot of fruit bushes and plants on order - I wonder when they'll be delivered? I might have to drop the nurseries an email to find out....

So, as you can see, I popped down to the allotment yesterday just to see what's going on, harvest some sprouts, pick off yet more cabbage white caterpillers (cheeky buggers got one last egg laying session done without me noticing), dig up some more comedy carrots, hoe the onion patch and plant the remaining strawberry runners. Well, I managed everything except planting the runners but I'll do that either today or tomorrow. Time was a bit short yesterday because it was my nephew Riley's 3rd birthday party in the afternoon that we were attending, and I'm a sucker for birthday party catering!

Anyway, just to keep you posted, here's the current sorry state of my allotment (they always look unattractive from now until late spring).

The Savoy Cabbages are coming along a treat! Forming nice hearts albeit a little small just now, I'm sure they'll be scrummy! You can also just see the Kale in this pic as well (top left hand corner) - we've eaten a lot of it but I suspect they're coming to the end of their lives. I must find out if I can pick and freeze Kale in order to store the last of it....

The 200 onion sets that I planted a few weeks ago are growing away merrily - there's a mix of white and red onions, plus quite a lot of garlic too and, thankfully, the birds have left it all alone, which is a relief as I didn't fancy having to replant that lot!

The leeks are coming along although the size is not consistent and they're looking a bit fleabitten but I'm reasonably pleased considering I've never grown them before and they do seem to be a bit temperamental. Fortunately I can't see any signs of rust, so I'm hoping they'll fatten up a bit more before I want to start eating them.

Finally I just wanted to apologise to Paula from Locks Farm for not posting her comments - for some reason I didn't get notification in my email that you'd sent them so only saw them when I logged in today. They've now been posted!

Pictures, as promised

Further to yesterday's post, and as it is SUCH a beautiful day today, I dragged The Husband away from his comfy chair to come and take some photos at the plopment, so here they be (you can click on each picture to make it larger - and I apologise for the fact that I can't work out how to reduce the gap on the page between each section of pic & text...):


This is the existing brassica bed to which I've just added a few more red cabbage, spring cabbage and a dozen sprouting broccoli seedlings. They've been in a couple of days now and the pigeons haven't discovered them yet, so I'm hopeful that I won't need to put up netting.









This is the carrot bed. There are about 100 carrots in there. With a bit of luck I might actually get some that are proper carrot shaped rather than something that would amuse Esther Rantzen...












This is how the Dwarf Curly Kale is currently looking - lush and green, I think you'll agree!

















These are my Brussel Sprouts - I really am quite inordinately proud of just how well my brassicas have done, never having grown any of them before. Perhaps they just really like the soil and the conditions are right for them....









This is how the herb bed is looking. As I said in yesterday's posting, the Coriander and French Sorrel have both gone beserk. The Coriander plant turned into a bush that had to be staked and even then still fell over - it goes all the way out to the right hand edge of the picture. Underneath it is the French Sorrel which has also gone a bit mental. [You'll notice I've discovered how to label things on the pictures - classy, huh?]






This is where I've planted up the 200 onion sets and garlic cloves. Not very clear I know, but you can just make out at least one of the 3.5 rows. The birds had only pulled one of the garlic cloves out, which I was relieved about as I didn't relish having to replant them all again - the backs of my legs are still stiff from planting them the first time!












This is where the fruit is going to be planted, when all the bushes, etc., arrive. Two blueberry bushes are already in but they're hard to make out in the picture. I need to get more black plastic to cover the rest of the ground....









So then, a shot of the bottom half of the plopment, taken from beside the future fruit bed.













And a view taken the other way, from the shed looking up the plopment.














And finally, an action shot of me! Taken by The Husband pretending to be a papparazzo hiding behind the raspberry canes!

Faster, Higher, Stronger....

