Ending & beginning

It feels very autumnal now, with a cold snap and the clocks going back we've turned the corner toward winter. The plot is mostly clear right now but it's also time to start planting some things for the new year.

The cabbages are at last beginning to ball up, really not sure how well they'll do this year but they will take the worst the winter can throw at them, so I'll just wait and see. The broccoli is looking okay too, it hasn't yet formed any heads though.

New plantings include broad beans (aquadulce) and I've planted some of the cloves from last years garlic. I went to buy new garlic but no one had any, some of the last year cloves aren't that big but I can always plant some more later.

I've still left the final squash in the ground hoping that they will ripen a bit more. It may be in vain? they seem a bit green to me compared to the other ones. The plants themselves have mostly died back, i shall have to clear them soon as well. Ordered some potatoes as well, Desiree and Charlotte as usual. They won't go i the ground until next March.

Wings of Desiree

Although the potato crop wasn't as big as last year the Desiree potatoes did okay. Quite a large bag full to keep us going until Christmas I hope.

My sunflower (only one survived the slugs) is in bloom, just. I'm sure it'll open out a bit more over the next few days. It's not quite 5 foot high and the flower is only about 6 inches wide.

Courgettes are coming thick and fast, the yellows doing rather well. I'm picking twice a week perhaps ten each visit.

I might get a cucumber yet! Only one plant survived (again thank you slugs)  and it has several tiny spiny cucumbers forming on it.

The first of the squash are also beginning to form, by shape I'd guess this was a cobnut squash, I'll have to wait and see what the other ones are.

Finally some tomatoes, they're rather small cherry tomatoes. I hope we get enough sun to ripen them.

Olympic Gold!

A long time between posts but I have still been visiting the allotment so here are a few pictures of what's been going on. The jet stream we were told moved north at the end of July and so at last we had one hot sticky week which was just in time to set the courgettes off. Although the weather has since gone back to sunshine and showers I'm picking twice a week and we aren't quite eating them quickly enough. I made a courgette cake yesterday!

My other main crop is the french beans, nowhere near so prolific as last year but pretty with the three different colours I planted.

The yellow ones have the smallest harvest, they tend to be flat and rippled with only a pair on each fruiting spur.

The purple ones have done much better, quite long round beans that usually go on to produce even more from each spur. The purple flowers turn blue as they die off.

The green although the shortest are the most abundant and at times hang in great bunches. They are really the best but it was fun to try the other ones.

Intermittent crops of raspberries have been enjoyed with ice cream, I like to mash them up to make my own raspberry ripple flavour.

At last the tomatoes are a flower but I think some of the other plants may have a bit of blight. The potatoes also got leaf blight so I've started to dig them up. The potatoes themselves are okay but the harvest again is much less than last year.

This is a self seeded nasturtium which is growing on my compost heap. The seeds I planted both this year and last have quite yellow flowers but I prefer these intense orange ones.

The five broccoli plants I got from mum are in the ground, I planted my last few cabbages between them to make a row. A net to keep the birds off and a liberal sprinkling of slug pellets has helped protect them so far. 

St Swithin's day

After the wettest week in the wettest July on record we reach St Swithin's day and remarkably it hasn't so far rained. It might be a bit too late for my harvest this season though. I picked a few tiny courgettes and dug up some little potatoes. French beans are beginning to form but I don't expect anything like last years bags full of beans. If we don't have a few more sunny days I fear there won't be many tomatoes or squash come august.

A couple more artichokes for dinner, they have done surprisingly well despite the cooler temperatures and rain. There were about a dozen ripe pea pods which I picked, the peas as sweet as anything but not enough to make a meal with so I just ate them raw. Not much else going on, I got out the strimmer and cut the grass in the process of which I chopped down one of my violette french bean plants. Oh dear! even less chance of a bmper crop.

Pathetic peas

All this rain and weeds are growing like mad. most of the week end has been spent having a good tidy up. The lavender in bloom around the plot post looks good, the bind weed growing through the lavender isn't so welcome.

The french beans are reaching the tops of the canes now and are in flower. The Violet has appropriately purple flowers! The yellow beans have creamy coloured flowers and the normal green beans have white flowers.

The pathetic peas. Only one plant has really got going enough to produce pods, a disappointment after last year.

I ate them directly from the pod, so sweet and tasty. I wish I had a few more.

I was worried about blight, my neighbour thought my potatoes might have it. I think they're just going over. I dug up a plant to check, fifteen smallish new potatoes, all in good condition.

There's quite a few raspberries coming, they prefer the cooler wet conditions. In Scotland we saw them growing wild in the way Blackberries do here.

This one was ready to eat which I did without even washing my hands!

Some weeds are more attractive than others but they all had to go, at least they come up roots and all from the damp soil. I now have mud ingrained into my finger nails.

The view from the compost heap. Under the green nets and with plenty of slug pellets for defence I put out my savoy cabbages. In front of that there are some more tomato plants and in the very front patch I've tried putting out some leeks although they were rather tiny.

Blooming

Perhaps a little warmer last week and things began to grow. The nasturtiums are in flower, these bright red ones are self sown from last year, the other are more orangey in colour. The flowers taste hot and peppery in a salad.

Flowers also on the patty pan squash, you can see a little squash in there too. The courgettes got a bit bigger but the fruit are still too small to be worth picking.

My canes have a good covering of raspberries, I hope to get a good crop of them this year.

My main job was clearing away the first broad beans, they had finished cropping and were a bit of a mess having been buffeted around in the gales. This frees up a bit of important space for cabbages, tomatoes and perhaps I'll get those leeks in the ground?

Digging out the bean roots I found a few potatoes. This was last years potato patch and they must have grown form spuds left in the ground. A few were skewered with the spade but I took the others home and ate them.

The french beans are topping out so I snipped off their growing tips, they're also just beginning to flower. 

Progress

Such a long time since my last entry and so much has happened, sorry I've been to busy to post. a two week holiday in June isn't the best timing for the allotment but it has to be done. This bag of beans I picked before I went away.

Some pods held as many as seven beans! Shelling them takes ages and is hard work on my nails.

I've probably picked about a dozen of these tubs full now, each tub holds about 700g of beans. There are eleven tubs in the deep freeze and we've eaten a few beans already.

I had quite a tasty strawberry crop too, these are from the newer plants I put in last year. They have a really good flavour.

Yum yum!

The french beans aren't looking so hot right now. Quite a few had blown off their canes and I had to re wrap them, you always twist them anti-clockwise because this is the way they grow. I wonder if they grow clockwise in Australia?

The parsnips are doing well, really! I had to do a lot of careful weeding but the Turnips and beetroot have fared okay as well.

I put out some tomato plants before I went away worried that they'd dry out if I left them undercover.  They've survived but are still really small, the few I did leave covered are much bigger and I need to plant them out as well now.

The potatoes are in flower, these ones are a pretty pale shade of blue.

Most of them are whiter like these above.

I have several big globe artichokes now. This plant has tulip shaped globes.

These are more traditional round artichokes but they're supposed to be the same variety.

I picked two which we ate for supper, despite the shape they were very tasty.

More beans, like green fingers reaching up. Some plants are so heavy with beans they've collapsed.

My very first patty pan squash, it's about the size of a fifty pence piece at the moment.

The courgettes are tiny, quite a few fruits have appeared but all really small so far.

And the yellow ones are even smaller, perhaps one cm long.

This might be my total crop of peas. Despite a double planting I've only got about six plants and this is the first pod on the only one that's in flower.

I dug my garlic up too. The foliage had died right back, the heads aren't that big but they weren't about to get any bigger.