August 2010 Archives

After weeks and weeks of rain, I finally got a chance to go and do some work on the allotment, beyond the snatch and grab harvesting that I've been doing. The weeks of rain had given a rather needed benefit of very soft diggable soil, so I was able to turn over and smooth out the ex pea bed, and the dwarf end of the beans.

I also turned over the middle slot of corn, as we've eaten all of those. They were golden nugget, and extremely sweet! We're now onto the second lot to ripen, and these are a paler yellow with more slender cobs. They are not as richly sweet as the golden nuggets, so I am considering doing a double crop of the nuggets instead next year.

The last corn slot are the mini pops, which are good for baby corn, and should be harvested soon too. It seems like an awfully large amount of area for the mini corn cobs though.

My squash are doing well - but with a tiny caveat. Out of 5 butternut squash plants, only one has provided fruit, and that one is a big monster. The turk's turban on the other hand is a mini squash. So are the vegetable spaghetti's and the marrow's. I have 6 small sugar pumpkins which look just right.

The plums are now ripe, and they are also tiny. They are half the size of last year's crops. Although we always have far too many anyway, so perhaps small ones will be eaten more?

The cauliflower are also showing up small, and my chevalier calabrese haven't produced any heads at all yet - they are normally huge, cropping a massive centre floret, then many side shoots. I am hopeful that they might still do something, as they are big and healthy. If the weather turns warm once school goes back, then they might have a chance.

The tomatoes in the back yard have finally decided to start going red, and the purple beans have been a bumper crop. I expected two or three crops from the blue lake climbing beans, but only got one, which was disappointing.

Oh, and did I mention my lovely new potoatoes? No wait, they were not new potatoes - they are just small. Rats. Still tasty, but fiddly to peel! My onions were tiny too, and we're using them as shallots! The leeks are looking small, but they are happy with colder weather, so they should continue to grow and we can use them through winter.

The areas I have cleared will now be sowed over with green manure, and I have plenty of that ready to go. Now it's time to start looking forward to next year, and how I can do better!

Today is the first day that my Abel and Cole fruit and veg box comes with just fruit in it. From now on, the allotment will provide all our vegetables week to week. I did this last year, and I was able to be self sufficient on the vegetable front for the rest of the year!

Although I've not been updating this blog regularly, that doesn't mean I've not been down there - I've just not had enough time to be leisurely about it.

Right now it's the school holidays. That means that I have both more and less time at the same time! But this past weekend I had to see a client on the Saturday, so hubby and girls went off to Yorkshire to visit the in-laws without me. That gave me the freedom to spend 4 hours down at the allotment yesterday!

The results of that were that I completely cleared the mangetout and sugar snap peas bed and took down their climbing frame. I collected all the dried pods for next years seeds, and have so far dug over half of it. I'll be planting some green manure in there.

The blackberry bushes are bursting, and the red currants are still overloaded, despite harvesting about half of them a few weeks ago.

The poppies have died down, and their seed heads are ready to be removed (unless I want 8,000 plants growing in their stead next year!)

The french climbing beans are moving along nicely, I picked, blanched and froze all the ripe ones yesterday. And I also picked one corn cob to test. It was full of plump kernals, but it was white. It tasted lovely, but the cob was bendy when it was cooked. I am wondering what I've done wrong. After a bit of research I think a few of my other cobs are now past their prime as the kernels have started to deflate. Unfortunately taking a holiday in another country in the middle of summer can really damage your crops!

The brassicas are all getting along well, apart from the collection of rejects that I planted out to replaced the cauliflowers that bolted. They don't look like they are hurrying to grow, but they were surplus to requirements in the first place.

I have to admit to being disappointed with my butternuts - only one plant of four has a large fruit on it (or any fruit at all!). There are four good looking small sugar pumpkins, one turk's turban, one vegetable spaghetti, and it turns out that "random pumpkin" was a marrow. Bummer - now I have about four of those, and I am not a marrow fan! I have more vegetable spaghetti and marrow plants growing at home from the runners up pile.

So here is a few photos from the past month: