The Summer Allotments (June 2012)

The Summer Allotments (June 2012)

This blog I hope will make up a little for my absence from GoY (Growsonyou.com) during the last couple of months! As many of you will know it has been because I found myself a new job – as a carer – of our 5 year old granddaughter! An 8 to 5 job 5 days a week! Monday, 3rd September, was the last day I had my job – till the end of October!

During the summer I’ve only been able to spend a few hours a week on our allotments! The bad weather has also impeded me on occasions as well. Nevertheless I’ve been able to get lots of photos.

As I’ve so much to talk about (!) & so many photos I thought I’d divide this blog in 3 parts! So each part will be dedicated to one summer month – starting with June.

Broad Beans:

We had two varieties of these beans; an unknown one Gerry brought down (He’d lost the packet!) as established plants from his greenhouse at home, I had also grown some in the greenhouse on the allotment called Aquadulce Claudia. I received my bean seeds in a swap organised on another gardening forum where I also post.

Here are both varieties, now with pods:

Aquadulce Claudia:

Unknown variety:

Here is a picture of both varieties showing the difference in colour between them:

Here is a picture of both varieties after I finished shucking them:

Cucumbers & Water Melons in the greenhouse border:

At the end of May I decided to plant out a few Cucumber & Water Melon plants in the greenhouse border:

Here is a photo of the very first Cucumber fruit:

Garlic:

My Garlic was looking ever so good at the beginning of June:

By the end of the month they were looking very sad for themselves & were covered in Allium Rust. After a bit of “detective work” on the internet I discovered that they were alright as long as it hadn’t entered the bulbs:

Gerry’s Brassicas:

One day around the middle of June Gerry came down to the allotment with lots of Brassica plants – only he didn’t know WHAT TYPE OF BRASSICA they were!

I can’t tell the difference, at this stage, either!

Here they are again a couple of weeks later – with Pinto beans germinating amongst them as well! This view is taken from the opposite end of the bed from the picture above, you can already see the difference in the Brassicas!:

Pinto beans:

I’ve found that these beans give a very good crop so I’ve sown them in several beds at different times:

Pulses:

Pinto, Garbanzo beans & Lentils:

Why are the 3 types all planted together you ask? Well our granddaughter likes to prepare Real Food for her dolls’ picnic & my wife gives her a couple of handfuls of these pulses & some white rice. She insists on mixing them altogether with water! When she goes home I gather them all up & the next day take them down to the allotment & sow them!

These are not for harvesting really, except perhaps the beans, but for green manure which I’ll dig in later.

Lettuce ‘Paris Island Cos‘:

I sowed some Lettuce seeds in the greenhouse in February but this photo is included here so that you can see the name of this variety & also realise I haven’t made a mistake with its name:

Here they are just before I planted them out in the plot (These seedlings may not be the result of the sowing in the photo above. I made a number of sowings & I may not have taken photos of each one, but they are the same variety):

After planting them out they were critically inspected by Mr Robin! I think they met with his approval as he didn’t scold me while I was taking his photo:

Onion from sets ‘Sturon’

During March my brother, Ken, spent a few weeks with us & he helped me on the allotments. He really was a Godsend as without his help during that month I would have fallen so far behind that little of what I grew would have been planted in time! He helped me plant these Onions, which came as sets:

A month later & you can see the progress they have made in 4 weeks!:

Early Potatoes

I planted 2 varieties of potatoes of early potatoes in a bed close to the greenhouse. Gerry, as is frequent with him, wasn’t sure of the name of the variety he bought at a garden centre. There was an offer in which you could fill a plastic flowerpot with as many seed potatoes as you could get in it – twice – as the offer was 2 pots for the price of one! Gerry thinks they may have been ‘Picasa’ but he wasn’t sure:

The two varieties in the same bed at beginning of June:

The two varieties in the same bed at the end of the month:

‘Arran Pilot’ is in the rows on the left of the picture:

Potatoes King Edward:

Potatoes Rocket:

Potatoes Arran Pilot flowering:

Potatoes can also be very pretty when flowering:

Pumpkins at top of plot:

A guy from across the central path in the allotments field gave me a couple of Pumpkin plants as he had more than enough. As I didn’t really have space elsewhere at that time I decided I’d put them at the top of Gerry’s allotment being the only space free as the rest of the allotment had been planted up by that time:

