OCTOBER 2013

 

This Is What Makes It All Worthwhile

 

The weather has been slowly deteriorating, wet conditions for several days in a row make final harvesting very difficult.  Despite the rain, however, the temperatures are unusually high for the time of year.  We brace ourselves for a massive storm with violent winds, hope the greenhouse manages to stay put - we survived!  Fortunately we have been getting the worst of our weather during the night leaving the days windy with sunshine and showers.

 

 

The decision was made on one of the few good days to harvest the potatoes, this could not be achieved all on one day.  The non Sarpo varieties were harvested first and the King Edwards were particularly good, although the foliage died back long before the Sarpo varieties.  I then harvested the three Sarpo varieties, Mira (red), Kifli and Orla (1st early), all three had high yields per plant, but Mira out performed all of them.  My fear was that although the they were very successful they wouldn't taste good! but they are excellent for all uses, chips, roast and mash.  Some of the individual potatoes were enormous!

 

 

 

The Biggest Boy!

 

 

The other bonus with the Sarpo varieties is that they don't seem to suffer from slug damage as much as other varieties for some reason.  I shall be planting these again next year, on a new part of the allotment of course and thank the Sarvari Trust for developing a potato that at long last can resist the dreaded blight which affects our damp and misty West country atmosphere.

 

The phantom pumpkin thief has struck for the second year in a row, they have taken their supplies rather than go and pay a pound at Tesco.  Perhaps next year we should consider putting tracking devices on them, trouble is one pumpkin looks very much like the other.  Not much we can do about it, just make sure last one out locks the gate securely.

 

The greenhouse has come up trumps this season and it now has a bumper crop of chillies, I have next had much success before but they seem to like where they are and I have been picking regularly from four plants.  The sweet peppers have also done reasonably well, I didn't seem to plant them early enough probably still on outside mode when I bought them.

The sweetcorn grown outside have grown into enormous plants and it looked at one point as if they wouldn't produce much in the way of heads of corn but they did quite well in the end.

 

The clearing up continues, the cages have been taken down and checked for damage which will be done during the winter months.  I have started to dig over the ground and plant the first of the over winter onions, but rain has severely hindered this job and it will have to wait until we have a drier slot.  The strawberry bed has been tidied up and the runners removed and re-planted where there are gaps - it seems a long time before we see the delicious fruit again.

 

That is the joy of eating seasonally, we look forward to beans at the right time and haven't travelled half way round the world, beetroot that doesn't come in vacuum packs and strawberries that taste like heaven.  Another bonus of growing your own food is colour, the green is so vibrant, carrots not only sweet and delicious but look  so colourful on the plate.

 

Savoy Cabbage and Broccoli - so vibrant

There is a good row of swede which will see us through several months and the carefully preserved parsnips have done well.  The freezer is well stocked with spicey ratatouille and rhubarb which will be a treat in the dark days of winter. The store cupboard is also full to bursting with the jams and chutney made during the summer and will not only keep us going but will be given away as presents. 

 

 

 

 

So the season draws to a close, there are still lots of jobs to be done and of course, everything has to be dug an manured before the Spring but I can allow myself a rest on my spade from time to time and think another job well done.  Oh that is apart from the shed at this time of the year it looks like this!

 

 

 

 

The End of Season Disaster Area!

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

 





 

 

 

 

 





AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2013

 

A House Full of Flowers

The weather has finally cooled down and we have had some rain, these two months are generally devoted to picking the crops and sowing late salads.  However, the hot weather has taken its toll on some of the crops - the beetroot seems to have stopped growing which is a great pity.  I have pulled what I can and left the rest to see if it will recover but I doubt it will since the leaves are shrivelling.  This does lead me to an experiment, the golden beetroot has done better than the Boltardy, probably because it has a bigger leaf which provides more shade for the beet, for the first time I made the chutney from the golden beets and it was a great success, very strange eye taste combination from the jar!  Will definitely do this again, also, in amongst the golden beets was a stray white beetroot I boiled it up and had a taste and it is not such an earthy flavour as traditional red beets but certainly makes a change and provides a variety of colour on the plate. Will seek out some seeds in the Spring.

