100’s of tomato seeds!

100’s of tomato seeds!

My wife & I went to visit our daughter & grandchildren the other day. She was the first of our three children & she also has 3 of her own. She lived most of her life in Spain but came back to the UK 15 years ago. She always remembers the special days like Mother’s Day & Father’s Day from her life in Spain so she still gives us cards & presents on these days when they are celebrated in Spain. (As well as when they are celebrated here in the UK!)

Father’s Day is always the same date every year whatever day of the week it happens to fall on: March 19th San Jose (St Joseph) so this year she gave me a card & envelope she had made herself but above all she gave me 5 packets of tomato seeds! In all there are over 400 seeds!!!

Tomato seeds 5 varieties:

Sheet of photos done by my daughter.

Tomato seeds ‘Alicante’:

Tomato seeds ‘Black Cherry’:

Tomato seeds ‘Red Robin’:

Tomato seeds Speckled Roman:

Tomato seeds ‘Ukrainian Purple’:

Last year she gave me some tomato & Sweet Pepper seeds but far too late in the year to sow. So I kept them to sow in the spring of 2018. On March 20th I looked for the seeds but only found the Sweet Pepper ones, the tomato seeds (I think they were ‘Gardener’s Delight’) were nowhere to be found.

Pepper ‘Topepo Rosso’:

I didn’t realize till I went to sow them but the packet of Sweet Pepper seeds is from 2014! They were a freebie in a gardening magazine she bought. I suspect the tomato seeds were from then as well! I looked on the back of the packet & it said to sow by 2016! Nevertheless I sowed them on March 20th as the tiny envelope inside the packet was still sealed. If they germinate well I will have gained some Sweet Peppers I hadn’t planned on growing but if they don’t nothing’s really lost.

Anybody want a few seeds of ‘Alicante’ or ‘Red Robin’? Just send me a PM & I’ll send you some.

I’m planning on growing a few plants of each to put on the balcony & a few more for my daughter to put in her back garden. I must ask my son who also lives here if he wants a few plants. I gave both of them 10 plants each last year & grew 10 on the balcony for us.

Lotties in winter

Lotties in winter

At long last I found time to do the promised blog of our allotments at the end of the year. Today is Boxing Day & it’s a very quiet day, in spite of the strong winds forecast! We began the day with a fair amount of sunshine though this only lasted a few hours before the clouds came over. No rain though. In the late afternoon we had a little sunshine once again before the night time pulled its veil over the evening sky.

Beetroot Bolthardy harvested:

This first photo is of the last of the Beetroots that I had been growing at the top of the plot. They’re in the bag because I forgot I wanted a photo with them just taken out of the ground.

All in all I’m pretty pleased with the way they have gone this year & will again sow them at intervals in coming years.

Broccoli Purple sprouting:

The Broccoli was given to me by a guy on the conjoining plot. I happened to read about their anti-cancerous properties just before going down to the plot. This guy was planting something, I didn’t know what, when I asked him if he knew about the anti-cancerous properties of Broccoli. He said he did & that he was planting his Broccoli at that very moment! He offered me the last half a dozen he had left over & so I planted them here. Mine have done better than his!

Godetias flowering:

The Godetias I sowed originally in the greenhouse to later take home & put on the balcony but which I put in the plot have been flowering for some time. I must say this has surprised me as I expected them to die at the first whiff of frost! They have survived at least 3 frosts – one of which was forecast to be 3 degrees C below freezing!

Lettuce Tom Thumb:

These miniature Lettuce, Tom Thumb, are still going strong after several frosts.

Lentils & Calendulas at top of plot:

This is the top of the plot where I sowed Lentils & Pinto beans. I had potatoes growing here a few months earlier. After lifting them & raking out the soil level I sowed some rows of Legumes. The Pinto beans didn’t survive more than one very, very light frost but the Lentils are not fazed by a few degrees of frost! The Calendulas have been there all year! They came up with the spuds & I left them after lifting the spuds.

French Marigolds in flower:

I sowed these French Marigolds in a seedtray with the intention of pricking them out into bigger flowerpots hoping, with the protection of the greenhouse, to get some flowers from them during the winter. I was so occupied with the digging of the allotments that I never got around to doing it! So, here they are flowering, still in the seedtray!

Annual Chrysanthemums:

A guy from Spain sent me some seeds of these Annual Chrysanthemums last year. I grew them on the allotment & some seeds fell into the ground & survived the winter/spring/summer to come up amongst the Carrots I sowed there. As they still hadn’t flowered when I lifted the Carrots I decided to try & save the plants. I put them in the greenhouse, in the growbag where Tomato Mallorquin had been growing all summer. They are flowering at the time of writing this blog!