Sweetcorn ‘Swift F1’:

At the beginning of the month Gerry brought down, & planted out, a lot of Sweetcorn, ‘Swift F1’, plants that he had been growing in his greenhouse at home:

Here they are at the end of the month &, in spite of the cold, wet month we had, they have grown tremendously!:

Sunflowers behind shed:

Gerry brought down a half bucket of Sunflower seeds saved from the plants on the allotment last year. His birds didn’t eat as much as he expected & it seems that even the wild birds didn’t eat as many as other years. So he had lots of seed left! I planted a few rows of them behind our shed & a few rows in another part of the allotment:

Sunflowers in another part of the allotment:

Sweetpeas ‘Royal Family’:

The Sweetpeas my brother planted out for me in March are now flowering:

Tomatoes & Marigolds:

I planted out these Tomato plants for Gerry at the end of May. As the year before we had lots of Marigolds & Tagetes growing amongst our tomatoes, to attract the White Fly, I repeated the idea this year using saved seed from last year only they turned out to be Tagetes when they flowered & not Marigolds!

Lavenders, Calendulas, Cosmos, China Pinks & Verbena bonariensis at top of Gerry’s plot:

View along plot from shed:

I’ll finish here this L-O-N-G blog of Gerry’s allotment during June with my traditional photo along the plot from the shed:

Thank you for bearing with me & I hope you found this blog interesting.

The October Plot

The October Plot

The October plot is quite a different plot from the September plot! It’s very noticeable that the days are hurrying towards their shortest time in December. Everything is shutting down now, the leaves are falling off the trees (time to collect them & compost them for leaf mould!) & most plants will have been harvested before the end of the month.

Talking about harvesting, here are a few photos of my harvesting results:

Beetroot Bolthardy just harvested:

I’ve now lost count of the number of times I’ve sown & harvested beetroot this year! I was even allowed to pull up some from the lady’s plot across the path. She said she had asked several other people if they would like some but they had plenty of their own! She happened to ask me at a time when I was between crops of mine.

Cucumber Marketmore just harvested:

I’ve been able to harvest quite a few cucumbers in spite of the powdery mildew that has covered them all growing season! I had greater success in the greenhouse than out on the plot! Does anybody know of a variety that is more resistant to this mildew?

Sweet Peppers harvested:

I am rather disappointed with the Sweet Peppers, these all came from the plants I grew from the seeds my wife brought me back from Spain last year. I’ve come to the conclusion that these Peppers are of a small variety & not like the big ones we get in the supermarket! Only a very few were longer & thinner the majority, as you can see in the photo are not much bigger than a thumb! These came from the bed of around 70 plants!

The Sweet Peppers in the photo below grew in the other half of the 3 Sisters’ bed. There were around 40 plants in this bed. There were less Peppers even though the plants looked stronger!

Sweetcorn harvested from 3 Sisters’ bed:

Gerry took these home but he hasn’t mentioned to me anything about them!

Sweetcorn F1 Incredible harvested:

I took these home but as I wasn’t able to cook them immediately I forgot about them in the fridge for a couple of days! I eventually got around to cooking & eating them – nothing much to say about them – perhaps as I didn’t use them earlier they had lost some of their sweetness. I’ve heard that Americans will even go so far as to take a pan of boiling water down to the plants & pop the cobs into the water within a minute of harvesting them!

Tomatoes Mallorquin from GH just harvested:

These came from the most ripe truss at that moment. I took them off to give the rest time to ripen a little more before the weather became too cold:

Here you can see how much just 1 truss weighed when I got them on the scales at home:

Tomatoes Self-sown from greenhouse:

How this plant got in here I’ve no idea! Obviously a seed came from somewhere & germinated in the soil between the concrete slabs that run down the centre of the GH & the plastic that covers the ground where I have the growbags with the tomato Mallorquin & the Cucumbers. It doesn’t look like any of the three varieties that Gerry & I grew last year. (Alicante, MoneyMaker & Gardener’s Delight).

Tomatoes Gardener’s Favourite harvested:

These Toms came from self-sown seed that somehow survived the winter in the soil. This was the only one to be harvested of the several plants that escaped my attention till they were too big to pull up (Yes, I’m a big softy at heart!). I spent much of the summer pulling up these weeds as they came up amongst my Sweet Peppers! The Sunflowers were just as bad as well! They kept popping up all over the place!