 

 

This year I have grown a variety of different herbs which have done exceptionally well, in addition to adding flavour to my cooking they make a good display in jugs in the kitchen and smell delicious of course.

 

 



Arty farty herb picture!

The new allotment holders are beginning to be conspicuous in their absence, the family with dog and children have disappeared entirely, their plot is already being taken over by the weeds.  The other family who took such trouble to build the raised beds appear occasionally but their visits are becoming less frequent, and, judging by the little boys pained expression when he had to come watering with his dad the novelty has certainly worn off!

We tried to persuade the farmer who owns the fields surrounding the allotments to plough in the other direction so that the ridges were running parallell but to no avail.  The damage to the banks has been repaired over the summer and hopefully we will not suffer another flood in the winter.  There is a large amount of grass to be cut and we have set up a rota so that it doesn't fall on just one person.  Being a bit girly I find the mower over the rough ground more than I can handle so my husband has been roped in to take my place - phew!

We were promised a new gate at the beginning of the season, a local farmer agreed to provide and fix.  This has fallen foul of West Country time, he will be 'getting round to it' some time, but not before the year is out I fear.  I secretly rather like the old gate, although it is looking very decrepit, it's a traditional five bar and very heavy, but I like the feel of pushing it open and using the old iron hook to keep it back just as allotmenteers have been doing for a hundred years.  The hinges on one side are buried in a granite block which I guess has been standing there for many, many decades.  He has promised to preserve the granite post, I hope he remembers!  We do now have a magnificent new noticeboard, beautifully hand made in chestnut by a local craftsman who also has an allotment.  His workshop is nearby in an old watermill and when the floods came he was completely flooded out - such a pity.  The building has now dried out and he is up and running again making his traditional furniture and repairing some auction finds for me!

 

 

I digress, I have begun to dig the main crop potatoes and have tickled each row of the Sarpo varieties, they are looking good with thick, lush growth and no sign of the dreaded blight.  The non Sarpo varieties however, are yellowing and beginning to die back although, to be fair, there is no blight but that is just down to the weather conditions.  We have had a few plots affected by blight further down the slope which may be because we are airier at the top.  Poor Farmer John arrived one morning to see his whole potato crop blackened overnight, he was not a happy man.  Fortunately, this happened far enough into the season for the spuds to have reached a decent size and so all was not lost.

I am suffering from marauding gangs of pigeons, they have taken a liking to my calabrese which I grew outside of the cages, I found each plant well munched but have left them to see if they will recover.  The brussel sprouts and savoy cabbage have been covered with fine mesh, but this has caused an unprecedented disaster and has wiped out any hope of a brussel sprout with my Christmas dinner this year.  I left the netting on too long and they have become stunted in growth, still as long as I can  keep the pigeons off there will be some good sprout tops.

 Despite a shaky start the runnerbeans are now doing well, we have been doing some interesting 'bee watching' on the bean canes.  Some of the bees are working well, but others seem to be confused and some are on the ground clearly in trouble of some description.  This reduction in bee activity has resulted in the flowers dropping before the bean has developed.  The plants and flowers have been well watered when it was dry and of course the rain has helped them recover from the dry conditions.  The beans themselves are of good quality with large pickings happening every couple of days.

 

 

 

 

Similarly the French beans are doing well with high crops, they have been grown in a cage protected by netting.  We will soon be all 'beaned out'!!!

  





Tah Rah!