It's been almost a month since I last updated the blog which is, perhaps, a little remiss of me, and for which I humbly beg your forgiveness. In my defence, the weather at the end of July deteriorated so I didn't go to the allotment all that much plus the last couple of weeks I've been glued to the telly watching the Olympics. And when I did go to the plopment I seemed to do nothing more than pick French Beans, which I thought was very boring to write about. The running total is - get this - 38.5 pounds of beans. I'm getting sick of them, as are my family, friends, neighbours and complete strangers in the street. In fact anyone who comes anywhere near me will be asked if they want some beans. My freezer is full of them, as is my fridge. There are carrier bags of them sitting on my garage floor.

This is all the more astonishing when you see just how battered and weedy the plants are looking now, but they're still damn well producing! Having said that, though, I think production is tailing off now and hopefully will be finished in a few weeks. It said on the seed packet that Cobra French Beans are a prolific cropper and they're not wrong! I've had getting on for 40 pounds of beans from about 40 plants (planting 2 or 3 to a cane). Whether I plant as many next year remains to be seen. One thing I will change, however, is the shape of the cane structure. The way it is now is traditional but I hadn't realised just how windy it gets at the plopment, and the structure's come apart on more than one occasion. Next year I think I'll put the canes in a more robust teepee-shaped construction which also means I can dot them about the place as well.

All my onions are now out of the ground. Our site secretary recently sent a warning round that the top of the of the allotment site had been hit by Downy Mildew which affects onions. I'm at the bottom end of the site and actually don't know if it affected my onions or not. The leaves were going yellow and falling over, but that's what they do anyway when it's time to harvest them. There's all sorts of ways of harvesting onions including doing stuff like bending over the tops and leaving them in the ground prior to digging them up (not sure what this is supposed to do), or easing them out of the ground with a fork but not pulling them up altogether, and leaving them there for a couple of weeks (I think this is supposed to start the 'stop growing' process). I know you have to let them dry for at least a couple of weeks before you can store them (otherwise you run the risk of them rotting in storage).

I decided that as the foliage was dying down on all of them they might as well come up out of the ground and do their drying in the shed which is draughty enough to allow drying to occur. The Husband kindly attached battens to the walls of the shed so that various hooks could be screwed in to hang implements from, and these battens actually make handy little shelves which, although extremely narrow, are wide enough to support an onion bulb. I've also got some hanging up in a pair of tights in my garage with a plastic tie between each one so they don't touch - the idea being that you cut the toe off the tights leg and remove the onion, undoing the tie so the next one drops down. It seems to work except that I can't seem to hang the tights high enough so they don't drag on the floor! We've eaten a few as well and while they're not as eye-wateringly strong as I remember previously home-grown onions to be, they're most acceptable. They're also very crunchy, which I like. So as long as they dry properly and store well, I'm going to chalk that up as a huge success for the onion crop! Next thing I have to do is track down some over-wintering Japanese onion sets to plant in September and see if they work.

The lettuce hedge is no more. The Salad Bowl lettuce was brilliant but bolted, as had the Wild Rocket, so they all had to come out. I've been successionally growing Lollo Rossa lettuce as well though so we're now eating them. I've also sown some mixed lettuce seeds that, supposedly, I can overwinter if I put cloches over them, so we can have salad leaves in Spring. I'm pretty cynical about that working but I'll give it a go. My carrots, however, are going from strength to strength. Luckily (touch wood) I think I've managed to avoid Carrot Root Fly as I've found no evidence yet in any of the carrots I've dug up, so I've just carried on sowing seeds at 2-3 week intervals, and planting them out in the plopment when big enough to handle. Although it may not be terribly clear from the picture but there are 5 rows of carrots, each with about 20 plants, so that's (hopefully) 100 carrots! The orange string shows where the latest row of little transplants went in a few days ago.

I think my Sweetcorn will be ready to eat very soon but I'm going to leave them a bit longer yet.

I've been gradually earthing up my Leeks individually lately. You do this so that a large percentage of the plant is blanched - the white bit that is eaten. I'm rather pleased with how they've come along especially as Leek Growing Lore seems to be very complicated and I just ignored all that and shoved them in the ground. We'll see what happens when I come to harvest them next year though. Hopefully I should get about 35 Leeks come harvest time, all of varying sizes I should imagine. The local Fruit & Vegetable Show is on in a couple of days and while part of me is quite tempted to have a go at entering some of my produce, I don't honestly think I've got anything that's of Show standard. I've been concentrating far too much on getting the ground cleared and actually producing something edible than to bother with all the palaver of producing showbench winning veg! Maybe next year though...

The Cucumbers have been a runaway success but are now, I think, coming to the end. I took a couple of pictures about 10 days ago so am posting them now. The first picture shows what they look like on the plant - this view reminds me of H R Giger's designs for the original 'Alien' film - all dark, smooth and tubular. I then picked them and laid them out on my kneeling pad with my trowel for size perspective - aren't they great!! Since then two have been sliced up and are sitting in two Kilner jars in pickling vinegar to be eaten over the winter, and we're eating our way through the others. Even after 10 days in the fridge they remain solid, hard, crunchy and juicy. I genuinely didn't expect to get anything like as good as this. Guess I'll be growing them again next year!

The Broad Beans have now all finished and I'll be taking out the plants quite soon, but leaving the roots in the ground as the roots of all bean plants fix nitrogen in the soil, so it's best to leave them. All of my Pentland Javelin first early potatoes are now out of the ground and either in storage or have been eaten. In their place I've sown Winter Spinach and Swiss Chard. The picture shows the Winter Spinach which has grown a bit quicker than I expected really (the black plastic covers the ground where the onions had been). I tasted one of the leaves the other day and it seems to be quite nice. I understand, though, that instead of just taking off individual leaves like you would with ordinary spinach, for winter spinach you cut off the entire plant to use, leaving the roots in the ground from which the plant regrows!

What else? The Herb Garden beside the shed has been quite prolific, even if I didn't eat very much of it. We had some of the French Sorrel as salad leaves (it tastes just like uncooked Bramley cooking apple), and I made some soup with the ordinary Sorrel (which was nice enough but not outstanding). The Basil I'm going to have a go at drying in my airing cupboard to then crumble up to put in a jar. The Garlic Chives I didn't use at all but as it's a perennial, it'll be there next year.
The Coriander has loved its location but is flowering like billyo now - I may save the seeds. The sweet peppers are coming along nicely as well - I have half a dozen decent sized green peppers but I don't like them green so even though I could pick and eat them now, I'm going to wait until they turn red.

The tomato plants are rampant but I have a horrible feeling there may be some blight there - there were fruits with tell-tale brown marking on the top. The brassicas are doing well, especially as I spend about an hour each visit just picking off the dang caterpillers. The green leafy growth coming out of the parsnips is just vast - I'm a bit concerned they're going to be huge and woody by the time I come to eat them, and I wanted to have them over winter rather than in the autumn. Is a puzzlement.

My First Cucumber!!!

Ladeez and Gennelmen - it gives me great pleasure, and no small amount of pride, to be able to introduce to you, my very first ever homegrown cucumber [drumroll]

Ta-Dah!! I decided that today was the day that the cucumber was big enough to be harvested and to commemorate the occasion, I've taken a couple of photographs so I can remember what it looked like after I've eaten it. So, for example, here it is reclining gently on the handrail of the bridge that leads to my garden.

Then I decided it did need something to compare it with so that you, gentle reader, might have some idea of the humungous size it had achieved, so here it is, sitting next to Sylvester, our slightly-
larger-than-
average cat who just happened to be there at the time I had the camera in my hand so was roped in to act as a ruler.

I also noticed at the plopment today that the tassels have started appearing on my developing sweetcorn cobs, so that means I have to start watering them all from now until harvesting. And one or two of the Broad Bean plants have started putting out shoots from the base - I dunno what that's all about but I'm inclined to leave them to see what happens, and if I get extra additional unexpected bonus beans, then so much the better!