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

These were harvested from the GH a couple of weeks after those in the previous photo. As you can see it was well worth picking those before to let these ripen! I still have a couple of trusses more waiting to be picked.

Amaryllis Red with white stripe:

This was just waiting for my return from a 2 week absence from the plot! We went to visit my wife’s family & our 2 sons for 10 days & on my first day back on the plot, Sunday, just to water the plants in the GH, I noticed a red splash which on investigation turned out to be this Amaryllis! I hadn’t noticed the bud when I watered the pots with tomato fertilizer the day before leaving for Spain!

Fig tree:

Up until recently this Fig tree was hidden amongst the autumn fruiting Raspberries. While I was away it had grown a little higher & was now visible. No figs to pick though as the very late frost we had in May, coinciding with a similar trip to Spain, (only 4 days though),killed all the growth they had put on & last year’s brevas, as the immature figs are called, so nothing for this year. Hopefully we will get some for next year as new growth next year will be protected by fleece!

Lettuce Tom Thumb just planted out

It may seem strange to plant out Lettuce so late in the growing season, now coming to an end, but I noticed that last winter they survived the heaviest frosts we had as well as all the snow & ice. So I thought they will be able to survive a few light frosts as we were bound to have some warmer days before the real winter cold set in. What I didn’t expect was that we would have daytime temps around 13-15ºC at the end of October!

Peanuts:

I have no idea if Peanuts are frost hardy, I doubt it but my plants have survived the first very light frost we had on the night of October 14th! A frost forecast for the 21st didn’t happen! Phew! So these are still growing! I have no idea what size plants they normally make or if there are any peanuts in the soil beneath them. I’ll find out shortly.

Pinto & Garbanzo beans & Lentils:

These Legumes, as this family of plants is called, are still doing quite well. The Pinto beans are very susceptible to frost, more so than runner/green beans. The light frost of the 14th damaged many of the plants but didn’t kill them outright. The next day I made it my first duty to go around the plants & pick as many pods as I could. But I ended up pulling up the plants as it was quicker & I put them in the GH to dry off till I can open the pods & extract the beans. The plants mostly were no more than 6″ high & many of them were going over any way.

The Garbanzo beans (aka Chick peas) & the Lentils proved to be frost resistant last year so I’ve not bothered with those for the moment. Any way they are there more as green manure than as a crop to harvest. I found last year it was too much work to get a few beans & lentils. In comparison the Pinto beans are much, much more rewarding!

Sunflowers Tall at top of plot:

As you might imagine all the Sunflowers have now finished flowering & Gerry has even cut off dozens of seedheads for his birds. I started to pull up some of them but more than 3/4 of them remain. I haven’t pulled up any of the Mini sunflowers yet or the Little Dorrit ones. Gerry has harvested many of their seedheads as well. I’ve saved a few for my wife who likes to eat Sunflower seeds. A very popular pastime in Spain!

Tomato Mallorquin just harvested:

These are the last fruits of Tomato Mallorquin that had been growing outside in the soil just behind the shed. I picked them before a subsequent frost could damage them. I’m disappointed with this tomato as the fruits were small & very late in forming. Next year I’ll go back to the more traditional varieties of tomatoes. I think they need a GH to grow & fruit well. The one plant in the GH on the allotment has, eventually, produced much bigger fruits as well as better looking. Yet Gerry had a dozen plants in his GH at home & they were a disaster for him! I have 3 plants on my balcony at home; these have done better than the ones grown out in the open on the allotment but not as well as the one in the GH on the plot.

Carrots Autumn King before lifting:

Carrots Autumn King after lifting:

I was surprised to see the roots so forked! I’ve been told there are two main reasons why this should happen, 1: soil too rich/manure & 2: stony ground. Well the first certainly can’t be true as this bed has had no manure put into it in years as Gerry didn’t know of a place to get any till this year. As for stony, well this is more of a possibility, but I think a hard pan 3-4″ down is more likely. I dug this bed over after lifting the carrots & I encountered this hard pan a little way down.

Parsnips White Gem after lifting:

Much the same reason as for the carrots. I noticed months ago that the Parsnips were pushing out of the soil & some seemed to be growing on their sides. So I thought at the time that the bed had a hard pan a couple of inches down. Which proved to be the case.