What can I say the tomatoes are fantastic, the non blight resistant are doing well but the Sarpo ones are magnificent both in the greenhouse and outside.  They are enormous and as you can see just perfect, unlike the others which are splitting and have patches of discolouration on some of the fruits.  I don't take much credit for this success since all I have done is watered, fed and supported them along with taking off the excess growth.  We had the audacity to go away for three days and the plot was left to its own devices the picture below is what happens when you turn your back for five minutes!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's time to look at the plums, I cannot say the tree was loaded but at least there were a few plums sadly everyone contained a maggoty thing which was apparently prevalent amongst the plums this year.  Oh well there's always another year at least the cooking apple was loaded with fruit even if it is still very small.

 

 

 

A Blighted Tomato

 

 

 

Towards the end of September the tomatoes outside show signs of blight on one plant only, I contacted the Sarvari Trust and they asked if I could send them an affected tomato.  So I packed one up in a little box and off it went, they confirmed it was blight, fortunately none of the greenhouse plants were affected thank goodness.

 

 

The picking has begun to tail off and the tidying up for the winter begins.

 

 

 

 



 





JULY 2013

It's Picking Time!

We are having a heat wave!  Watering is the priority at the moment, and picking the salad to keep it going as well as making regular sowings of radishes, lettuce etc..  It's very hot on the plot and any work has to wait until the evening when it is a bit cooler, as well as very early in the  morning but by 10.00a.m. it is already too hot.

 

 

The strawberry jam making continues with the biggest batch being made on the 13th July, there is also a picking for jam on my new blackcurrant bush which is excellent news as when I moved allotments I left behind a most prolific blackcurrant which produced pounds of jam each year.  I love the tartness of blackcurrant, and although it is a bit of a fiddle it is well worth the trouble. 

 

 

There was good blossom on the Victoria Plum tree this year which avoided any frost, fingers are crossed that we will finally have some plums to pick later in the year.  Likewise the pear tree had good blossom but is looking a bit sorry for itself, maybe its the heat so I'm pouring extra buckets of water around the trees. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The tomatoes are beginning to ripen in the greenhouse and the outdoor plants are beginning to produce large amounts of toms.  Interestingly the non Sarpo potatoes are growing strongly, however, the Sarpo varieties are racing ahead, I never water the potatoes, and they don't seem to suffer so much as other crops in dry weather.

 

 

I have six courgette plants, which are now producing their first courgettes and flowering well.  In the opposite beds there are six ridge cucumbers, these went in late and one of the voices of doom on the plot, declared that they would not do very well.  I am pleased to have proved him wrong, I know that before long there will be more cucumbers than I will ever be able to deal with and will be giving them away.

 

When the plot is watered and everything picked including the sweet peas which are perfuming the hot air wonderfully it is time to put your feet up and just enjoy the summer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



JUNE 2013

It's Strawberry Time!

Our new families on the plot started with huge amounts of enthusiasm, lots of children running around with trowels, tongues out concentrating hard sowing their seeds.  One Dad made himself rather unpopular by deciding to burn the old carpet he found on his plot, clouds of toxic smoke drifted over the rest of us and he had to be politely told to remove the carpet rather than set fire to it.  He was not overly pleased but finally complied with an offer of help to the local tip.  This family also had a fairly uncontrollable dog which, quite amusingingly and obviously in the spirit of trying to be helpful proceeded to dig large holes immediately after planting was done.  The rest of us watched with interest and waited for the enthusiasm to wane, a second family also spent time and money building raised beds and a large fruit cage.

 

Water Supply At The End Of The Plot

 

Finally the weather is warming up and, of course, the evenings are at their longest, which means work can carry on until almost 10.00 if anyone is that keen.  Having experienced deluges of rain and low temperatures there now seems to be a definite upturn and watering has begun in earnest.  We are very fortunate in that we have lots of water available on the plot and together with our own waterbutts we are rarely without water.  Nevertheless, it becomes a chore when it has to be done every evening and the greenhouse twice a day at the hottest times.  Watering is never so effective as rain and as bad luck would have it the dry weather arrived just as I had planted out a variety of brassicas, which had only just started to put on vigorous growth..  The beetroot was doing well and the first pickings had been made of both the Boltardy and the Golden beetroot.  I love beetroot chutney and was keen to stock up the cupboard once again with as many jars as possible.  

