It has been far too many weeks since our last update so this one covers quite a lot of happenings! We knew that the end of June and the start of July was going to be a busy time as we had Glastonbury festival and Neil’s Ironman event, both of which spanned full weekends and which fell consecutively. In addition, just prior to going to Glastonbury the weather really picked up and temperatures were consistently high meaning that lots of jobs that needed doing couldn’t really wait what would amount to more than a fortnight.
Prior to Glastonbury both of us spent almost a full day at the allotment getting things ready to be left alone for a couple of weeks. This involved a major weeding of both plots, including the paths on plot 97. We had a lot of things still in the greenhouse or coldframe that needed to be planted out or potted on. We potted on all the tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, peppers and aubergines into their final larger pots. We added a handful of the organic pellet feed that lasts for up to 8 weeks to each of them. In the greenhouse on plot 118 Neil dug the pots down slightly into the open soil, this seemed to work quite well when we tried it with a few select items last year as a bit of an experiment. It does seem to mean they don’t require so much watering.
We potted on all the brassicas but they had still been in the small trays they were sown in so they went into the small black bags we use as an intermediate stage. We put them straight out into the coldframe as we didn’t want there to be too much delay in them being ready to be planted outside once we returned from all our festivities!
Courgettes and some squash were ready to go outside and they did their usual impression of looking like they had died in the days following being planted out! But, as usual, they perked up in no time and once we had returned they looked much better.
There were loads of other things that we did and I had been really efficient and written a list of them for blog purposes but due to a technology fail this got deleted! But we did get to a stage where we felt content that the plots would not come to ruin due to our absence. Once we returned we were pleasantly surprised by how good they looked and also by how much had grown in the sunshine. We were also able take our first produce home-strawberries, rainbow chard and some mini cucumbers. In fact we have declared this year the year of the strawberry. We are at 25 punnets so far and there are still fruit on some of the plants!
In the last week or so the heatwave has meant that some things look permanently parched. Neil has set up the greenhouse irrigation system on plot 97 which helps. We have now planted out all of our squash varieties. All of the brassicas are either planted out under netting or are outside but still in the small bags still developing their roots. It does feel like they are really behind, I’m not sure whether this is due to the cool start to the year or our being busy or a combination of both, but they will be ready to go out this week. We have had a couple of trugs filled with produce, which along with more strawberries and cucumbers has included some peas, broad beans, red and blackcurrants and a handful of blackberries.
Having visited today to do some watering in the greenhouses we have our first red tomato! There are lots of green ones on all the plants but this is the first one to ripen. It is the gardener’s delight variety that is in the lead, although the plant does not look too healthy so it may be in a panic that its days are numbered! I also discovered that one of our pepper plants had lots of tiny holes in most of its leaves. I had expected to find some whitefly which we have had previously on some greenhouse plants but there were none. After very close inspection I found lots of very thin, bright green caterpillars. My internet searching has not given me a conclusive answer yet as to what they are or how to treat them but as the only thing I had at my disposal was some whitefly organic insecticide I gave the plant a good spray with that – even if the active ingredient doesn’t see them off the drenching might have drowned them! I’ll do an inspection at the weekend to see if there is any change.
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