Also this was my first time ever at growing either of these two crops. Advice on watering Parsnips & Onions changes according to who you ask! Some say they never water after watering when planting out while others say they water them like other crops! So confusing for a newbie!

Beetroots Bolthardy before lifting:

Beetroots Bolthardy after lifting:

I lifted these because I wanted to clear the ground & finish digging the bed over. There were in the same bed I planted up with Lettuce Tom Thumb. They also looked big enough to harvest & were unlikely to get much bigger even if I left them for a few more weeks.

I’m quite pleased with efforts of growing Beetroot this year as it is only my 2nd season growing them. I have one last bed at the very top of the plot but these won’t be ready to harvest for months I should imagine – if they are frost resistant, something I don’t know – yet!

Godetias at top of plot:

My wife likes these little plants a lot & most years I grow a few plants on the balcony for her. I also had a few this year but they didn’t do very well so I bought another packet of seeds which I sowed in a tray in the GH on the allotment. Unfortunately I could never seem to find the right moment to prick them out into pots to take home & put on the balcony. Eventually I decided to plant them out of the plot even though I wasn’t really expecting them to put on much of a show before the frosts killed them off. But it seems the warmer weather of late has saved them for the time being! As I’ve no photos of the view from the shed I’ve put this one on to end this instalment of the continuing saga of the allotment through the year!

Lots of photos for the last (probably) blog of the growing season on the plot. I may make up a last one sometime in November. I still have to make up one for Plot 12A!

End of another growing season (well, almost!)

End of another growing season (well, almost!)

An old Australian group called The (New) Seekers has a song called Circles in it there are a couple of lines that say “the seasons go ’round & around, lets go round one more time”. Well that’s how I feel about the growing seasons, one is coming to an end & now we look forward (or back, as the case may be) to another season!

I’m going to take you on a look-back on what has been happening on Gerry’s allotment which, as you all know I help him, with:

Lentils & Pinto beans at the top of the plot:

Beetroot Bolthardy at the top of the plot:

Beetroot Bolthardy in another part of the plot but sown a couple of weeks earlier:

Pink Carnation seedlings at the top of the plot:

These are from seeds my wife brought back from Spain. Having nowhere to sow there on my balcony I sowed them in the GH & now I’ve planted them out to make bigger plants that I will lift & pot up in the spring & take home so she can see them flower during the summer on our balcony.

Godetia Azalea flowered:

Another of my wife’s favourite plants. These are annuals & will die with the first frosts – just as the flowers are beginning to open, I sowed them too late!

Carrots Autumn King

These have really grown a lot during August & now in September they are looking great!

Dwarf Apple tree:

A couple of photos of Gerry’s dwarf dessert apple tree. Last year there were two apples …

… this year we have had a 100% increase – we now have 4!  In this photo all 4 can be seen at the same time, if you look closely!

 

Ipomea or Morning Glory

When we were in Spain, in May 2011, I bought a packet of seeds that my daughter-in-law brought to my attention – these  Ipomea or Morning Glory:

They would seem to be a newer variety as the flowers stay open most of the day, even when it is pretty warm. I grew these in Spain for many years but only a couple of colours & they invariably died by midday – unless the temperature was low, like it is now in the autumn.

Cucumbers Marketmore Harvested:

The smooth skinned one grew in the greenhouse but the other one grew outside. The tomatoes that can be seen alongside are some I harvested the same day:

Peanuts:

I’m afraid after the first flowers, I showed you in a previous blog, no more have appeared! The plants continue alive, as can be seen in this photo, but they aren’t growing any more:

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

The tomatoes are now beginning to ripen & I’ve now started to harvest them:

Here is a view of them growing on the plot. As I’ve stripped off some of the lower leaves the French Marigolds & the Tagetes really jump out at you!

Three Sisters’ bed:

The Three Sisters’ bed, although long since reduced to Two Sisters after the last of the water melons died, is still going strong:

Here is a photo of the runner/green beans I picked from the few runner bean plants that grew up & produced beans:

Lettuce Webbs Wonderful:

My Lettuce Webbs Wonderful are doing quite well. Gerry will be able to start cutting them for his rabbit & birds while I’m away for a couple of weeks.