Garlic sprouting:

During November I put in a few Garlic cloves from a head of Garlic one of our sons brought over from Spain when he came to spent a couple of weeks holiday with us. He said they were probably the best Garlic you could buy in Spain! I told him at the time it was far too early to plant them but I would do it when the time was right. So here they are just poking through the ground right in front of the greenhouse.

Peanuts at an end:

Many of you following my allotment blogs during the year will remember my experiment with growing Peanuts on the allotment, well I can report that the experiment has been unsuccessful! Not surprising to anyone I suppose, but I did get at least ONE (1) peanut!!!

You must realize that I also started them very, very late. I’m determined to have another go next year & will start the seeds off much earlier, I may even give them some protection from the elements as well.

Pinto beans harvested:

Here are some of my Pinto beans as I was removing them from their seed pods in the greenhouse. I left them to dry for a couple of months before I removed them from their seed pods. Really I was too busy, & lazy!, to do it earlier! They had been picked more than a month before.

Pinto beans bagged:

Here is a bag with some of the beans once I took them home & put them in a bag. We have had a meal with some & there are still some waiting for me to remove the beans from their seed pods!

Tomatoes Mallorquin in Greenhouse:

This is the last photo of the tomatoes Mallorquin. I sowed them in January 2011 in the greenhouse. They were from the packet of seeds my wife brought me back from Spain in September 2010.

Tomatoes Mallorquin harvested in Greenhouse:

A few days later I decided it was no use keeping them on the plant any longer so I picked them & here they are laid out on the bench in the greenhouse.

Runner beans

These were the last of the runner beans for this year. I collected the last few seedpods to save for next year & I’ve now cleared the ground of them. We had a huge crop from them!

Fig trees with frost protection:

These “wigwams” are the winter protection for the two Fig trees we have. After two year of losing the fruit in the very late spring frosts I thought I would protect them this year & see if we can get something to eat from them. I shan’t take the fleeces off them until the middle of May next year. The two previous years we have had frost as late as the first week of May!

Tomatoes Mallorquin in greenhouse just harvested:

These are the very, very last of the tomatoes Mallorquin. I harvested them on 5th December. I then removed the plant from the growbag & threw it away.

Godetias at top of plot:

I showed you a photo of these Godetias at the top of the plot further up but this photo was taken several weeks, & several frosts later! Even on Christmas Eve they were still flowering!

French Marigolds & Cosmos on Christmas Eve:

The French Marigolds I showed you a few photos earlier were still flowering on Christmas Eve & there were a few Cosmos amongst them! They had been affected a little by the frosts lately but, as you can see, continued to flower!

Sweetpeas Royal Family just sown:

I finally sowed my Sweetpeas. I had tubes & compost all waiting in the greenhouse but I had no seeds till the 15th December! On the 20th I sowed about a 1/3rd of the seeds. The tubes are placed in a standard seedtray in which over 20 tubes fit.

Onion Alisa Craig sown on Christmas Eve:

When I spent an hour or so on the plots on Christmas Eve I sowed a few of my Onion Alisa Craig seeds in a seedtray. This is a little later than last year I think when I believe I sowed them a week or two earlier. I was quite pleased with the results of the sowing when I lifted the bulbs in July. I want to sow more this year as our stock ran out about a month ago!

Well that’s the last from the plots I share with Gerry for this year. I have to make up one last one with what I’ve been doing on my very own plot (12A) which I got from the Town Council on 1st September.

Wishing you all a happy end to the year 2011 & a fantastic New Year 2012.

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!

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!

End of July on the plot

End of July on the plot

Well July (October?) has come & gone & now the summer seems to be getting underway – at last! The weather forecaster said a couple of times during the last 2 weeks of July that the weather map corresponded more to one from October than July!

Well now the time for harvest is upon us! Our Onions have now reached the point where we have to lift them so they can dry out.

Onions, Turbo, from sets:

This is what Gerry’s Turbo onions, grown from sets, looked like on the 15th:

Here’s what they looked like 15 days later when I lifted them:

Here’s a close up of the onions which have become very big!:

Onions, Alisa Craig, from seed:

Here are the onions, Alisa Craig, I grew from seed:

Three Sisters planting:

Two views of the Three Sisters planting:

10 days later:

The Sweetcorn isn’t doing too bad nor are the beans but the Water Melon has been a waste of time! I pulled up just this morning 2 plants that had died! Only a very few of the plants I put in are growing, I doubt I will be getting any water melons!

