Normal Service Has Been Restored

Enough of my trials with the red ants (the bites are much better, thanks for asking....), let's get back to matters vegetabular (have I just coined a new word?)

It's been chucking it down here since I last went (and got all bitten) so as there were some bits of blue in the sky today I thought I'd best grab the opportunity to get down the road to do some weeding and harvest some stuff. The last pictures of the plopment proper were on 8 July which is some time ago now. So, behold the jungle that has appeared since last you looked:


All the new potatoes have been dug up now and, delicious though they were, the yield was quite staggeringly poor. In the vast majority of cases, I only got 2, maybe 3, spuds per plant! Barely worth it. I'm hoping for much better things from my Desiree main crops.

I'm growing quite a few new things this year that I've not tried before - Butternut Squash is one. You grow them like cucumbers, up poles, but I believe pollination is a bit tricky - it says on the packet that you can aid pollination by using a paintbrush or just sticking your finger into one flower and then into another to act as a surrogate bee or bug or whatever. I've found, though, that I've only so far had one flower open at a time! This is just an experiment, though. We'll see what happens.



Another veg I'm growing this year for the first time is the Pattypan Squash or, to give it its more formal title, "Early White Bush Scallop Summer Squash". Originally grown by native Americans for hundreds of years, it's now very popular in modern American vegetable patches but little grown over here. You grow them just like courgettes and I started by sowing just three seeds but all three germinated so I didn't bother sowing any more (I only need to grow enough to feed the 2 of us and if it's anything like courgettes....need I say more?)


But, look, I harvested my first squash today! Well, okay, so it was the only one on the 3 plants but I'm hopeful there'll be more! In the picture the squash is next to (some of) today's harvest of Cobra Climbing French Beans and another new arrival, Yellow French Beans.

My courgettes are coming along:


As are the cucumbers:


The Calabrese/broccoli:


And the Sweetcorn is starting to develop its flowers (or what passes for flowers in sweetcorn-world):


The two rows of Resistafly Carrots seem happy enough, but it's hard to tell until you dig some up, so we'll see later if they stand up to their billing:


The lettuce hedge is as succulent as ever. One thing I can say for my plopment is that it grows terrific lettuces. Just after I took this picture I tasted a few of the leaves from the salad bowls (frilly bright green plants in the picture) and, sadly, they were starting to bolt (I'd suspected as much) and the leaves were so bitter I had to spit them out, so I removed them. Fortunately I'd brought with me half a dozen new lettuce seedlings so they got popped into the vacant space.


The fox trampoline was starting to look a bit full and as I'd not weeded underneath the mesh since planting the brassicas in there, I figured it was time to do it.


And this is showing just how big the brassicas have got (I think we're looking at mainly Savoy Cabbage here and possibly some Brussels Sprouts):


The Cosmos that Sylvia planted when she had the top of my plot has flowered beautifully this year. I decided to leave them as the colours are so vivid.


And, finally, this year's competition on the site is for the best scarecrow (last year was tallest sunflower and the year before that was something to do with sweetpeas, I think). Anyway, I have enough to be getting on with without having to think about designing and constructing a scarecrow so won't be entering, but other people on site are and scarecrows are gradually appearing. The competition is going to be judged sometime during the week of 10-16 August (which is, apparently, National Allotment Week) but this one went up this afternoon (all 10ft of it!) and I think it's fabulous - such an easy design and so effective! Bit early for Hallowe'en but what the heck, I wish I'd thought of it now!!

Stand By Your Beds!

Tonight is the annual allotment inspection. The committee processes around all the allotments they administer in Farncombe and decide whether you're doing well enough to be allowed to continue to next year. I feel a bit ambivalent about this - on the one hand it does ensure that only those people who take growing veggies seriously get to do so and it ensures the site is kept looking nice (no vast beds of enormously tall weeds or plots full of rusting metal) but, on the other, it does feel a bit like being back at school, where some stranger is judging what you do and how you go about it. You have little option but comply to their requirements. Having said that, though, the requirements are not that onerous, just keep the grass weeds down, edges and paths mown and ensure that a minimum of 50% of your plot is cultivated.

So yesterday I popped down just to ensure the edges of the beds were trimmed and the longest of the grasses were cut down but I'm quietly confident the plot will pass muster.

