on the allotment

I got back down to the allottment today after a week of dashing down only once to water the squash that I had to leave in the shed. Finally they are all planted, although the squash area is very dry and could do with a some good compost. I was quite relieved that the shed dweller didn't eat them or sit on them!

The borlotti beans have suddenly flowered, and at the same time are looking yellowed. I don't think that they'll be a bumper crop after the cooking incident.

The potatoes on the other hand are looking spectacular. Or their foliage is, anyway. And so are the onions - despite a rather large amount of bind week trying to entwine itself odious self around them.

Our harvest today was a huge bag of peas, and two radishes. We ate the radishes on the spot, so there is no photographic evidence, but they were mildy spicy and very nice. The peas are here:

The girls set about picking the peas with a pair of scissors, and there may be some number of peas that were immediately eaten rather than being included in the harvest - but it's all ending up in the right place either way!

After getting the squash in and recreating the netting covers on the brassicas I decided to pull the carpet off the remainder of the second brassica row. This involved much dirt in the eyeball sockets from a combination of wind and flapping, so that was a highly enjoyable little game. 

But having got it cleared of loose debris and then rolled up, I found that the soil underneath was excellent and pretty weed free. That gives me some nice space to plant in the chevalier calabrese that is in the greenhouse.

I also planted out the courgettes, electing to put them in the carrots row due to the larger amount of squash that I've planted. That row is very empty at the moment anyway, due to me losing the sieve! I don't want to plant my carrots until I've tilled out some fine sandy soil from my "home pile" which is full of weeds and probably the poo of some small children. That's a story for another day!

And I leave you with more lovely photos of poppies and corn, plus the full view update photo!

This is a backdated update, as I've been so busy with orchestra and school that I dashed about the allotment and didn't get a chance to make any posts about it!

The big excitement was the first sight of peas!

They were delicious! I forgot to take a photo of the harvest before we ate them though!

The big annoyance was that the foxes had walked over my netted cabbages, and broken over half of them. It's a good thing I don't actually like cabbages!

I managed to send the family off for the day so that I could head down to the allotment and get the first round of brassica's in. These are the ones that have been growing in the veg-table, and were getting rather large!

I needed to dig over and de-weed the row for these, but I forced my hand by digging them up and taking them down laid on trays - that meant that I had to dig quickly and get them in.

This job took most of the afternoon, but the finished results were worth wrapping up (in insect mesh!) I got purple sprouting broccoli, two types of cauliflower and savoy cabbage planted out today, with calabrese and some more cauliflower still to come.

I also noticed that the peas are now flowering - my favourite time, and even better, I have one spear of asparagus showing! This is the third year of the asparagus, so I think I can start cropping it! And only a week ago I thought I'd killed it off completely.

The corn is also coming along strongly, and despite not getting down there to water during the week, the beans are fine. Not even nibbled by snails.

I also emptied out my compost, and transferred the secondary compost pile into the main bin. Once it's full I'll cover it over and leave it to quietly rot away.

Oh - and I almost forgot to mention the plum tree. It's so overloaded with tiny green plums that it's obviously going to be another bumper plum harvest!

This is the full view - things are starting to come together now!

Last weekend we have the good fortune to enjoy some of the nicest, hottest weather so far in the English springtime. Also, we had good timing to be on an activity day, with overnight camping on that wonderfully warm day.

Luckily, I thought to leave the greenhouses open while we were away. The evening was cold, but the plants should have been hardy enough to withstand that.

Except... that I didn't leave them open at all. I had the thought, but failed the action. As a result, the beans on the top shelf - the borlotti beans - were baked. And they haven't even been harvested yet.

About half of them are totally shrivelled, and about half are mostly fine. It's been a week since the photo on the right was taken, and there are also two beans that I thought were toast which appear to be growing back.

So yay.

Some of the squashes and pumpkins were also scorched, but most of those have bounced back admirably.

After lining up all the greenhouse veg in the shade and watering them profusely, I headed down to the allotment with the french climbing and dwarf beans so that I could plant them out. They were getting rather tall and precarious, and needed to start to climb up some supports.

Because it was still the hottest day of the year, made sure that I was well protected. Sun screen, a hat, long sleeved shirt, and an umbrella. See the photo below for proof of that!

That's the newly planted french beans you can see in the middle, and in the shade the dwarf beans that I was putting in at the time.

I've created a nice shelter around my redcurrents and blackcurrents, and the berries are shaping up nicely there. We might even get to eat some this year!

And for the first time I have cherries on my cherry tree. I suspect that I might need to protect it from birds too, so I need to check that.

I probably should have updated the blog last week, after my flying visit to the allotment during which I built a fantastic tent-like structure around my runner beans.

But I didn't. I'll have to live with that oversight, but I am sure I'll get over it. 

I didn't even take a photo of the tent. Silly me. But I DID take a photo of the beans when I removed the tent today:

So, as you can see, the tent did diddly squat about protecting my beans from the frost. Yep, that's one dead bean.

Luckily, about half of the beans are mostly fine. And even more luckily - I don't even like runner beans. I only planted them because I didn't eat so many last year that I had lots of seeds to harvest.

And they were so pretty I had to plant them again!

I have to say the most lucky part is that I hadn't planted out the french beans or the borlotti beans.

Alos, a lot of other plots on the allotment lost their entire potato crops in the frost. But mine had gone in late, and were hardly showing, so I didn't have that problem.

And I'd also only planted out the first earlies - the Duke of York - and still had the maincrop in the shed chitting.

Chitting... That word still makes me snigger.

So today I decided to plant the maincrop out. The only problem facing me here is that the purple sprouting broccoli is in the way, and it's still harvesting. Not so much now, but still putting out a bit - like a faded old tramp. But I was tired of waiting for it to finish.