I put in a few more Winter Spinach plants, so there's seven gone in now where some Pentland Javelin spuds have come out, and I think I'm going to investigate sowing Spring Cabbage for overwintering, to be eaten next May or thereabouts. Oh, and I must just tell you, we ate those gnarly carrots last night and the taste was almost overpowering!! It was like eating solid Essence of Carrot - intense wasn't the word. I've never eaten homegrown carrots fresh out of the ground before and it was just astonishing, frankly. So I'm definitely sowing more of those babies, you betcha!

Finally, by way of a change, I caught my 2.5 cats sitting companionably on the bridge this afternoon and, as it so rarely happens, I took a picture and am posting it here for your delectation. The black cat is Damian, my 0.5 boy - he spends half his time with us and the rest at his other house, 3 doors down. Then in the middle being sociable and facing the camera is Sylvester, and finally, closest to us but facing away is Pepper. They all say 'hello', by the way.

Anyone want any beans......?

Okay, those of you who know more about these sort of things than I have been very kind in not sending me emails pointing and laughing at the 'measly' 2 pounds of beans I picked last week. Because this morning, dear reader, I filled a carrier bag with the blighters and weighed them when I got home - 4lbs 10oz or 2086 grams. Oh. Dear. Lord. Fortunately the lady who owns the horses where I go riding says she'll have some, and I can feed a family of 5 down the road (except they're off to Tenerife on Thursday for 2 weeks) but that still leaves me with far more than I need. The upside is that it would have cost me £13.45 to buy that many beans at Sainsburys, although I'd want sectioning if I did...

The freezer bit of my fridge/freezer is a couple of large drawers but it's not vast so I've been pondering the old-fashioned way of preserving foodstuffs, by bottling or, as they call it in America (even though it uses jars) 'canning'. Apparently, if done correctly, stuff in jars can last for up to 15 months just sitting on shelves in your pantry (if you're lucky enough to have one) or, as in my case, the garage. It's still a very popular way of buying vegetables on the Continent. I can remember being quite surprised the first time I visited relatives in Holland and seeing glass jars of carrots and peas that had been bought from the supermarket.

Apart from the ridiculous bean situation, what else is happening at the plopment? Well, I decided to pull up some carrots and was genuinely thrilled there was actually enough to eat. And because I hadn't thinned them, they've all grown around each other and sprouted extra limbs and just gone generally gnarly! You wouldn't find those in the supermarket! Apparently our site is quite bad for Carrot Root Fly so I'm just hoping that these haven't been affected. Since I planted these guys, way back in April, I've planted at least 50 more carrot seedlings each 2 or 3 inches away from its neighbour so hopefully I'll get 'proper' straight carrots a bit later on.

The monster cucumber just goes from strength to strength! I'm having to tie the plants further up the bamboo cane wigwam almost every time I go as they're starting to sprawl somewhat. There are plenty other little tiny cucumbers forming so I've got my fingers crossed that we actually get to eat some of them this summer.

I'm digging up more of my First Early potatoes - Pentland Javelin. I'm not sure I'll bother with them next year, the yield per plant doesn't seem to be particularly high, they don't really have a lot of flavour and they don't seem to like being cut into quarters and boiled very much - they fall apart too quickly and the skin comes off. So I'm a little disappointed, to be honest, but at least I know now for next year. I've still got Second Earlies - Maris Peer (or Piper, can't remember which!) and Main Crop Desirees so it's not as if I'm going to be lacking in spuds this year! Where the Pentland Javelins have come out, I'm putting in Winter Spinach seedlings, and I've still got Swiss Chard sprouting at home which can go in when the rest of the potatoes come out.

That's about it for now - the Swifts are still squealing wildly around my head and I've never seen so many Cabbage White butterflies in one place before, all signs that Mother Nature is doing her thang for which we all must be eternally grateful.

Till next time, this is Kaz signing off saying "be most excellent to each other".

Feels like home...

