Sitting in the sunshine

Went to the plot in the morning. Only intended to pick a few spuds and a cabbage, but ended up picking some other bits for my sister. I took all the remaining courgettes - there are still a few more flowers but not sure they'll have time to grow as frost is threatened...

It was lovely and sunny and really quite warm so we just sat in the sun for a bit, watching other people clearing their plots.
And we saw a steam train go by - I was shooting into the sun so actually missed the engine, but the smoke looks quite artistic :-)

Cabbage Patch

Ventured under the cabbage netting (which hasn't been terribly successful at keeping butterflies off) and weeded. I pulled a couple of the red cabbages which have split and been eaten. I found a lot of snails and slugs in there - netting won't help against them! You can see from the picture that the non-eaten cabbages look brill.

This month's pest - Leek Moth

Well, another crop has gone because of the pests! The leeks have been looking bedraggled for a few weeks but after confirming that we have leek moth we decided to bite the bullet and pull the whole lot up :-(

 

Such a shame, though I did manage to save a few to eat (after some very careful checking for critters!)

 Jamie dug the patch over and we took all the leaves and other waste home to attempt to avoid contaminating the ground with any remaining caterpillars/pupae. Hopefully our friendly robin will spot any that we didn't clear...

The ground did look good after it was dug though - it looked a bit awful with a load of miserable looking leeks on it!

Weeding, weeding, clearing

As promised, we spent a few hours on the plot yesterday. Weeded the whole leek/potato quarter and the root/onion quarter (well, lots of it!). The green manure (mustard) has grown really tall and should really be dug in, but we'll wait a bit to do that.

green manure

I cleared the pea netting and weeded that area too. Tomorrow we should do the brassica patch. Some of the cabbages look really good but others have been chomped by something - not sure whether it's caterpillars or something like mice - it certainly has a big appetite whatever it is!!

The leeks (all over site) are looking pretty awful - we think it may be leek moth and need to examine for further evidence now we've checked them out on t'internet....

Our poor neglected plot

We haven't spent time on the plot for a couple of weeks, last weekend was so hot and there was grass seeding going on on-site so we went for walks in the sun instead. Jamie did pull some Kestrel spuds on Tuesday.
We went up yesterday though and it's desperately in need of some tlc! There are so many weeds and the Congo potato foliage has all died so looks a mess. We'll go up later and do a lot of weeding and clearing.
We picked 2 sweetcorn. Only about half the cob had formed proper kernels. Soo sweet and tasty though! We also had another cucumber, some little turnips and carrots for snacks while we listened to England footie.
Picked 2 courgettes which should have been picked a fortnight ago - they're giant marrow-sized now. Think I may be living on courgette soup all next week!


Not much room for anything else in our Ka boot!

We picked our first celery plant. We didn't really look after the plants as much as we should have and although they're tall and bushy the stems are weird. Some of the stems and just a shell, with no tasty fleshy bit. The rest appeared to have gone to see so we had some stem which was tasty but not spoon-shaped; more round... Still tasted ok and could have been used for soup, but not really properly grown. Celery needs much more water than we gave it; the ground needs to be almost water-logged apparently, so different plan for next year!

Not everything on our plot is purple, but...

While we were pulling one of the Kestrel spuds I found this lovely little purple centipede.

Mmm, sweetcorn

Picked our first two sweetcorn today. As you can see, one was far better than the other (sorry Jamie!). They were deliciously sweet and worth the wait. We've watered the rest in the hope that there's more time for plenty of kernels to develop - but may be a bit late in the season.

Still picking courgettes to stop them turning marrow-sized - and have got away with it so far this year, though we have given a lot away!

A bit of clearing

Spent a bit of time clearing up some of the plot today. Pulled the patty pan plant - there were just a few small squashes but others that were just going mouldy.

Pulled out a lot of the calendula - we've collected seeds but pretty sure the whole plot will be covered in them next year, given the number of seeds that we're finding everywhere!
Nice to see the rhubarb chard out in the open and glowing in the sunshine again.

Extreme rain!

We decided to walk up the allotment yesterday afternoon to pick a cabbage and some carrots. We badly mis-timed it! We had to shelter under a railway bridge for about 10 mins because there was a torrential downpour. We got to the site just as the skies opened again and ran for cover in the container - the sound of the rain on the metal roof was amazing!

The sun came out soon afterwards and the site looked beautiful, so we quickly picked our veg and went home! Sploshing through the huge puddle that is Marsh Lane after a rain storm :-)

Manure

We're a bit concerned with the broad bean we planted as a test in the horse manure. The leaves are really curled like reported with Aminopyralid contamination. Jamie's doing another test with 4 more broad beans. We haven't got too much manure and haven't spread it across the plots yet so it won't be catastrophic if it is contaminated, but obviously we don't want this additional problem!!