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 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!