I compromised, and dug two potato trenches as normal, but in a slightly condensed area. And in the centre of the trenches, the middle pile - there is still one broccoli plant growing.

The other big achievement of the day was getting all the corn planted out. There are three varieties, minipop, tuxedo and golden nugget.

And then of course, there are my peas, still going strong. Here's a photo (just because I like them!)

I made best use of the polling day today by taking the kiddos down to the allotment and making them work hard. Face it, it's educational!

The dandelions are still there, laughing at my face with their wicked wicked weediness, and they are also turning overnight into puff balls of weed invaders, then blowing over the allotment. But they don't really worry me - they are pretty easy to pull out of fresh soil once they are as big as your hand. Does that make me sound bad? Probably!

I fixed up the last two rows of peas in front of each of the existing rows. These two rows are likely to grow to 1m and 75cm respectively, while the two inner rows are looking at 1.5m - so hopefully I can harvest all 4 relatively easily. I do perceive that there might be problems with the lowest crop on the inner two, but we'll see how that turns out. The outer two rows are sure to be more straggly, with more gaps for reaching through, as that is how they both turned out last year, and seem to be starting off in a similar vein this year.

I fastened the top of the runner beans support onto the end of the pea support and lay out a double row of bamboo poles in a zigzag pattern. I have three more sets of beans to add in, and I want them all to have sufficiant space, but I am still condensing the area in which they'll live. I've put the supports much closer to each other than last year. As they grow up they don't need as much room on the side.

The next lot of beans can probably go out as soon as possible. The main thing to consider is another bout of frost, and as it's now May 6th, I am counting on this risk being very low. The french climbing, borlotti and dwarf french beans are the ones that I want to protect most though, so I don't mind holding off planting them out for a bit longer.

I also started to dig over the weed choked carrot row, which still has fennel happily growing in it, and a lonely celery plant and three bluebells. I was delighted to find it easy to dig up, despite the total coverage of garden weeds. The interesting mix of weeds in this row was brought about because we imported the dirt from our back garden when we dug out the slag heap that was left by the builders who put up our conservatory (14 years ago!).

And by "we dug out" I mean Mr Boxer shorts really.

This dirt is sandy rather than clay based - so it was fabulous for carrots, and now proves to be easy to dig over which is great. I have a pile of leftover dirt by the shed which I plan to use for this year's carrots. I am going to dig out a large triple width trench, then fill it with filtered garden dirt and plant the carrots. Last year I had one carrot that was 1 foot long. That just proves that this dirt is winner, since the year before all I got was barbie legs and octopusses!

The only problem with the spare pile of dirt is that I MAY have planted a poo or too in there. We don't have access to the toilets while at the allotment, so I keep a solid potty down there for the kids to use. It has a pull out draw to empty. Wee goes directly on the compost, but poo isn't so welcome. Apparently foxes think it's tasty too, so I have to bury it or take it home, as there is nothing quite as disgusting as the leftovers of a poo meal. 

This weekend the forecast is for rain, so I don't know if I'll get much more done, but I am pleased that I had the chance to use polling day if the weekend does turn out to be rubbish.

I heard a rumour that Sunday was going to be pouring with rain, so I needed to get my arse down to the alloment on Saturday in order to get some digging done.

I could really do withOUT the rain, to be honest, but controlling weather never has been a talent I aquired. I wasn't able to do a brownie "Weather badge" when I was 7, and it's not got any easier 30 (something) years later.

So with the grey clouds scudding across the sky and hubby safely at home keeping one eye out for rain in order to take in my washing, the kids and I headed down to the allotment.

They ran off to play with some friends, and I didn't see hair nor hide of them for over 2 hours - which was plenty of time to get some digging underway.

I have to say, I DID get a lot done, but I had a large amount of things on my "I'd really like to get these done list", and I didn't get all of them done.

I also forgot to take my camera down, so if it doesn't rain tomorrow I'll go back and take a photo, but in the meantime, here are some of my happy little squash plants, who are waiting for me to get a row cleared for them.

This next one is called RP - that's short for Random Pumpkin. I have no idea what it actually is, but it's growing bigger and faster than the rest!

The funny thing is, the row of seedlings that is doing the best are the ones from my harvest last year - most of whom where unlabeled, and so I was mostly guessing to which type they were. The packaged seeds (which were a year old, but sealed) are growing much slower (or not at all).

I snatched some allotment time this morning instead of working, and took two trays of pea seedlings down to plant out. I'd erected a pea frame Monday afternoon with the help my number one gardener, so it was all ready to go.

I had to finish stringing the frames up, as I abandoned that in order to administer first aid to my mini digger, who had fallen over her fork and landed on her knees. But that didn't take long.

These are the two tallest types of peas, sugar snap and carouby mesane mange tout, so I've built the pea frame in the middle of the row, and I plan to run two smaller frames on either side for the other two.

Right now it's really hot, so I hope I've given them enough water to settle in!

I woke this morning to the sound of rain, and my first thought was "No!!!! I was going to be down at the allotment!" and then my second thought was "Oh no, why didn't I do the washing YESTERDAY?" and then my third throught was "Well at least it's nice for the London Marathon".

So you can't say that I am ALL selfish!

But luckily, after the initial rain the day settled into a grey and overcast one with windy weather, scudding clouds and sunny patches. We went off to the allotment afterall and got loads done.

I now have several rows re-dug, onions and shallots in, and potatoes planted:

The rhubarb has gone mad, as usual, so I had to do the first harvest of that. A nice surprise also was the purple sprouting broccoli which I left to its own devices. In fact - strangely - the ordinary broccoli which had already been harvested, but not removed had decided to grown a sprouting variety too!