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| 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.
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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'!!!
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| 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.
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