Clearing through the showers

As soon as we arrived at the site it started to rain - we really should try to move faster on a Saturday morning!! There were a few heavy showers throughout the afternoon but we escaped to the container with Neal and Malcolm for one of them and managed to work through the others. Sadly, our umbrella that I was so proud of a few weeks ago, broke on it's second outing :-(



Rain's a-coming

Jamie cleared the area where the onion netted cage is - we're going to sow some Aqua Dulce broad beans in there over Winter. We're hoping they'll survive better than they did last year. Kerry told us that she protected hers with enviromesh and got a good early crop this year, so we thought we may as well give it a go. Jamie added some chicken manure pellets to the ground and hoed it in well.


Not a great pic, but I like the shadow of this black wasp

I cleared the cabbage patch. We had one giant cabbage left and one little one. They've gone over though - have black tainting along the inside of the leaves so they went into the compost bin, apart from the stems which would take far too long to rot down (so the Council gets them).

The leeks are looking quite good, even with the rust. Quite a few people have leek moth damage but the enviromesh seems to have saved ours so far. Our ones from Malcolm, which aren't under netting, also seem to be doing alright - he said his look better on the side that's protected by the runner beans so maybe ours are protected by the marigolds and the carrot netting on the other side.

The temperature in the last few days has still only gone down to 4.5° - the courgette plant has succumbed but still hasn't collapsed completely. And the Cornells Bush Delicata has still not been frosted so they're still ripening up.

This is evidence of mice in our raised bed - look at those little teeth marks! They really like beetroot! Our sweetcorn seem to be ok but pheasants have desecrated other plotholders crops :-( We'll probably pick the last of ours tomorrow.

Beautiful day in between the showers

More pickling and picking

Jamie pickled the silverskin onions this morning in 25g of Demerara sugar dissolved in 350ml of Aspall Classic white wine vinegar.

Later we visited the plot. We were the only ones there, it's a bit of a dull day with rain threatening.
We picked salad for lunches and today had those lovely tomatoes and silverskin onions for lunch on bruschetta - such a tasty snack. We got 3 cucumbers - I think one of them will be given away at work, along with one of the courgettes.

The cabbage should serve us for at least two meals. The beets are from the raised bed and were pickled in sweetened red wine vinegar when we got home. Luckily there are a few cut-offs which can be added to my salad tomorrow!

A new record!

We've beaten last year's record of 7 items of home-grown veg in one meal :-)

We reached 9 last night:

1. Potato
2. Onion
3. Cabbage
4. Carrot
5. Lettuce
6. Tomatoes
7. Cucumber
8. Pepper
9. Spring Onions

The cabbage and carrot were made into coleslaw with salad cream - soooo tasty. I could eat buckets of it.

The cabbage had quite a lot of damage to the outside leaves, but plenty inside to cover a couple of meals.

Plans for salad and sweet onions

We had a few hot hours on the plot this morning. Weeding, grass-cutting and dead-heading the calendula - every time you turn round another seed head appears. We really don't want them self-seeding everywhere again next year! They're beautiful but you can have too much of a good thing :-)


Silverskins

These are our roundest silverskin onions, have left loads in the ground in the hope that they will also grow more spherical. These ones are going into a little jar of sweet white pickling vinegar for Christmas martinis - haven't quite decided on the recipe yet.

The strawberries are having a second flush of fruits. Hopefully we'll get to eat some - we missed out on the first lot because the birds got them, well there were only about 5 that grew, and they weren't very good :-( Next year we plan to have a proper strawberry bed on Plot 8

Strawberries

We picked a great trugful of goodies today - the kestrel spuds look good (and no slug damage or hollow hearts in this crop so far), salad consists of lettuce, tomatoes, red spring onions, cucumber and even a little pepper. And we're going to have coleslaw made with our first cabbage - which is a bit nibbled but we can eat round that!

A brolly for a shed and leeks

We had some time to spend on the plot this afternoon, lovely and warm and quite sunny. We've bought a fishing umbrella. Hopefully for more sun protection as well as rain (I'm saying that quietly as we can do without rain for a few more days!).

Brolly/Shed beyond the coriander

We were offered some more leeks (thanks Malcolm!) and after losing all ours last year due to leek moth I figured it would be silly to refuse! So I puddled some into a space in the legume quarter - there was only room for 12 but if they get big that's plenty on top of the others that are growing pretty well so far under their enviromesh cover.

The sprouts have grown so tall that they were touching the top of the netting so we've added the extra struts back to the cage (we took them off when the cage blew off in the windy weather in June). We have replaced the netting but it's nice to see the sprouts looking so healthy - there's not much slug damage and no caterpillar problems so the enviromesh has done the trick so far.

There are already sprouts forming and on one of the plants they're really big - well, bigger than these little tiddlers.