Things have been growing apace since the last pictures and, I'm delighted to say, out of all the seedlings/plantlets I've put in over the last month or so, I've only lost one lettuce, so that's not bad at all. Everything is now in except for some successional lettuce seedlings and another 8 Climbing French Bean seedlings which will go in once big enough. I'm still sowing Carrots though. Oh, and I did have to pull up all the Broad Bean plants (so, actually, that probably does count as a loss, a big one too - oh well...) but have used the space where they were to sow carrots and plant beetroot and chard seedlings.

Current overall view of the plot - veggie section nearest camera, fruit bed further away to left of frame

Courgettes and Pattypan Squash bottom to mid right; Butternut Squash and Cucumbers round wigwam; Sweetcorn bottom to mid left; Dwarf Yellow French Beans mid top; Mange Tout and Climbing French Beans round wigwams on far left

Mange Tout & Climbing French Bean wigwams on right. Next to it, going up the picture, is where the Broad Beans were. It now contains - from the left hand edge in - a row of Chard, Lettuce & Rocket, Carrots and Beetroot. Clicky for biggy.

Finally managed to weed the onion and garlic bed - there are about 350 onions and 50 garlics in here!

The lettuce hedge is coming along.

I'm going to start harvesting Salad Bowl leaves (the bright green ones) this week - it's a 'cut and come again' variety so you only use the leaves you want. The red Lollo Rossa are a bit behind, and, this year, I'm also growing Little Gem (the darker green, more upright ones in the pic) which is a cos-type lettuce, meaning you harvest the whole thing in one go.

The potatoes are doing fine.

The smaller row on the left of the picture are my Earlies and should be ready for harvesting in 2-3 weeks' time. The taller row on the right are my Desirees which are a main crop. You can't really tell from the picture but the row was more or less equally split between those planted on ground that had been manured in the spring, and those that hadn't. I think there's definitely better, healthier looking plants on the manured half of the row which is nearest the camera. It'll be interesting to see the difference in the size of the spuds themselves.

As far as the fruit bed is concerned, so far, as of today, I have picked a total of 2658g of strawberries (= 5lbs 13oz). Sainsbury's are currently selling organic strawberries at £9.97 a kilo, so multiply that by 2.658 = £26.50!

The raspberries are all autumn fruiting varieties and, as they were only planted last autum, much like the blackcurrants and gooseberries, they only start fruiting in the second year so I have to wait until next year to get the benefit of these. But the Blueberries are coming along and are starting to turn blue:

Blueberries turning blue

Again, I don't expect a large crop this year (frankly, I'll be lucky to get a punnet's worth) but I'm expecting good things next year, especially after the pampering the 3 bushes have had and will continue to get!

So, it all looks okay, doesn't it? Fingers crossed for tonight and I'll post an update later.

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....)

Damn - October already?

Oh, hey, look I KNOW I've not done an update since the beginning of September and I KNOW there's no pictures with this one but that's just the way it goes sometimes, doesn't it?!? I promise I'll take the camera next time (probably later on this week) and just take a whole bunch of pix.

First things first - just how mental is this weather? Just after I last posted it got cold, then we definitely did have an Indian Summer for about a coupla weeks which was most welcome, then it got a bit colder, and now it's raining but unseasonably warm!! Every time I go to the plopment I have to take a change of clothes because I don't know if it'll stay the same from one hour to the next....

Right then, to business. With the help of The Husband, we've managed to clear the beds that S dug while she was working the plot which meant, rather sadly I suppose, that I've had to dig out the 2 rhubarb plants she put in (mostly because I don't think I'm going to be growing rhubarb and, if I did, it wouldn't be where she'd planted them) and about a gazillion self-replicating strawberry plants (I AM going to be having a strawberry bed but, again, not where she'd put them and probably a different variety), so I'm starting with a clean slate. Also we took out about 10 pounds of Desiree potatoes! We ate the bigger ones but I have to say that I'm about to chuck out the little fiddly ones that are left because not only are we eating hers, but also all the ones that I planted, so we're swimming in spuds!

The top half of the plot is going to be mostly dedicated to fruit so, to this end, we've planted two different varieties of Blueberry bush - 'Jersey' and 'Duke' - one is early fruiting, the other later, and I have a 'Patriot' on order. I've no idea what acidity the soil is so we just played it safe, got 2 smallish (40 litre) bags of ericaceous compost, dug big holes, filled them with the compost then stuck a blueberry bush in each, watered them in and are hoping for the best.

I have many other things on order - 3 Blackcurrant bushes (Wellington XXX), 2 Gooseberry bushes (Langley Gage), 2 Raspberry varieties (Autumn Bliss and Glen Prosen), Strawberries (Aromel), and 1 dwarf Cherry tree (Maynard). I'm also looking into apples and pears but they need to be on very dwarfing root stock and we've not decided what varieties we want yet. I've decided against Redcurrants because we don't eat them now so god knows what we'd do with a bushfull of them.