 

When I took over the plot I inherited a large number of chicken wire frames these have proved excellent, I link them together in either fours or sixes with extra long cable ties and grow many of the crops within the frame.  This allows them to be protected from cold winds with netting around the sides early in the season and from the marauding pigeons when the crops are mature.

 

 

 

 

 



 

  

 The cages do have their drawbacks, when covered with netting around the sides it forms its own microclimate within the cage and if the netting is not removed when it is no longer needed they can become very dry and dusty.

The strawberry plants have been netted to protect the fruits which are now ripening fast, I use a series of hoops about a foot high and spread the net over these and peg down firmly trying not leave any gaps that birds can enter and get trapped.  Sadly this year I did have a female blackbird die in the net, this was a first, it was even more distressing as its chick was sitting beside its dead mother - very sad, and I did spend a few days in deep guilt mode.

 

However, we were soon picking several pounds of strawberries each day and jam making was in full swing.  In total I picked almost 25lbs, much the same as last year.  The new plants had their flowers removed so as to put all the energy back into the plant and they are doing well.  Unlike last year when the strawberry picking took place in between downpours of rain, this summer picking was done on warm, balmy evenings in the company of neighbours - just magical!

What of those blight resistant tomatoes in the greenhouse?  They are doing fabulously well, I planted three plants from the local garden centre at the same time to see the difference, and what a difference.  The garden centre plants were growing reasonably well in the greenhouse conditions, but the blight resistant plants were racing ahead, thick luscious growth which quickly formed five trusses of fruit, they needed strong support.

The same thing was happening with the potatoes, these Sarpo varieties promise to be blight resistant but so far we have not had the weather conditions for blight.  The potato top growth is very lush and therefore smothering any weeds which dare to raise their heads above the parapet.
 

 

 

MAY 2013

 

Flowers on the Allotment



Amongst our trusty band of allotmenteers there are those who will not grow anything you can't eat.  I don't hold with this theory firstly for practical reasons flowers encourage bees and insects which we need to pollinate the vegetables and I need my plot to be aethestically pleasing as well as productive. 

 

I come from a family of allotment gardeners, my father and both my grandfathers had allotments and all grew flowers.  Firstly dahlias are the top of the list, you don't need many plants to give a wonderful show for many weeks towards the end of the season.  I love pinks and purples but also have some zingy yellows and contrasting whites.  They take their place at the top of the plot behind the rhubarb.

 

Annual Dahlia Display

The next allotment essential flowers are sweetpeas, each year I grow different varieties from seed on wigwams.  This year I had enough for three wigwams, two for all blue and one mixed.  Some years the sweetpeas are infested with a small black beetle which nestle deep inside the bloom.  This makes bringing them indoors impossible as they will quickly cover every surface - this year was one such year.  Sweetpeas must be picked regularly to keep them flowering otherwise they will sulk and simply stop. The only solution therefore, as I don't use any kind of chemical spray, is to pick and place them in robust jugs or vases and put on a garden table.  You can admire them from your window and enjoy their wonderfut perfume when having a well earned cuppa in the garden.  Eventually the beetles will disappear and the blooms can be brought indoors as normal.

 

 

Each year I am compelled to plant nasturiums, they do tend to seed themselves and so if you plant them in a different place each year they will continue to give you some plants.  I don't really know why I grow them, I don't put them in salads etc., but I do love their colours - so vibrant.

 

 

 

 

 

 No allotment would be complete without a few marigolds they are meant to chase away carrot fly etc., but even if they don't they are very attractive and again lure the lovely bees. 

