Flowers on Things

A couple of fairly brief visits to the allotment this weekend. But we achieved what we wanted to. As well as watering, feeding the birds and, obviously, checking out how everything is doing...

Salad Blue

Potatoes do have such pretty flowers these are in the potato bags. The Kestrels in the ground have flowers too, but the Salad Blue in the ground haven't flowered yet.

Athlete

Ok, some potato flowers are more hairy than pretty! But perhaps these will look better when they're fully open..

Purple-podded Pea

The flowers on the purple mangetout look nice but the plants are really not happy - they're pathetic! Not just because they are only about a foot tall with a 5-foot obelisk to grow up! I earthed them up a bit today and watered them with Epsom salts in an attempt to get some colour back into their leaves...

I also earthed up the Florence fennel - I wasn't really sure how much they should be earthed up, so I did a bit of a mixture of total or partial bulb coverage. We'll see...

And in the greenhouse...

Tomatoes

All the tomato plants are at about the same stage as this photo shows (judging by the evidence of side-shoots I would guess this is the Orange Paruche which is the only one that should be growing as a bush).

Britney

Two of the peppers (Britney and Milena) have one flower each; Chelsea is a bit behind with just a tiny bud so far.
And elsewhere - the Disco and Defender summer squash are planted. Another Disco will be planted out once it grows a bit more. The parsnips nearly all germinated (we sow 3 per station). We won't remove 2 until we know they're safe from slugs - there are certainly a few missing.

The broad beans are getting bigger - come on broad beanies!!

 

We planted up the 10 Minicole cabbages yesterday - under netting to protect from pigeons and butterfly egg-laying (shh, and slug pellets). I planted out 4 of the Russian Giant sunflowers and have put bottle cloches round them until they get a bit bigger.

And our plot neighbours have erected a shed - we told them they're not allowed sheds, but did they listen?! No :-)

We pick strawberries whenever we visit but the ants/slugs/woodlice are having a field day on them! It's VERY disappointing to see a lovely juicy strawberry and then find there's a hole in it - often with a family of woodlice to boot! I would say that probably more than half are inedible as a result - what a shame!

This is one of the least damaged ones :-(

Oh well, still have enough for desserts. And I took a lettuce and salad bits home today so home-grown salads for lunch again - hooray! I love that!