Onions R Us!

Today we planted our onion sets. We don't want many, as we don't usually store them. However, by the time we'd lined up the four rows, with about 8 inches between the rows and 6 inches between the onions we found we'd planted 44! That's quite a lot of onions to get through. I think there will be a lot of soup-making this year!!

Hopefully we'll be able to do a bit of storing this year, in the big cloche. The onions are meant to be mildew resistant F1 Hylander, from Thompson & Morgan. We covered the rows with the netting, just to stop the birds from pulling the sets out of the ground before they root. The birds think the brown onion skin tops are worms and always scatter them about.

The spring onions have sprouted now, along with the other salad crops I sowed. No sign of the broad beans yet. But another row of garlic has appeared - that makes 5 rows!! Hmmm, where's that onion and garlic soup recipe?!

Here are all our potatoes chitting - look at the little Canarian black ones in the middle. Not very black, but they're very small! We chopped one in half and it has lovely yellowy flesh. Hope we get a good warm spring/summer so that these survive and re-produce!

Wanting Some Rain

We want rain for our broad beans and a few salad seeds that we sowed two weeks ago. No sign of the broad beans yet, but the radish and salad leaf are coming up. Hopefully the perspex will protect them from nibbles - until they're ready for me!

Here's the garlic - growing nicely under the netting as something (probably a pheasant) had nibbled a couple of the shoots last week.

The funny thing is that there are four rows of garlic now.... Obviously the T&M garlic was just rather slow compared to the Wilko garlic. We're going to have a LOT of garlic this year!!

This is the rhubarb - both plants are showing signs of what's to come - yum yum!

And this is our spuds, chitting under the grow lamp in the hallway. We were obviously a bit late, many of the spuds were sold out last weekend, so we didn't manage to get Anya which we wanted. So, we bought Kestrel (of course) and Rosabelle.

We also have some Tenerife black potatoes on order. Not sure how they're going to manage in our climate, but we'll see...

Work Day #1 2015

This picture sums up our work day yesterday!

It's a shame it got so wet as I didn't manage to get a photo of all the lovely volunteers standing round chatting and eating at one of the tea breaks. We had some fabulous home-made sweet and savoury snacks and guess who took the bottle of Tenerife Honey Rum (Ron Miel) along?!

We did lots of tidying and hedge-cutting and left the site very wet, tired and dirty! 

HahaWell done all, thanks for helping keep our site looking lovely!

Holidays are Over :-(

We've been away in lovely Tenerife for a couple of weeks. Puerto de la Cruz is in the North of the island and is very beautiful. It doesn't get quite as scorchio as the South of the island, but night-time temperatures were 23°, so not bad for October!

Banana plantation

We had a few hours of rain over a couple of daya; the trees and shrubs really appreciated it but everything dries off so quickly as soon as the sun emerges.

Rainy morning

Here are a few of our flora and fauna pictures - more photos can be viewed here if you're interested.

We visited the plot the day after we got home - just for a quick look. The temperature remains high for the time of year, but there's been a LOT of rain. Mostly last Monday I've been told.

I don't know when the temperature dipped to zero but the plot looks pretty much as we left it - though there's more grass, in the wrong places!

I picked a couple of squashes. The patty pan was okay but the zephyr was going brown on the inside so I didn't eat that and I'll be chopping the plants down for compost fairly soon. The boltardy beetroot was still delicious even though it had grown big.

Oh, and I still got a good harvest of asparagus peas. Most pods have grown a bit too big but there are loads of flowers and new pods coming.
Talking of aspargus; I had some delicious lunches on holiday; asparagus & brie tostado, asparagus and tofu sandwich - mmm, so tasty. It was at the vegetarian restaurant, El Limon in Puerto de la Cruz - if you're ever there, I recommend it - particularly anything with asparagus in it!

Que aproveche!

Manure and Squashes

First visit to the plot today following our lovely two weeks away in beautiful Tenerife - now, I love the allotment, but I'd rather be in Tenerife again right now!

I only went to see how things were doing and to pull a potato but ended up spending a couple of hours on the site.
There hasn't been a frost while we were away and the weather has apparently stayed quite warm, though there had been a lot of rain at some point - the gauge was full.
Looks like I'm going to be eating squashes for a few months - Jamie's refusing at this point :-)


Cornells Bush Delicata

Jack-be-Little

Uchiki Kuri

It was such a warm day and there were quite a few of us there because the manure was being delivered - we can buy a barrow-load from HAHA for £1 (HAHA buy it from a local farmer). We were pleased to see how well-rotted it is and I moved 8 barrow-loads to our plot - Jamie may get some more next week.

I went home with a very heavy bag of potatoes, one squash and a sweetcorn - most of the sweetcorn have gone over now but the one I took home was still sweet and tasty, though the kernels were a little harder than you'd really want.

Holiday? What holiday?!

Well, as you can see...I'm not blogging about growing tomatoes in sunny Tenerife!
We didn't make it out of the country! We're so disappointed.

The Arteriovenous (AV) fistula in my arm, which was used for needling during haemodialysis, stopped working the day before I wrote the last post. Because I have my transplant I don't actually need the fistula any more but it's kept if there's a need for it in the future.
I checked with my renal unit at the Churchill Hospital and they told me it could be painful and to take painkillers. Well, there's painful and there's PAINFUL!

Clotting fistula

After another trip to the hospital and some antibiotics the decision was made - I couldn't possibly travel and wouldn't want to have been abroad with an arm that hurt when a sleeve touched it.
So we've got a couple of weeks in Hungerford instead!

Today was the first day we've ventured to the plot. The sky was blue and sunny but no life in any of our recent plantings yet (garlic or broad beans) and nothing interesting to photograph. The minimum temp has been 2° and maximum of 13° (not 28° like Tenerife - no! Stop that!!)

Anyway, back home pretty quickly to nurse my not-so-swollen-now arm.
Tut, such bad timing  :-(

Back home

We're home from hols and apparently missed some amazing hot (20°+) and sunny days over the last week, though the thermometer showed that the minimum was -0.5°.

Whilst in Tenerife we saw that the locals are growing lots of potatoes. Some had even harvested some - well it is the island of eternal spring.

This was near La Oratova (up the mountain-side) where they get a lot of cloudy, misty weather so we figure they must mainly stick to growing early varieties to avoid blight. Lovely to see something so familiar growing amongst grape vines and orange trees!

Quick trip to the plot this morning to see what we've missed. Our shallots and onions have a lot more greenery showing. The salad seeds and radishes have sprouted - but no sign of the corn salad or broad beans yet.
We watered everything as there's been no rain but under the surface the earth is still quite damp.
Now we need to start sowing, but not today!

Tenerife

We've been sunning ourselves in Tenerife for the last 10 days.

Can't help thinking what it would be like growing veggies here! We've decided that carrots would appreciate the sandy soil; potatoes would be blight free; tomatoes and peppers would be abundant and there'd be lots of squashes and melons. Only trouble is the lack of water - really would need to get that sorted! Here in the North of the island they do get some rain so it is lovely and green, but still even drier than Marsh Lane.

The veggies in the shops are pretty weak looking, the spuds tend to look like seed potatoes. Haven't seen too many bugs apart from butterflies, so there must be some caterpillars about, though I'm surprised any get past the lizards!



Aah, back home tomorrow to see if we've had any frost....