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.

2nd season allotment blog – 15 days in June

2nd season allotment blog – 15 days in June

I thought I might take a slightly different view this time with the plot – I’m posting a photo from the beginning of the month & the same 2 weeks later so you can appreciate the growth made in 2 weeks.

3 Sisters bed – Water Melon, Sweet Corn & Runner beans:

Once the Water Melon gets underway I shall not earth up the plants in the rows. This is done this way for the moment to facilitate watering & weeding.

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

Sweet Peppers:

Beetroot Bolthardy:

Beetroot Bolthardy Harvested:

Lettuce Cos Ruboneo:

A month later:

Onion sets Turbo:

Onions Alisa Craig from seed:

Shallots:

Potatoes 1st Early Rocket:

Potatoes 1st Early Rocket – 1st Harvest:

View of plot from inside shed:

As is Traditional I’m ending this blog with a couple of views from inside of our shed as I see it while sitting down to eat a well earned sandwich or two!

Well I hope you found this slightly different way of focusing on the allotment that Gerry & I run of interest!

Although I now have my very own allotment plot, since June 10th, it’s very late in the year to do a great deal. I shall continue to help Gerry as before. He also gave me a hand last Saturday in helping to clear my new plot.

At the end of the month I shall post another blog of the progress the plot has made during the 2nd half of the month. Hopefully there will more harvests to show. I’ve had to leave several things out while doing this comparison blog. Next time I’ll add more things. Enjoy!