 

Potatoes Maincrop Maris Piper:

Here are the my maincrop potatoes in a wheelbarrow. Almost the last to be lifted:

 

A view of Gerry’s Runner/Green beans. These plants were absolutely loaded down with beans! I picked a lot to take to the Harvest Thanksgiving service we had at our church on Sunday 18th September:

 

Lentils & Garbanzo beans:

These are doing very well. They are growing on the ridges left behind after harvesting the potatoes:

Sunflowers Tall:

In spite of the strong winds we had this month the great majority managed to stay upright:

I have no photo from the shed this month – not even from the outside. I’ll see if I can include one in next month’s blog.

The August plot – Part one

The August plot – Part one

Well here we are already half way through the 8th month of the year! Where did the time go? It has just flown by! It seems it was only a couple of days ago we were planting out the spring plants for our summer crops & now we are in the middle of harvesting them!!!

Cucumbers:

Here are a few photos of the Cucumbers in the greenhouse:

We have had the equivalent of about one a day for the last month or so! Some days there haven’t been any due to low temps probably, other days we have had 4 – 6 which I’ve picked to take home. The ones grown in the greenhouse have produced more & better quality fruit than those outside. The plants in the GH have been covered in Powdery Mildew for several months (as have the outdoor plants) but they keep on growing & producing more fruit. I give them 5lt of water a day or more! They are growing in 3 growbags, a tomato shares one of the bags!

Tomatoes:

The Tomato bed has grown a lot during this month. Now the plants are head high & the very first few fruits are starting to turn orange.

You can see the progress in just 2 weeks!

Now the tomatoes are beginning to ripen & here is just one photo – so as not to bore you too much!

I thought I’d introduce a new feature in this blog – I call it:

Find the veg!

Let’s start with an easy photo – just compare the following two photos to see if you can spot the Beetroot, among our “native flora”:

There, that wasn’t hard, was it? Well now that you have “warmed up” try this next one – you may have more difficulty this time:

Ready for another? Here we go then:

Did you enjoy that?

Our “native flora” grows incredibly fast after a drop of rain! It wasn’t through negligence the beds got in that state I only put the seedling out into the beds about 10 days before!

Here is a photo of a miniature Lettuce called “Tom Thumb”. It’s extremely hardy as it coped with all the worst that our last winter could throw at it with no protection whatsoever! I think I will grow some over winter in the greenhouse! I picked a load of them today & we will eat some tomorrow. I also sowed some more seed in the GH.

Here is a photo of Lettuce “Ruboneo” gone to seed:

This was one of the Lettuces I grew from the seeds my wife brought me back from Spain last year. The main head had been eaten but we cut them back to within an inch of the soil & they sprout again. Gerry has been taking the new sproutings for his birds & rabbit but there are many in flower now as each original plant produces 6 or more new shoots.

Peanuts:

Though the plants themselves are not getting very big they are producing flowers!

As you can see they have very bright yellow pea-like flowers, now I hope I get some Peanuts from them:

Potatoes:

Here is a photo of Gerry’s King Edward main crop potatoes which I dug up as the foliage had gone yellow/brown. Some of the soil was being eroded away from around the tubers thus exposing them to the light:

There must have been well over 10kg there!

Legumes or Pulses: aka: Pinto beans, Garbanzo (Chick peas) beans & Lentils:

As I got such a good crop from the Pinto beans I sowed last year I’m sowing many more this year in different beds, mainly where potatoes were grown earlier. Although I didn’t get any return from the Garbanzo beans or the Lentils I’m sowing them as green manure. When I pick the beans I shall dig the rest in.

The photo above shows them a couple of weeks after I made a sowing where we had 4 rows of potatoes earlier.

The next photo was taken on 15th August (somehow it escaped from having a caption printed on it!) & shows the Pinto beans that were sown between Gerry’s onions grown from sets. These were harvested a couple of weeks ago. They didn’t germinate very well but now they have made quite a bit of progress & are even flowering now, you may not be able to see the small white pea-like flowers on this photo.

The following picture is of all three legumes which I sowed after taking out Gerry’s Shallots. As the self-sown Sunflowers had made such enormous leaves & are coming to an end now I removed many of the leaves on each plant so as not to have too much shade when the legumes germinate:

Three Sisters’ bed:

August has seen this bed come on by leaps & bounds! The photos don’t make this as clear as I would like though:

You can see the runner beans climbing up the canes here. (Note to self, in a future planting use shorter beans!) Unfortunately the Water Melons used as ground cover plants have almost all died off! So there will be no Water Melons from the plot:

The Sweetcorn used as support for the climbing beans have taken off & produced plenty of flowers & it seems the cobs are developing well. I did wonder if the leaves of the beans would hinder the fertilization process but this does not seem to be the case.

