…As our regular reader(s?) will know it’s been a while since the last update on here, very nearly a month in fact. We’ve not been managing to get down to the plot as much as we would like this summer for a variety of reasons, the last two weekends before this one felt like we had hardly done anything. We tried to change that this weekend and we have got a few days booked off at the end of the week to hit the plot again (and make them both look nicer for the allotment competition judge who will be coming round soon!)
Since the last update we have decided to try and put a better path down 118, it currently has just a black membrane down and frankly looks a bit rubbish. It doesn’t help we’ve been piling weeds on there to dry out in the sun so it looked a mess and really needed sorting. To that end I have been scavaging a few flags (17 at the last count) which have been an absolute pain to move around, I had no idea how heavy they were. I set to work laying a few of those this weekend whilst Pilla bravely tackled weeding the whole of 118. It’s a huge plot but Pilla is very efficient with the hoe and managed to get the lot done. We both weeded the front after that and the plot looks way better for it.
We now have a nice new sign on the front of the plot from the Society – the dreaded ‘Hosepipe Ban’ sign. Our plots are pretty close to taps and we don’t really water that much outside of the greenhouse so hopefully it shouldn’t effect us too much. We did feel sorry for the people who have to walk down past a few plots to get to a tap. In the heat that is not a fun job! We really have noticed the lack of rain, the ground is very dry, but it’s doesn’t look like our plants are suffering too much at the moment.
We spent the few hours we had on Sunday on the plot sorting the greenhouse. It was really packed with chilli, sweet pepper and aubergine plants to the extent you couldn’t really get in there. This is not great for a variety of reasons not least that the fruits in there need light to ripen. This was a much bigger job than we thought, we pulled out all the Jalapeno, Cayenne, Padron, Sweet, Marconi, Chili, Twilight, Black Pearl and Habanero Peppers – we must have 4 or 5 of each. Most of them needed staking and some we decided to give away, but once they got a good watering they got placed back in the greenhouse with a lot more room and hopefully a lot more light.
We have been taking loads of produce off the plot. We must have had about 2 kilo’s of strawberries so far, including this rather interesting looking fella. I’m not sure if we should have censored it or not! Alongside the mountains of strawberries have been getting an almost equal amount of raspberries. Seeing how many we got this year, I’m not sure we needed to buy the second variety we got earlier in the year, next year we’ll be swamped! We’ve also had (in no order) turnips, cauliflowers, carrots, courgettes and cucumbers (you really forget how many of these you get. It’s madne, ss), potatoes, red currants, blackberries and more lettuce than we could possibly eat. Ace.
To say sorry again I’ve made a video on what Plot 97 has done this year. You lucky things.
Another long day at the allotment. We got there bright and early to find two gifts – a bottle of homemade banana and apricot wine from Chris (thanks Chris!) and Bob had rotavated all of the ground that we had turned over last week (thanks Bob!). This was a huge job giving us lots more usable space and must have taken ages because the soil was rock solid. – the soil looks perfect for planting in now. I tried on a section I had turned over on Saturday and whilst Iwas struggling with the rotavator Pilla was busy feeding and watering the garlic and shallots on plot 97.
We made a quick call in to the stores to buy netting and canes (you can never have enough canes it seems) and also returned with a massive amount of wire fencing, which should easily be enough to cover the full side and the back of our plot. After lunch I used hoops to make the tunnel covering the cauliflowers and red cabbage, while Pilla sowed a couple of rows of swedes. Hopefully this should protect them from attack better than last year as the mesh on this netting is much finer.
Back on plot 97 we planted out our sweetpeas across the front and up the bamboo arch and filled up their place in the cold frame with the runner beans and purple sprouting broccoli. I did some more weeding on plot 118 and Pilla planted out kale (dwarf green curled), savoy cabbages (tarvoy) and sweetcorn (sweet nugget and mini-pop, a mini variety from Bob) in the greenhouse and a few more lettuce varieties out in the plots. We also potted on some of remaining chilli plants.
Our first fruit shouldn’t be too long away now, the strawberry flowers will soon turn to fruit and the red current bushes already have little green berries on-exciting!
We’ve both been really busy lately – walking marathons, running marathon training and work which had somewhat restricted our ‘plot time’ and definitely restricted our blog time, so we were dead set to change that this weekend. This post relates to the previous two weeks and we’ll add another one with the bank holiday weekend work.
Two weeks ago..
