Phew what a scorcher! Or comparatively speaking given recent weeks. As we are at Neil’s half ironman triathlon this weekend I popped to the allotment today mainly to do some watering so things would be ok in our absence. However, the weather was glorious and I could find plenty of things to do so I ended up being there for a few hours. In fact there were so many things I wanted I get done I was jumping between jobs in what was probably a bit of a disorganised manner! Still I accomplished a fair few things.
I potted on the rest of the tomatoes that are going in the greenhouse on plot 97. This was really hot work as I had to lug the grow bags around emptying them into pots while temperatures reached 44c inside the greenhouse! In previous years we have fed our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines with Miracle Gro Organic liquid feed, adding it to the watering can once a week. When we did our B&Q run last weekend to stock up on grow bags and things we went to buy a couple of bottles of food only to find it is no longer available there. I’m sure it’s still stocked elsewhere but we don’t really have time to spare tracking it down! So we bought the only organic vegetable food option they had, the Miracle Gro dry feed. You add it to the compost, dig it through and water in. It reckons one application lasts 8 weeks. So we added that to the large pots we transplanted our tomatoes into and we’ll have to wait and see how it performs.
While in the greenhouses I realised there were a few other things that probably needed potting on or there was a risk they wouldn’t last until we had time to get to them. So I potted on the Brussels sprouts (hastings) and cauliflowers (snowball) and pit them straight out into the coldframe.
I pulled up some old sprouting broccoli and curly kale that was going to seed and dismantled the tunnel they were in. I also did some wedding of the larger weeds, so things looked much neater which is always my preferred way to leave things when we are away.
Some chippings had been delivered to the car park from the council. I put a couple of wheelbarrows over some patchy areas of plot 118 where you could see membrane peeping through. But I stopped after two as the chippings were largely green matter so it seemed a bit pointless to exert too much energy on it.
Having admired how far on some of Bob’s beetroot was and having only planted ours out a couple of weeks ago he revealed he had started his in the greenhouse as plugs. So instead of sowing more beetroot and chard straight outside on plot 118 I started some off in trays. Another plus is the neat lines we’ll have without inconsistent germination!
Lots of things are coming on in the sunshine. The grapevine has little grape buds on it and the plum tree looks like it will have a bumper crop after last years rest. The asparagus has produced seven spears of varying heights in the last week alone. I’m desperate to eat some this year but once again Neil says we have to wait! It doesn’t seem like it’s growing any thicker this year than last so I’m not sure what we are waiting for or what we could be doing to help it along, but oh well. I vote that if it doesn’t make big improvements next year we eat it and use the space for something else!
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