The weather report stated that the fabulous weather we've been having recently would break overnight and today in the south we'd wake up to heavy rain, hail and thunderstorms. Well, they got it partly right, we've had more in the way of light showers than a downpour but it does mean that I was right to take the opportunity to spend about 8 hours over the last two days at the plopment getting stuff into the ground before the rains came.

Tuesday I dug out the rows of invisible Rocket seedlings as I couldn't find them and replaced them with Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings. I don't hold out much hope for the Carrots as they've already been attacked by a snail in the plastic-house but I'm fed up of looking at them in there so into the ground they go. I also started to weed around the row of Second Early potatoes because the chickweed, couch grass, bindweed and mare's tail were coming back. I had hoped that walking on them would kill them off but all it did was flatten and harden the earth.

Yesterday (Wednesday) I decided I was going to put up the poles for the Climbing French Beans. For the past 6 or 7 years I've been growing French Beans in two huge round pots at home so I've never done the traditional, all in a line, pole arrangement before. Last week I'd bought a batch of 8 foot tall canes and was worried they were going to be too tall but the ground at the plopment is so soft they easily sank in about 1.5 feet or so. I tied them together and then added smaller ones through the top to stabilise it. There are ten canes in the ground but I currently have 12 plants so two had to double up. I've more coming on in the plastic-house so they can go in later. (I woke up this morning though and realised that I'd completely forgotten to put slug pellets around the bean plants! I'll have to pop out later on when it's dried up a bit and just hope they're still there and not in some snail's belly...)

But I've come to realise that two really quite major things have happened since Sunday - I think it's probably more of a matter of perception within me than what's been happening at the allotment but, even so. Let me try to explain: putting the shed up and being able to use it properly since Sunday has made a big difference - I now feel that I actually own the land, it's a space that properly belongs to me now. I have somewhere to store my things, where I can sit in the shade. It all feels more permanent somehow - before it was just a plot of land that didn't really mean anything even though I've been working it for the last 3 months. I almost felt like a bit of a fraud and I shouldn't really be there - the shed has made a statement, it claims ownership. It denotes that I'm going to be here for a long time and I'm serious about it. I built the shed (well, not me, but you know what I mean), I cultivate the land - I have a place now and it feels like home. When I was doing my various archaeology degrees I was always interested in the Archaeology of Landscape and how the ancient mind related to ownership of space/land, what they did with it and how it was demarcated. Perhaps I should put up a (fake) burial mound on my boundaries.....

Secondly, bizarrely, putting up the bean canes has turned the site into A Proper Allotment. It looks like a real, grown-up one now, not just the results of me fannying around in the dirt hoping to get things right and praying that I wasn't making an idiot of myself and that people weren't laughing at me for getting it wrong. I mean, check out the pictures - the top one here shows, from the bottom of the picture, my little Raspberry bed, then on the right are two rows of Broad Beans, the dark square above them are the newly-watered rows of Spring Onion and Carrot seedlings and above them are my four rows of Onion sets. The light green 'row' next to them all running the width of the plot is actually my row of First Early Potatoes (the plants are actually in the row between the two boards) - yes, I know I need to weed it. Then there's the (weeded) row of Second Early Potatoes running the width. Next to that you can see the bean canes and, lastly, from the canes to the pathway is where the Red Cabbage and Brussels Sprouts are. It looks good, it looks right and I did it all. Yes, you may call me Mrs Smug.

This picture, taking from a slightly different angle, shows the shed in use! It also, unfortunately, shows how much is still left of the plot to be dug, weeded and cultivated. I'm going to try and get it all done this year - I still have Broccoli, Kale, Savoy Cabbage, Parsnip, Lettuce and Sweetcorn to go in yet! - but I also realise it might just be too big a job and it'll have to wait until next year. The remaining seedlings will just have to find a spot in and around what's already been done! The picture actually gives a distorted image - there's quite a lot of ground left to do, probably as much as I've already dug. But, hey, it's stopped raining so I may be there later...