Below is a picture taken from the opposite angle to all the other pictures I’ve posted up till now of this bed. The Sweetcorn here didn’t get planted with beans – I didn’t have enough!:

I’m going to finish this blog with a couple of photos of flowers plus the shed one – with a difference!

Morning Glory:

Where we have the divide between the two half allotments I put in some canes & tied them to the wire between the two iron posts Gerry put in some years ago. I also put a lot of string to give the Sweetpeas something to grip onto earlier in the year. I also grew some Culinary peas there as well.

They have all died & I planted seeds of Morning Glory (Many colours) that I bought when in Spain back in May. They are now in full flower & look absolutely lovely! Here is a picture of them during the middle of the 2nd week of August

Here is a close up of a few Morning Glory flowers that I took this morning! As you may notice we had a little rain but only a little:

View of the shed:

Here is the picture I promised of the shed with a difference! This time it is from outside as from the inside the view down the allotment is blocked by Dwarf Sunflowers, Gladioli & the Raspberry bed!

I apologise if you found the blog longer than usual but even so I could have gone on as there are many things I haven’t included! (Perhaps I could make up an extra blog in a day or two? Let me know what you think!

Until my next blog,
Happy gardening!

Summer (?) on the plot

Summer (?) on the plot

We may be “officially” in the middle of a “Great British Summer” but you would never believe it! A couple of months ago one of the tabloid newspapers had great big headlines on its front page proclaiming we were going to have the hottest summer since records began! At least words along those lines! Temps were expected to be in mid to high 30s C!

I’ll start this month’s summary of the plot Gerry & I share with a look at how the Three Sisters planting has come along:

Three Sisters:

Beginning of July:

As the month got under way here is a shot of what this tripartite planting looked like:

A week later we had some very strong winds for a few days & these blew over the Sweet Corn so I put more canes in & ran some string between them & loosely tied in the Sweet Corn before they ended parallel to the ground instead of perpendicular!

Another week later & the Sweet Corn, as well as the Runner beans, are going “great guns” but the Water Melons aren’t doing at all well!

Cucumbers in greenhouse:

Beginning of July:

Middle of July: (Spot the difference!)

Looking terrible, aren’t they? What can you do about Powdery Mildew? I can’t give them any more ventilation than they now have. The door is never closed nor is the vent in the roof & there’s a pane of glass missing where the Tomato plant is growing, as anyone with sharp eyes would have already noticed!

Outside in the ground they also have Powdery Mildew!

First Cucumbers to be harvested from the greenhouse:

Had quite a few since then though during this last week they seem to have almost stopped growing! Maybe the colder weather?

Same day but only 2 were big enough to harvest from the plot outside:

Onions Alisa Craig:

I grew some Onions, “Alisa Craig“, this year from seed for the first time ever.

Here they are a few days before I lifted them to dry:

These are a few that came out of the ground when I pushed the tops over. Many of the tops had already begun to keel over I just hurried up the natural process! The soil was so dry that it looked, & felt, like grey sand!

Shallots:

Garlic:

The Garlic I planted haven’t grown very big at all! I wonder if it is worth the while planting them in the future?

Purple Sprouting Broccoli:

I was reading about the benefits of Broccoli on the Internet – very good for preventing Prostate Cancer it seems. I commented on it to a guy in the plot next to ours who was planting out some “Greens” (they all look the same to me – I couldn’t distinguish between a Cabbage or Brussels Sprouts or a Cauliflower!) when he said that was was he was planting out! He then offered me the few plants he had left over! I accepted them & planted them & covered them with some netting to protect them from the pigeons as you can see in the photo below:

Beetroot:

The day before we went to Spain (Prince’s Wedding day) for a few days I sowed some Beetroot seeds directly in the soil, the only ones I’ve sown that way this year, so here is the end result a couple of months later:

Just a few days after taking the above photo I decided they were big enough to harvest & this is what I got:

Onion Turbo:

These are Gerry’s onions from sets planted in March I think:

Peanuts!

