October Clearing

We had a lovely sunny afternoon on the allotment today. We had the place to ourselves for half the time but after lunch more plotholders turned up.



Cleared potatoes

The picture shows the potato quarter with no potatoes left (just the leeks). We pulled the last couple of Chopin plants today. Got some good-sized spuds but slug holes a-plenty - just hope there's enough potato left to cover two dinners!

Cleared runner beans

Most of the time today was spent clearing - such a shame, but it is October (though it didn't feel like it at 17° in the sunshine). Jamie saved the last of the tomatoes and cleared the three plants - it wasn't worth saving the green toms this year as they're rather blighty, but the plants did do fantastically well for us. The tomato plants couldn't go to compost because of the blight, so they went home to the Council recycle bins.
I cleared the runner beans and put them in our green compost bin - I transferred the contents of the green one into the black bin first and gave it a good mix up.


The Cornells Bush Delicata squash are looking good, we have about 8 squashes which are ripening nicely. There's a risk of frost tonight and because we really want these to ripen a bit more before they get frosted we wrapped them up with fleece for the night. It's surprising that they haven't already got frosted - seems that our plots may be being protected because of the hedge/stone piles/canal (take your pick!) because other people's squashes were frosted a couple of weeks ago. I had to scrape off the car windscreen again during the week so I was expecting the worst.


 

We got everything sorted, chatted with our fellow gardeners then made a quick exit with the trug so that we could eat our sweetcorn as soon as possible after picking it!

The two biggest sweetcorn hadn't formed kernels right to the end but were delicious and plenty big enough. We had to have the third one because the plant had fallen down - the cob wasn't really ready but we scoffed it anyway :-)