When I removed the netting there were masses of spiders and beetles as well as centipedes and woodlouse but this was a prettier visitor (sorry, not you Dave!)

Shhh, no dogs allowed on the allotment!

Another blue sky day!

We did a morning a session of weeding and digging then went home for a few hours. By 10:30 the temperature had already reached 26° in the shade, of which there is very little at Marsh Lane. We went back up in the afternoon and by then the temp was 31° phew!
I found a tiny bit of shade behind the runner beans!

I planted the petit pois plants which Jamie had sown in the root trainers - 8 out of 12 germinated. I also transplanted the fennel directly into the herb garden so hopefully it will grow enough for some soup!

Found this little bug - it must be a shield bug but I don't know what sort yet - but still haven't done my butterfly count. The cabbage whites are desperately trying to get at our cabbages, which the slugs are already loving!!

As we were leaving this lone swallow was singing very happily on the overhead cables - there were lots of them sweeping the air today.

Slugs, Weeds and a Frog

Jamie found this frog beside our brassica cage! Lovely - I love frogs :-) I popped it in a nearby pond, but hopefully it'll keep visiting our plot - there's certainly plenty for it to eat!

Little froggy!

Slugs have even developed an appetite for potato leaves this year - and look at our poor pepper! That was the one I took the photo of at the end of June :-(

The weeds have had a field day! They aren't very tall but they're everywhere.

Unweeded row (on the right!)

At least you can see where we've been and after taking this pic the other row of celeriac was also cleared. I found this information about celeriac before I bought our plants so surely it should be the perfect year for it!!

"Water it like mad. If you’re flooded, and the fire brigade evacuate you, sneak back during the
night to water your celeriac, even if it is under a foot of water. It will never have too
much water. Then water it again."

The onions are looking good, hopefully the mildew resistance is working as we've seen it elsewhere on site. We watered the spring onions with some epson salts as the leaves are yellowing a bit - they need the extra magnesium. Whereas the shallots are yellowing and dying back so they'll be ready to pull soon and then we need to find somewhere to dry them off prior to pickling..

Silverskins

There is a distinct lack of insect life on the plot, hardly  a butterfly in sight. These are the first black fly we've seen this year - these are being farmed by the ants! Still undecided as to whether the ants are going to help reduce or cause more blackfly to breed. We'll wait and see - slightly ashamed to say that they're not on our beans so not our problem at present :-)

Red Ants and Blackfly

We pulled the sickly potato (it's a kestrel), there were just 3 tiny tubers. It's the only kestrel plant that's in trouble, the others have very healthy haulms.

Sickly Kestrel

Healthy Kestrels

The runner beans have finally reached the top of the canes and there are a few flowers. There were a couple of bees working them today when the rain stayed off for a bit so hopefully we'll get some beans.

Some you win, some you lose

We had a few hours on the plot yesterday morning. Jamie digging the new plot - which is a real struggle, so many stones; and I was mostly weeding - the weeds sure do love this weather!

I planted the remaining french marigold plants. Most of them are in the legume quarter as they are meant to ward off aphids and I put the last 5 plants in the cabbage plot for the same reason. We have a bit of extra space in there because one of the cabbage plants died. We're not sure why. It went a bit reddish (we thought we'd sowed a red cabbage by mistake) and then it just gave up growing and shrivelled away :-(

Happy cabbages

Two of the sweetcorn plants didn't survive but the rest look pretty happy - we've left their protective cloches on because it's still windy (and obviously rainy!). 

We've noticed that the celeriac leaves have started going brown. I've checked it on a few websites and it is either celery fly, celery leaf miner or fungus blight or leaf spot. I figure the leaf spot or blight are the most likely so we're off to the plot shortly to pull all the affected leaves off - hopefully there will be a few left growing!

Browning leaves on celeriac

Some of the shallots have formed flower heads, so I pulled them off - don't want the energy going into the flowers rather than the bulbs.
We managed to get home before the torrential rain started. Me with a small handful of mange tout as usual! I like them just cooked briefly in boiling water - it's a scrummy snack but not a diet I'm going to live on for long!

What annual leave is for

Of course, we spent most of the day on the allotment. We had it to ourselves much of the time - it wasn't sunny but still pretty warm.
I planted out the celeriac (14 plants) on the new plot - half are under a green cloche and the others are just protected from birds. We need to keep them well-watered.

Celeriac

The mange tout have flowered already and are growing much better than the sweet peas - I think a little Growmore may be needed for them!

Mange Tout flowers

What happens to parsnips if you don't pull them up! (Not our plot!!)

We bought some pots and filled them with Grow bags and some John Innes young plant compost for the peppers - they should tumble over the sides, but the pots look a bit lonely at the moment...