Yesterday, while it was dry, I took the opportunity of planting 200 overwintering onion sets, consisting of 100 'Swift', 50 red 'Electric', and 50 yellow 'Shenshyu' varieties. I also put in cloves of Solent White and some other kind of garlic whose name I've forgotten.

Last week I cleared the Sweetcorn (as they've now finished) and weeded where the French Beans were (leaving their roots in the ground as they fix nitrogen into the soil) and put in 6 red cabbage, 4 spring cabbage and 12 sprouting broccoli seedlings for brassica fartiness next Spring. We've been eating the Curly Kale (in a fabulous pasta dish which includes bacon, anchovies and chilli, topped with grated fresh parmesan - yum!), and we've had one meal with the Brussels Sprouts, so it's all coming good. Although I do need to find a recipe that uses Chard - any ideas?

My coriander has gone beserk and I'm planning on doing something with the seeds, and the Sorrels are also clambering all over the place - think I'm going to have to thin them for next year. The peppers have done their darndest but none of them turned red. Oh well, I want to grow Chillies next year anyway so may have to rig up some kind of glass frame to go against the shed, into which peppers could go as well.

I think that's is for the time being. I'll put up piccies in the next few days...

I'm expanding!!

I can't believe that it's September already - where did the year go? And when's summer going to arrive? To be honest, I think we've had what little summer we're going to get back in May and June when it was really hot and sunny. The hottest day of the year was 11 May when The Husband and Da were putting up my shed down at the plopment. Oh well, not much we can do about it, perhaps that's the way our weather's going to be from now on - hot and sunny in late spring, and then damp and warm until winter starts hoving into view.

Yes, I'm expanding! Admittedly I've just had a 3 day Royal Visit from the venerable parents-in-law which always involves sitting around and eating a lot, but this year was entwined with sister-in-law's landmark birthday (i.e., one with an '0' at the end) including a big party with people attending from all over the country and, frankly, I'm feeling poisoned from all the food-that's-really-bad-for-you-but-tastes-SO-good plus alcohol that I've been forcing down my neck and now my clothes have mysteriously shrunk, but, more importantly for this blog, I've now taken over the top half of my plopment! Yay!

If you recall when I started posting all this drivel way back when, I told you that I had actually only taken on a half-sized allotment as an old girl, S, had been allocated the top half. Now the occasions when S and I visited at the same time where very few and far between but when we did happen to be there at the same time, she always said that she thought she'd taken on too much, that it was a lot of hard work and she felt a bit overwhelmed. Therefore I knew it would only really be a matter of time before she gave it up. With this in mind I decided to ask the Site Secretary a few weeks ago about the protocol for taking over when S decided she wanted to give up - could I just have it? Or would I have to go to the end of the waiting list? The Secretary said that as I was already working the lower half, then I could automatically have the top half, as and when S decided to jack it in. Annual rental is paid in Spring so I thought I'd have to wait until then but last Wednesday the secretary rang me to say that S had contacted her to say she was giving it up and that she'd taken everything off the plot and out of the ground that she wanted. The secretary said it was now all mine and that I wouldn't have to pay any extra until next Spring because S had already paid until then! So now I'm really excited and daunted at the same time. I can now plan for soft fruit (which I couldn't grow before as I had no room) including proper raspberry and strawberry beds, gooseberries, blueberries, (possibly) rhubarb, a small apple tree (strictly speaking I'm not allowed to plant trees on the plopment but I can't see that a small one, no more than 5 feet high say, can hurt...), Victoria plum tree, etc. But the site is overgrown - mostly with grass I have to say, but still overgrown and will need to be cleared properly, so I'm back to where I was, ground condition-wise, in February this year. I'll have an autumn and winter of digging and weeding ahead. The two pictures (you can click on all the pictures in the blog to make them bigger) show the full length of the plopment taken from the end of S's plot (my existing plot is the bottom half - you can see from where the french beans are growing up bamboo canes? I was growing stuff just in front of that, and then down to the shed - have I explained that properly? oh well, you get the idea hopefully!) I think what I'm going to have to do is clear as much of it as I can and just buy loads of black weed-suppressing plastic to cover the ground until spring. I'm also going to have to look into getting a petrol-driven strimmer as well - a rechargeable cordless one just doesn't have enough power or battery life to do the job, and I really can't manage a full size plot with a pair of garden shears - even doing the half plot was a pain.

