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....)

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.

It's NOT a monsoon, okay?

According to the BBC, yesterday's downpour was absolutely not a monsoon although, apparently, some of the more populist newspapers were calling it such. According to The People Who Know About These Sort Of Things (i.e., proper scientists), 'monsoons' only occur in the Indian Subcontinent and although, as in this case, the term is frequently misused to describe heavy rain, it actually refers to the seasonal reversal of wind direction. So all we had was a month's worth of rain in one 24 hour period. And, boy, didn't it feel like it?!

I decided that I really ought to check out the plopment and see if everything was still there. I haven't been posting much because, frankly, I don't think it's all that interesting for you guys to read that I cut some lettuce for my tea, did some weeding and decided to stake my tomatoes as they were getting a bit tall and being blown over by the wind at our exposed site. But an update is a bit overdue.

I went down to the site for a couple of hours today just after lunch and, thankfully, everything was still there and thriving happily, so let me put up some piccies:

First off, here are the tomatoes which, as you can see, have now been staked! These eleven plants were given to me by a friend who didn't know what they were (other than tomatoes), i.e., whether they were bush or ... er ... the other kind (what are they called? you know, the ones that grow tall?) Anyway, I stuck them in the ground, did that business of removing the side shoots (when I remembered) and they seem to be happy enough. There are flowers and everything now. When the fruits start forming, I'll have to remember to start feeding them. After taking this picture I weeded out the encroaching couch grass that you can see at the bottom of the picture - b***** stuff....

Growing just behind the tomatoes are my outdoor indoor cucumbers. These are Telegraph cucumber plants which are, ideally, meant to be grown indoors but I'm trying them outdoors and I'm surprised at how well they're doing. They've thoroughly enjoyed the recent wet weather and there are a handful of little baby cucumbers coming along on both plants. I had to tie them further up the bamboo poles so that they don't trail on the ground and the plants and stems are really hairy and feel like they should sting but don't - bizarre. You can also see one of the cucumbers coming along nicely.

The onions are doing very well although apparently there's been an outbreak of Downy Mildew on some plots further up the site. I had a look at mine today and I'm not sure if they've contracted this or not. I'll need to keep a close eye on them because I'm very proud of my onions this year. The close up picture shows how large they've grown in comparison to an ordinary trowel. I think I'm going to have to start harvesting some soon...


So, what next? I'm growing Climbing French Beans (var: Cobra) up poles this year (I prefer french beans to runners which get stringy) and even though most of the plants are nowhere near the top of the poles yet, I've started harvesting some damn fine looking beans. Last year, before I had the plopment, and for several years before I had been growing French Beans in a couple of huge pots at home and last year had barely a pound of beans from them in total all summer. I think I've picked around a pound of beans just today so this all bodes well! Yum!

Just at the bottom right of the bean plant picture, you can see the Red Cabbages, so here's a better picture of the six biggest ones. I have some others growing in the brassica patch but they're much smaller so should mature a bit later in the year.

Also in the brassica patch are my gorgeous Curly Kale. I have been cooking a fabulous pasta recipe using garlic, bacon and Curly Kale so decided to grow it rather than buy the pre-shredded bagged stuff from the supermarket. My veg book (the Hessayon one) said that Kale was one of the easiest vegetables to grow and I can say it's been simple - just put the seed in a pot and it grows! I think we're going to be able to start harvesting a few leaves very soon, so I may well have to sow a few more seeds to get plants to see us through winter. You can't really tell from the picture (because it's been taken looking down on the plants and through the netting) but they're actually about a foot tall).

The sweetcorn is doing its sweetcorny thing, with each plant getting bigger and taller at different rates! When the wind is blowing through them they have that lovely rustly tall grass sound. Fingers crossed that I get some decent cobs out of them.

Finally, despite the wind and the cold, my little red pepper plants are still hanging on in there and starting to put out flowers which, hopefully, will turn into luscious sweet red peppers. Actually, I've already decided that if they don't work this year I shall persevere with them next year, perhaps finding different ways to grow them because (a) I like them and (b) they're so blimmin' expensive in the shops - I mean, 69p each!! - that's it's worth keeping going until I get it right!