Yes, Peanuts! I’m growing them outside in the soil! Here are two photos as proof of what I say!

The picture above is of them the day I planted them out & the one below is about 10 days later. Of course I have no idea whether I will get any fruit (peanuts) as I may have planted them out too late, but it’s another of my little EXPERIMENTS! , like the Pinto beans & Garbanzo beans & Lentils I tried growing last year.

Potatoes 1st Early Rocket harvested

I believe I mentioned somewhere before that I had read the praises of this variety sung on the BBC Gardening Forum which decided me to give them a go.
The results can be seen below. But I have no idea of how many kilos I harvested – of these or any of the others below!

Potatoes 1st Early Kestrel harvested:

I harvested Gerry’s potatoes at the beginning of the month & you can see what each plant produced in the 4 rows in the photo below. I also took a photo of each row as I finished digging them up but I also took this one of all 4 rows when I had finished lifting them all:

He has quite a few more rows of Main Crop potatoes still growing as have I! He has King Edward & Maris Piper whereas I only have Maris Piper as my maincrop. I do have a couple of rows of 2nd Earlies Maris Piper that need to be dug up soon!

Potatoes 1st Early Arran Pilot harvested:

These potatoes were the last to be planted (can’t remember the date now!) & I put them at the very top of our plot.

Runner beans:

The Runner beans Gerry sowed at home in his GH & brought down to the plot later are now flowering, as you can see. So far we have had just one pod but there will be plenty more soon! I planted them in 3 rows & on the outside I planted some Pinto beans which are also in flower – though they can’t be seen in this photo.

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

The tomatoes are setting fruit but it doesn’t look like we will be having a glut this year! They are now waist high. The 3 plants on my balcony are now head high!

Sunflowers Little Dorrit:

Here is a photo of some dwarf Sunflowers called Little Dorrit. Gerry bought a packet earlier this year. I shall save some seeds for next year.

Sunflowers Titan:

The first three rows of Sunflowers in this photo are of Titan, again a packet Gerry bought this year. Behind them are more that I just call Tall as I don’t know what they were called last year.

Anyway they are growing faster & taller than Titan! For some strange reason they are also growing taller on one side of the bed than on the other! You might be able to see that in this photo below:

Water Melon,Sweet Corn & Broccoli:

The Water Melon & Sweetcorn are growing together at this end of a bed which also includes Broccoli. The Water Melon is doing better in this bed than in the 3 Sisters planting. The wood chips were put down weeks after the plants were put in.

Sweet Peppers:

The Sweet Peppers are coming along nicely! They are opening their first flowers & I expect to see the first fruits beginning to form over the next couple of weeks, perhaps I will be able to get a close up picture of a plant with its baby peppers!

There is no view of the plot from the shed this time simply because it seems I have forgotten to take any! Anyway it is difficult to see down the plot any longer because the apple tree branches with their fruit are hanging down over the doorway & the Raspberries have almost reached their maximum height, further obscuring the view down the plot!

Well that’s it for this blog. In my next blog, about the beginning of August, I hope to include a “View From The Shed” photo which at least may show the Gladioli beginning to open, as there are now lots of flower stems emerging from amongst the leaves.

Allotment 2011 – My second season!

Allotment 2011 – My second season!

My second season on the allotment is now getting underway. I have been down there on occasions during the winter but as I suffer from Reynard’s Syndrome, which causes poor circulation in the extremities, I find it difficult to spend time out in the cold as I lose all circulation in my toes & fingers & it can be very painful at times.

Anyway there is little that can be done down there during the winter. I did go down on the 20th of December & this is what I saw!

The whole allotment appears to be covered in snow – actually it’s hoar frost!

Here’s a reminder of autumn! A lovely pear tree in flaming red – didn’t half light up the dismal days back then! 🙂

I went down on Boxing Day 2010 for a few minutes – too cold to do anything! I wanted to have a look at how my plants in the greenhouse were holding up.

This is how the plot looked:

Buddelia before pruning & in full flower in the middle of July 2010:

Buddelia after pruning by Gerry:

I’m very impressed by the way the Lentils & Garbanzo beans (Chick peas) took all that hard frost & snow we had in December! Yet the poor Pinto beans succumbed at the very first whiff of frost! (I’ve deleted the photos of them that I put on here as we are now coming into spring & I don’t think anybody wants a reminder of what happens when a plant is killed by frost – we’ve all seen too many of them killed off during the winter).