So that's my Big News at the moment, but what's happening in the growing half? Sadly, as I suspected, my big, beautiful tomatoes have all contracted blight and have had to go on the bonfire (or will do when it dries out enough to burn stuff). You can't put them on the compost because the spores will survive, and they're too heavy to put in bin bags to take home to go to landfill so I'm going to have to burn them. Like most people, I enjoy a good bonfire but I'm extremely aware of how close to people's houses the allotments are and if I lived there I would be livid at bonfire smoke constantly drifting through my washing, so I'm going to have to time it properly. Actually, as a group of people, the allotmenteers at my site are pretty good about keeping bonfires to an absolute minimum.

I'm digging my way through my second early spuds, Maris Piper. The yield for these has been at least 2 or 3 times that of the Pentland Javelin, but they are prone to scab. Scab is unsightly but doesn't affect the eating quality of the potato once you've peeled them, so while it's a bit of a nuisance, scab's not really that much of a problem.

We've started eating the sweetcorn and it's fantastic! I've got 18 plants and they've all grown beautiful large cobs which we're currently eating for lunch! They're a variety called 'Applause' and they've been really successful.

Oh, hey, look, the sun's just come out - I think I'm going to have to sign off now and shoot out to do some digging, while I can.....

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.

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".

....Gods, what a monster......

I was dahn the plopment this morning, doing the usual, weeding, clearing a bit more land for the forthcoming Winter Spinach and Swiss Chard plants, when I decided to pick some beans. I'm growing Climbing French Beans (variety: Cobra - the same that whatsisname off Gardener's World is growing at his allotment, but I put mine in first....Joe Swift, that's him). A few plants have grown to the top of the poles but the majority are still clustering at around knee-height.

"There'll be just a few, " thought I, "I can use a few tonight and blanch then freeze the rest". Readers, what a sad, deluded fool I was to think such naive thoughts. I couldn't believe how many there were! So I decided that, when I got them home, I'd weigh them. As you can see, I put them in my biggest mixing bowl and stuck them on the scales (remembering to weigh the empty bowl first and zero it) and, amazingly, there are just over 2lbs of beans, or 933 grams for you more modern types. I checked with Sainsburys online to see how much they're selling their organic beans for and they're currently charging £6.45 a kilo. That means there's six quid's worth of French Beans in that bowl alone. God only knows, though, what I'm going to do with all the beans that are going to be coming - I've spawned a monster!!

Another candidate for the category of 'monster' is this cucumber - this is the same one that I pictured just six days ago and you can see how much bigger it's grown! I really hope it works properly as I adore cucumber. The plants are starting to sprawl across the ground a bit now so I'm having to tie them up to the bamboo wigwam in the hope that the developing cucumbers grow straight down. Unfortunately they do seem to be popular with Whitefly and I'm not sure how much damage they'll do - I think Google will be my friend in this and I'll research it in a bit.

It was a lovely day at the site today - the swifts have started swooping and screeching again after a gap of about a fortnight. They'll be gone by August so I'm wondering if the adults are now flying around with the fledglings, getting their muscles working and building up their strength for the monumental flight soon back to Africa. I'll really miss them when they've gone, they were joyfully chasing each other no higher than about 10 feet above my head today. It occurred to me that there were very few pictures of the rest of the site on my blog, so, the first one here is a view taken from beside my shed looking up the pathway. I'm about three-quarters of the way down the site which is nearly 5 acres in total - it's really quite big as you can see, and surrounded by houses on all four sides. A bit open, though, so it can get windy, but lovely nonetheless.

Facing the other way, down the path, immediately next to my plopment is a small car parking area - which you can see in the picture - then more allotments. There are others on the other side of the road but I didn't photograph those as the batteries in my camera were playing up then! C and M have the allotment with the white metal chairs and table, at which they hold parties on sunny Saturday evenings! How terribly civilised....


Some of you may wish to know what the plot next door to mine now looks like - this is the one, you may recall, that I was envious of earlier in the year because it's so neatly laid out with raised beds. Well, this is it now, and I have to say that, if nothing else, the sunflowers are magnificent!

Finally, a general shot from the end of my plopment looking back towards the shed and pathway. Please note the fantastic genuine 1970s parasol - my parents-in-law never throw anything away and to them I am particularly grateful for letting me have this fantasy in yellow and brown to sit beneath while resting my weary bones and deciding what to weed next. It has been a total life-saver this summer, so thanks Desmond and Minnie!