We've started to see ladybird larvae and soldier beetles on the plot now, also lots of bees as there are quite a few flowers around for them now.


Silver Y moth

I found this moth on our netting.The moth takes nectar from flowers, but of course the caterpillars enjoys tucking into brassica and garden peas(!) as well as nettles - well, hopefully this ones babies will stick to nettles... ho hum...

Watering, watering

Another lovely hot and sunny day meant that we needed to water again this evening. We watered everything but are taking care to avoid leaves particularly on the onions which suffered so badly from downy mildew last year.

The cabbage have settled in really well and I'm sure they've grown a few centimetres already! Plenty of water for the broad beans which are covered in flowers and bees, ants and bugs are doing their best to pollinate so we get some lovely beans!

I chopped the parsley down to ground level, hoping it will recover quite soon... The chives are covered in lovely purple flowers but I'll need to chop that down soon too so that we get some fresh growth to use. The par cel seeds have germinated.

Jamie sowed our Earlibird sweetcorn in the bedroom propagator - they should germinate pretty quickly and we'll get them in the ground as soon as possible. We only want 9 plants so out of 12 seeds we hope we'll be ok...
The turnip leaves are being eaten away by flea beetles (probably) but hopefully the turnips will still grow and the beets are getting quite big but no bulbing up yet - I'm getting impatient!!

Seedlings (& slugs)

Quick visit to the plot after work to see how it's managing after the windy/rainy/sunny week that we've had.


About 10cm of rain

The perspex over the beets had blown across the plot but the beet seedlings are looking happy enough so they should be alright without that protection - I'll sow a few more seeds to fill the gaps.


Boltardy Beets

The silverskin onions carrots and parsnips have all got nice little seedlings growing now. All onion seedlings have the bent over tops so they're easy to spot amongst weeds; carrots are a bit more tricky but if you pull one (even when they're this tiny) they already taste carroty!


Silverskin onions

Early Nantes carrots

The seedlings in the cloches are looking good too though I think we may have to arm ourselves with more slug pellets - this rain is really encouraging them to be out and about, dining on our lettuce seedlings!

Potato planting and other stuff

Jamie did all the work today. I've got a cold so just flitted about and mostly sat down enjoying the sunshine. It's definitely April - we've had some torrential showers over the last few days but managed to avoid them all this morning.

That meant that Jamie was able to plant the two remaining rows of potatoes - both about 6" deep with grass/paper at the bottom of the trench and then the usual bag of farmyard manure. These two rows have Kestrel, Orla and the last Duke of York Red (which we intend to leave in as a maincrop).

We were joined by a lot of robins and blue tits on the plot today - the robins are getting very cocky and are willing to pinch worms from a couple of feet away from us now. I spotted the kestrel and he sat on the telegraph wires long enough for me to get this pic of him. It's a bit blurred as I had to zoom in but his lovely pinky plumage really stands out when he's flying over the site.

Kestrel

Most of our seeds are emerging now, including some silverskin onions, beets, cabbages, sprouts, sweet peas, salad crops. No sign of the parsnips, leeks or spring onions but we've found them to be quite slow to germinate previously.
We need to work out our sowing plan for the rest of these busy weeks now, then we can sit back and wait for food :-)

More seeding

Dull weather today but not too bad for sowing seeds and Jamie dug manure into the sweetcorn patch.

In the morning we soaked some seeds (sweet peas & beetroot) in hand-warm water for a few hours to help them germinate a little quicker. This softens the tough outer shell of the seed so the seedling can break out more easily... well, that's the plan.

Seeds soaking

The 2 types of beetroot were sown directly into the ground - the Boltardy are in the onion quarter and the Moneta (which are a monogerm variety which means they only grow one root per seed) are sown into the raised bed.

The following were sown into seed trays and put into the cloche:

• Nelson F1 brussels sprouts
• Minicole cabbages
• Sweet peas

I used my Nether Wallop paper potter for the first time to make some pots for the remaining sweet peas (I made the pots longer than the potter is meant to make because I want the sweet peas to get long roots). The potter is designed to make little 3cm pots and they're really sturdy so I really want to find some more seeds that would appreciate a little pot to start growing in.

The salad cloche in the raised bed had a row each of mixed leaf, radish (Dragon F1) and corn salad. The radish look ok but not one corn salad showed up! The mixed leaf started ok but each visit there have been less plants - today there were just 4 tiny seedlings left!! So, my succession sowing hasn't quite gone to plan but another row of each has been sown in the cloche today... and I did buy a new packet of Corn Salad seeds.

4 lonely seedlings!

A whole long row of Little Gem lettuce was sowed in the other cloche in the raised bed, so hopefully I'll have some kind of lettuce for my lunch in a few weeks time...

It's due to rain all day tomorrow and the ground certainly needs it, so I hope the weather people are right for Marsh Lane!