The green manure looks like another victim of the cold winter. I had a look today at the bed (2nd March) but I can’t make out the shapes of the mustard leaves! Plenty of weeds now though!

These tiny little Lettuces “Tom Thumb” also survived the frosts & the snow but the rain eventually did away with them & I had to pull them up as they were rotting.

New Year 2011

Now let’s get into the New Year 2011!

Here’s snapshot of some of the things I had growing in the greenhouse while looking forward to another year on the plot.

Around Christmas I sowed some onion seeds. It’s the first time ever for me! Last year I grew onions from sets – again a first for me! They did very well. I hope the onions from seed do at least as well!

Here then are the very first seedlings to be transplanted & you will see that I’ve sown some more in the tray behind the seedlings:

Today, 2nd March, I planted all the seedlings into the soil on the allotment, you can see them in the photo below:

I put some Garlic cloves into the soil on the plot around Christmas time. The ground had thawed out a little so I made holes with a broomstick handle & dropped the cloves into the holes scraping some soil over the holes but without firming down as I thought I had made the holes too deep.

I later got some more Garlic but this time I planted them in trays in the greenhouse & this is what they looked like near the end of January:

A couple of weeks ago I planted them into the beds on the allotment.

The earlier sown ones have now come up as well & this photo shows them today:

They are in two beds but occupy only about a square meter, perhaps less:

I’ve planted the seedling onions in the same bed as the Garlic cloves but continuing on down from the cloves. Although I planted dozens of onion seedlings today I still couldn’t fill up the bed!

Below you can see the seed potatoes I’ve put out to chit on the greenhouse staging. The eyes are now just beginning to grow a fraction. I don’t have a more recent photo than this one of the day I put them out on the staging:

These are called “Rocket” & are first earlies. I saw they were highly praised by people growing them & who post on the BBC Gardening boards. When I went to Wilco’s to get a bag of seed potatoes I noticed these & remembered them from there & so I bought them. I’ve been told they have very nice BLUE flowers! I’ll be sure to take some photos when they come into flower!

I’m going to wait a couple of more weeks before planting them out. I see no advantage in putting them out now into cold, sodden soil – even if it does tend to dry out pretty quickly – I don’t want them rotting!

I’ve also sown a few seeds of the Green & Red Peppers my wife brought me back from Spain last year:

Red Peppers sown 15th February:

Another variety of Red Peppers:

I was astounded by the amount of seeds in each packet. The packet says there are 5 grammes of seed in each packet – that’s 100s of seeds in each packet! – quite literally! The seeds are loose, not in a foil envelope inside but the whole packet is made of foil with the picture & instructions printed on the outside.
The first packet I opened was the Lettuces & they spilt everywhere! I managed to get most of the seeds back into the packet but there must be thousands!

I managed to sow a few but they have also come up amongst my transplanted onions!:

Here is a photo of the seeds recently germinated – not sown, you will notice that I’ve tried to modify the caption on the photo but could only add on top!:

I also sowed some of the Tomato seeds brought back from Spain by my wife. Again I’ve 100s of seeds!

I looked at the trays today but none of them show any signs of germinating at present. Perhaps the temps are too low for the moment. I’ll give them another week or 10 days before I sow some more at home & put them in the airing cupboard to germinate!

To finish I’m going to put in a couple of photos of the new strawberry bed I made up last autumn & my “traditional” photo taken of the plot from the shed!

New Strawberry bed after the winter & in desperate need of weeding if we are to get any Strawberries this year!

After an hour or so of hard graft this is now what it looks like:

I shall now stay on top of it & this will be the last time it gets into such a state – at least while I look after it!
Last year when I started my series of fortnightly blogs I added a last photo of the view as I saw it from the shed. As a lot of people liked that I’ve decided I’d do the same this year – at least until August when the Raspberries will block the view down the plot.

Actually this is not the most recent photo ( I haven’t taken any more yet) as since taking it I have cut the Raspberry canes right back to soil level & cleaned up all the leaves & weeds from the bed. They are just now beginning to sprout once again. These are autumn fruiting canes.

Well that’s the end of this first instalment for this year! Hope you won’t find it boring, I’ve tried to make it interesting but your comments are most welcome.

Until next month then. Enjoy your new growth & the spring flowers.