Beetroot, Bolthardy:

I continue to plant more Beetroot in the greenhouse & here is the last batch before planting out:

Here they are planted out! Nothing much to look at! They look lost & forlorn in the patch I’ve put them in:

A Tomato “weed”:

This appears to be a self sown seedling from Gardener’s Delight that we grew in this bed last year! It’s growing amongst Gerry’s onions & has had no more water than the onions yet it is growing quite well & has even set fruit! As the self sown Sunflowers have grown very big they cast a lot of shadow over the bed now. The Tomato doesn’t seem to mind though!

Carrot Autumn King:

The Carrots I sowed quite some time ago are now making much better progress after I dug up my Alisa Craig onions. They were obviously too dry before but now with more water they are doing much better.

On July 18th I planted out the ones I’d been growing in a seedtray in the greenhouse. I put them in front off & to the left of the ones I sowed directly into the soil.

You can see the difference a couple of weeks makes! The Lettuces you can see at the top are Webbs Wonderful that were planted out the same day as the Carrots.

Globe Artichokes:

Gerry’s Globe Artichokes are now in flower & the flowers are very attractive to look at, as you can see in this close up of one!

Lettuce Tom Thumb:

Towards the end of last year’s growing season Gerry gave me a packet of Tom Thumb lettuce seeds. I sowed a few rows & was very impressed indeed by its hardiness as all the small plants overwintered very well out on the plot with no protection at all!

A few weeks ago I sowed some in a seedtray in the greenhouse & planted them out on July 13th:

Here they are a couple of weeks later. In a few more weeks I’ll be able to start picking them.

Peanuts:

The Peanuts I wrote about a couple of weeks ago are all still alive & doing well:

Runner beans:

The Runner beans that Gerry started off in his greenhouse at home, which he later brought down to the plot, are doing very well. On Saturday I picked the first handful of the year.

I forgot to take a photo but here they are in flower & their bright red flowers bring a welcome splash of bright red to our plot. Almost every other plot has some as well!

Sunflowers:

One of the Sunflowers, (light yellow), self sown, from last year now in full flower. It’s the only one of its colour among the self sown!

Some of these self sown Sunflowers are, literally, the size of dinner plates! Most of the self sown Sunflowers are multi-branching ones & the plot has really come alive in the last couple of weeks!

Sunflower Titan grown from seeds Gerry bought a couple of months ago. 1st 3 rows on 15th July:

Titan 1st 3 rows 25th July:

These are Sunflowers from seed saved from last year seen on 15th July:

In just 15 days they have grown enormously!:

First of the mini Sunflowers, from seed I saved last year, now beginning to open:

This one is called “Little Dorrit”. Gerry brought the seeds down a couple of months ago & I sowed them:

Titan 1st 3 rows on 15th July:

Titan 1st 3 rows on 25th July:

Potatoes Maris Piper 2nd Early:

Last week my brother, Steve, & his wife came to spend a few days here. I roped him in the help me on the plot!

Here he is just starting to dig up the potatoes:

Here are some pictures of the potatoes we dug up:

They are in 3 groups/piles because of the configuration of the bed:

Tomatoes Mallorquin:

These Tomatoes are growing away quite strongly now & have a fair number of tomatoes:

The Tagetes & French Marigolds are really thriving in this position!:

*Yellow flowers at bottom of plot (Perennial Sunflowers):

We were unable to identify these flowers last year but they come up every year. They make a nice splash of colour where they are but they are not nearly as bold & brash as the Sunflowers.

View from the top of the plot:

I thought you might like to see more of an overview of our plots so I took 2 photos from the very top of our plots looking down towards the bottom:

The first photo shows more than our plots. Gerry’s half plot begins where you can see the Sunflowers with the dying Sweet peas in front of them. From there to the hedge is the half plot

From the bottom of the picture to the the Sunflowers is the half plot that belongs to another lady & her daughter.

On the left you can see our greenhouse, all the plot from there, both back & forwards, is Gerry’s whole allotment.

View of the plot from inside the shed:

To end this terribly long blog is the “Traditional” view from the shed. Unfortunately there is not much to see! Gerry had cut the Gladiolas that were beginning to open before I took this photo!

There are still more things I could add but I think this blog has now become too long so I’m putting an end to it here. Nevertheless, I hope you have enjoyed this blog of our plots.

Please leave a comment to tell me what you think of it!