After Pilla walked through the night I really didn’t have much time to spend at the plot on the Sunday. I finished putting the fence posts up on plot 117 and started clearing the front. It was a bit of a weedy mess both in front and right behind the fence and it was really making the plot look unloved. I managed to do about two thirds of it before I got hungry and came home.
One week ago..
The day was cut short due to rain. Before it started Pilla did manage to get quite a lot planted out in some very neat rows on plot 98. We literally have about a hundred varieties of lettuce and lots went out across the plot. I re-jigged the staging to provide us more room if we need it. Once the rain started Pilla heroically tried to carry on sowing seeds but we discovered the rain makes the seeds stick to your hands and makes the whole things rather frustrating! After potting on the chillies we called it a day.
Exciting times at the allotment this week – not only did we harvest almost more crops than we could carry, but Pilla got to use her new trug:
As you can see it’s pretty full up. I have to admit that the trug is quite useful – and it looks the part when Pilla is carrying it, I’m just not sure I can pull off the look! The full list of it’s content is:
Sugar snap peas
3 yellow courgettes
Runner beans
Dwarf French beans
Broad beans
3 types of lettuce
2 cucumbers
A handful of carrots
Thyme
Raspberries
Sunday was exciting for different reasons – there was a lesson from Bob and Walter on how to prepare vegetables for the annual show. The first weekend we spent at the allotments was at the annual show last year (you can see that here) – and we did wonder if we might have produce to show this year. We probably will, but won’t be challenging for a prize (we had a sneaky peak at Debbie’s onions and shallots and they must be about three times the size of ours) and unfortunately Pilla’s appeals for a category of our own for wonky vegetables was rejected!
After the show meeting we braved the rain to rattle through our list of jobs. I added a few more strawberry runners to the first bin I cut holes from last week. We have two of these to fill and thankfully our strawberry plants are going crazy producing runners for us to use. Using these bins will give us an extra half bed for other things next year and we should have lots more strawberries than this year. Pilla was busy digging up our bed of shallots – they had got a bit of a pounding in the heavy rain this week and didn’t look likely to recover and their leaves had been yellowing for a while. We got a pretty good number from them but they are pretty small – they are currently drying out in our spare room.
We also planted out the remaining habenero chillies, melons and some more basil and sowed more of our lettuce varieties. We didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures today – a lot of the time we were hiding out in the greenhouse sheltering from the rain. I did manage to venture to the front border – the dahlia’s that Mike from work gave me are looking great. Back in the greenhouse we are about to have a glut of peppers, we have four plants and each one probably has 10 peppers on it. We also have our first proper chilli growing – finally!
In between rain showers (actually just when the rain got a bit lighter) I planted some green manure in the bed vacated by the shallots and Pilla planted our some more radishes. We were pretty damp at this point so called it day.
Colour all round at the allotment and mainly sunshine yellow hues! We have blooming sunflowers, opening courgette flowers and a pre-allotment breakfast of little eggs from the chickens. After the monthly allotment meeting yesterday we got straight to work. I was potting on the chillies into the florist buckets as they had started to flower and the hope is that with a bit more room we might get some fruit on them at the end of the season. We ran out of compost before I could do the same for all of the habaneros so this remains on the list of things to do. Meanwhile, Neil put his DIY skills to the test and set about drilling large holes out of a tall bin which he then partially filled with compost. He then carefully planted the strawberry plants Bob gave us so that theyare hanging out of the holes. The bin will be further filled once the runners in our strawberry beds are established. These won’t fruit until next year but they really couldn’t wait in their small pots any longer.
Exciting things happening in the greenhouse. We have a few little sweet peppers emerging, see above for our largest specimen thus far. If they continue at this rate we will get a good return from our four plants which will be a bonus as I think we were sceptical we would get anything at all. Neil had some aubergine tickling to do, with the help of a second hand paint brush. This followed a week of research in which opinion seemed to be divided. Some aubergines are apparently self pollinating whilst others require a bit of a helping hand. Not knowing whether ours were the former or the latter we thought it was better to play it safe and give them a tickle inside their flowers to distribute their pollen. Fingers crossed for the results! It was also time to plant out the dill and sage that had been started in the greenhouse. They are both looking a bit leggy so hopefully some fresh air will strengthen them up. A special mention goes to a new addition to our allotment equipment in the form of an old desk we recycled from beside the bins in our flat! Very useful for potting and DIY tasks but it may need a coat of varnish so it doesn’t perish.
It has been a good week for harvesting produce with a lots of lettuce and beans to bring home and I must say it is making us feel very healthy and virtuous! There is nothing quite like the taste of a fresh homegrown raspberry.
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