Perhaps the two ultimate bee attracters however are the lavenders and a large clump of michaelmas daisy, this was given to me by a very dear lady, Norma, who was the best gardener I have ever met.  Norma died suddenly last year and she is sadly missed by all of us who have worked our allotments for some years.  She was there almost every day and sometimes twice, she had green fingers, everything flourished under her tender care but she was always very modest about her produce and ready to give away cuttings, plants and seedlings.  Her spirit lives on through her generosity and the plants she loved so much.

The lavenders are so valuable in many respects, they attract the bees of course, they look beautiful, they provide ingredients for baking, dried they give up their perfume for many months. Well worth giving them a little space, perhaps to provide a divider between beds. Recent research shows that lavender is right up there for bee activity and anything that can help our bee population has got to be good.





 




 

 

 

 So the year progresses, the soil is still cool, several sewings of parsnips have produced only a very few plants.  Fellow plotter, Ron, always starts his parsnips on damp kitchen paper in the airing cupboard and transfers them when they send out the first shoot.  Sadly I can't get that to work for me and I nurture the few plants I have to give me parsnips for Christmas dinner.  The potatoes on the other hand are beginning to push through the soil, the Sarpo varieties are lagging behind a little, everything else is much later than usual.  The second batch of runner beans are well away and can be planted now the threat of frost has finally passed. 

Then there are the carrots, I am now on my fourth sewing, still nothing, I am convinced the soil is too cold and we haven't had enough sunshine.  I will give it one more go and then give up for this year, this isn't the first year they have been difficult to grow, having overcome the dreaded carrot root fly by using very fine mesh netting, the challenge is to get them to germinate at all!!

On a more positive note, the strawberries are doing really well, lush and green with lots of flower buds. Just can't wait for the taste of those first delicious berries.

 

 



 

 

 

 

 



 





 

 

 

 

APRIL 2013

Twinkle in the Greenhouse

 

The very best times on the allotment are those when nobody else is working and it is totally quiet apart from the song of the birds and can even be so quiet that the munching of a rat is the only accompaniment.  It provides perfect peace at times away from all the trials and tribulations of daily life and allows valuable thinking time and space.  On the other hand an important part of working the plot are the chats with your neighbours and exchanging ideas and recounting successes and failures. 

 

 

The experiment with planting the first sewing of Twinkle peas in the greenhouse was a great success and the first picking came at the end of April far earlier than anything I had ever had before.  It worked well also because the pickings were over before the tomato plants were ready to go in.  Early sewings of beetroot in the greenhouse were also quite successful, the cabbages however were slow to grow and a poor colour.

 

 

Back at the greenhouse at home it was time to plant the runner and French beans. I always start the runner beans in large yoghurt pots as they give a long root run to give them a good start.  This I went back to Enorma as they have proved to the best for my plot.  By the end of the month they were ready for planting out.  The weather was improving but was still unseasonably cool, the annual task of putting up the runner bean canes was accompanied by the usual conundrum of do we put them North/South or East/West.  The problem with putting them East/West is they are prone to the strong South Westerly winds which can strike at any time in the West country, they went up North/South with a good deep trench filled with the contents of the compost bin, should be a good crop.

 

 We were all waiting for the weather to warm up, each day there were long debates about whether to take a chance and plant the runner beans or to hold off.  I took the plunge after a couple of sunny days and put them in well protected with scaffold netting.  However, just a few hours after planting the weather turned cold and windy and during the night the temperature plumetted resulting in a few hours of frost.  The  next day the runner beans were gone, the lovely green healthy leaves of the day before all shrivelled and brown.  Oh dear!  It was just a case of starting again. I planted a new crop and hoped for the best. 

Everything was beginning to demand attention, but still the temperatures remained low and the soil cold to the touch.  I did hear a tale that if the soil felt cold to a bare behind then it was too cold ,to sew seed, I was not about to test out that theory, but it certainly did not feel right for the time of the year!

