by Neil Wilkinson | Oct 25, 2009 | Allotment
More general tidying up to do today as there are more plants coming to the end of their life. Neil cleared the last of our tomato plants from the greenhouse, which suddenly looks very spacious! One of the pepper plants was now bare and a couple of the chilli plants were limp and so they went on the compost heap too. However, this was only after another bumper harvest – 15 habaneros and 47 chillies to join the bulging bag in the freezer and the ever lengthening string of dried chillies!
A bit of digging for some accompaniments for the Sunday roast followed. The leaves on our parsnips had grown considerably over the last couple of weeks and so we expected that the roots would have done their fair share of growing too and indeed they had. They were very tasty and sweet and were joined by a mixture of beetroot alongside our chicken. We also picked some kale for a chorizo and bean stew later in the week.
Our biggest job this week will come over the next few days when we have to address our minds to our seed order. We learnt from last year that it is easy to get carried away with your order as the names of fancy fruits and vegetables catch your eye! Also, some seed packets come with 12 seeds in them and others have 1200! As a result, we have some things that we will definitely have to order for next year and others that will last us for another two or three years. We have already decided a few new things that we want to try out, including swedes and broccoli and I am sure we will find other things to tempt us, so stay tuned.
by Neil Wilkinson | Oct 11, 2009 | Allotment
Our visit to the allotment this morning coincided with some typical Manchester weather – a good bit of drizzle. Thankfully we had a whole lot of tidying up to do inside the greenhouse – it’s been two weeks since we spent some serious time there and lots more of our plants have now given up for the year, so we could hide from the worst of the rain and hack down half of the tomato plants.
The greenhouse now looks incredibly tidy and spacious! Whilst we were in there we had a visitor we hadn’t seen for a while, Tammy has been camping out with another plot holder for a while but must have fancied a break from the rain. She managed to find her way into quite a few pictures 🙂
We did some more serious harvesting today – we took home our pumpkin, two squashes and a whole trug of assorted chillies, habeneros, sweet peppers, courgettes, aubergines, onions and herbs. The chilli plants have really been the stars of autumn, they are absolutely covered in fruit and we harvest loads more each time we go. We counted 48 chillies today and this was after taking lots last week. Thankfully they freeze and dry very well so we should be eating our own chillies well into next year.
by Neil Wilkinson | Sep 28, 2009 | Allotment
Only a short visit again today. We had the day off (in part to recover from my triathlon. I do like to think if you were to draw a Venn diagram of twenty something, marathon running, allotment owning triathletes that I might be the sole person in the middle!) so it was nice to spend a few hours tending to the allotment when it felt like we should have been at work.
Top of the list of jobs was to harvest more of our produce – it might be almost October but we are still getting really good amounts of tomatoes, peppers, chillis, runner beans, coutgettes and aubergines. We also took our first sweetcorn home (Pilla is proudly displaying her ears in one of the pictures). The sweetcorn was absolutely delicous for lunch!
We’ve got our first little figs forming. Figs are funny things – they set their fruits late in the year, you over winter them inside so they don’t get hit by frost and they then grow on to be ready the next summer. We currently only have about three of them so we are not expecting a bumer harvest next year!
We started clearing out some of the spent plants in the greenhouse. We’ve cut down one of the tomato plants that had no fruit and also composted the disappointing melon plants. The melon plants had taken great delight in spreading leaves everywhere but had been very reluctant to produce anything remotely melon-like. We then added some manure to the front bed and planted some crocuses and snow drops – they should add a bit of colour to the plot late in the winter.
by Neil Wilkinson | Sep 13, 2009 | Allotment
Another quietish day at the allotment. We didn’t plan to stay long because we didn’t think we had too much to do – there were a few tidying up jobs and a fair bit of harvesting, but nothing huge or time consuming. Whilst I was busy chopping down the spent cucumber plants in the greenhouse, Pilla was busy dealing with some overgrown chard and harvesting blueberries (sadly enough we counted how many blueberries we’ve had this year. From one plant we have had over 100, from one plant zero. Why?!)
We then set about clearing the cauliflowers. The cauliflowers were a disappointment this year, we didn’t manage to harvest a single one. They went from looking perfect, but small to bolted and flowery in a week. After taking down the netting (another thing we need to improve upon for next year) we composted the cauliflowers and put some manure on the half of the bed that we never planted anything in after our savoy cabbage seedlings failed. The manure is amazing – it’s been rotting for a good few months now and is absolutely full of worms. I don’t mean that there are a couple crawling around on the surface, I mean every trowel full has hundreds and hundreds of them. It’s quite impressive.
I then sowed some green manure on a couple of the beds we manured up last week. We then just had to harvest our goods. We are still getting loads off the plot – this week we took home blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, green & yellow courgettes, green and red peppers, chillies, aubergines, rhubarb and loads more tomatoes. Pilla put some to good use this afternoon by making tomato and chilli jam using our own tomatoes, chilli and garlic. Delicious!
by Neil Wilkinson | Aug 5, 2009 | Allotment
Aarrgh! We are on the very edge of our first disaster on the allotment – and it goes by the name of tomato blight. I popped down tonight to water the greenhouse plants and saw a very concerned looking Bob on Sharon’s plot. Her greenhouse toms had been struck down and were looking very leafless and sorry for themselves. I did a quick recce of our plants and sure enough the outdoor toms had been got – their leaves have all wilted and they have big brown blodgy spots on the stems. So far the greenhouse plants are ok, but if it is in the air I think it’ll get in. Bob came to the rescue again by giving us a packet of a fungicide that could help combat it. I’ve sprayed the plants and I currently have my fingers crossed. In the meantime I have taken the tomatoes that were turning red and brought them home before anything bad happens to them.
Ketchup anyone?
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