Last year was disastrous for beetroot and other root vegetables the wet cold summer decimated the crops and I started sowing beetroot earlier than usual, this year I chose both good old Boltardy and a golden variety for a change. Fingers crossed for more success this year.

Signs of spring are everywhere, birds are nesting including great tits who have found a home under the waterbutt on next doors allotment!
 

 

MARCH 2013

Spring Just Around The Corner

Every allotment set up will have their characters and we are no exception, Farmer John has a broad Devon burr which is difficult to understand and results in me having to nod sagely and inject our conversation with 'really', 'of course' and 'that's great' in what I hope to be the right places. Farmer John however, has the ultimate green thumb.  Droopy cabbage plants which, if they were mine, would not survive the night perk their little leaves up and within the twinkling of an eye are luscious green plump cushions which for some peculiar reason the pigeons seem to ignore and turn their attentions to everybody else's brassicas.  Then there is Mrs A who cannot bear to part with any plant that happens to alight on her plot, if they were all edible this would be fine but unfortunately this includes a variety of rampant weeds and invasive garden plants that have been introduced from her garden.  As a consequence she has to carve small squares out of the plot in which to plant her vegetables and the rest of us mutter as the daisies, poppies, forget-me-nots etc. liberally spread their seeds over everyone else. 

 

Then there are 'the sheds', a wonderful melange of shed built sheds, expensively purchased examples, one fabulous corrugated offering painted in camouflage colours. The chaps on the plot take the whole shed thing very seriously indeed, springtime is accompanied by much hammering and sawing as sheds are constructed, extended and beautified.  The ladies on the other hand are just as happy tidying their sheds, and yes I do have a brush to give it a sweep out from time to time.  My own shed is painted in a fetching shade of green in the hope it will blend into the background, and at the beginning of the season it has a major tidy and starts the season looking like this:

 

 

 

 

March started well, planting of early crops got under way, I only grow a few broad bean plants as they are not the favourite family veg, some early lettuces and cabbages went in the greenhouse to speed their development.  My first sowing of Twinkle peas had also gone into the greenhouse as an experiment to see if I could get an even earlier crop.  Rhubarb picking was well underway, I inherited a number of crowns some of which are exceptionally early and if the weather is kind the earliest pickings of non forced rhubarb can be at the beginning of February.  The strawberry bed was now three years old and underwent a radical sort out and given a good feed of potash.

 

 

 

 

  New strawberries also arrived in the post and were popped in the new bed prepared for them.  This was created from the area previously given over to raspberries which had never done particularly well and were dug out in the previous autumn and the ground deep dug and composted.  The strawberry crop from the previous year had been spectacular and the plants remained vigorous and survived to produce another year.

 

So all was going well then came the rains, torrents, sheets, deluges over many days.  The allotment site is surrounded by fields on three sides.  The field to the North (top of the site) had been ploughed with the ridges running North to South all heading towards the site.  A reservoir formed at the bottom of the field until the hedge and bank could no longer hold it back and it broke through.  The resulting river of water carved its way through large swathes of the top plots swamping large areas of ground and causing the top soil to be washed down the hill and deposited on the lower plots.  Eventually the rains eased and we plodded along to stand and look at the devastation, the newly laid rubble path had disappeared and my carefully spread manure was now on my neighbours plot.

 

 There was one saving grace the rains came before I had planted my potatoes, hurrah!

However, time was running out for the potatoes as the chits were beginning to look decidedly straggly. A central path divides the plot into two matching halves, the Sarpo potatoes were planted on one side and main crop non Sarpos on the other.  Each row was carefully labelled, I must confess I am not always very good a remembering to label things but as I was keen to see which variety did the best I was, on this occasion, most precise.  Sometimes there is an immense sense of satisfaction that all the tasks on the plot are up to date, sadly this doesn't happen very often as there is always something to do.  Even greater then the pleasure to be gained from leaning on your spade and enoying the moment.