An Extra Day on the Plot

I had plans for Tuesday, they fell through but once you've booked leave it's difficult to go back on that, particularly when the sun is shining, so we had a fabulous sunny day on the plot. We were doing more tidying of the plot - mostly Plot 7 and Plot 8. And we picked our first raspberries of the year - so tasty when eaten with strawberries.

Jamie found this tiny, tiny mushroom - look how small yet perfectly formed it is!

 I haven't been able to id it yet.

We're pleased to say that our second sowing of carrots has germinated and all the second sowing of mangetout have also popped out of the ground now. These are the yellow-podded ones, which are doing far better than the purple-podded. They're still a bit weak, but the flowers are pretty.

Whilst weeding and clear hundreds of tiny grape hyacinth bulbs (I'm drying them out in the greenhouse) I pulled this couch grass stem - look how nothing gets in its way! We've seen it growing through a potato before too!

The butterflies have re-emerged since the weather cheered up. Here's a white - I think it's a small white.

And in the evening we had the HAHA AGM. Not a great turnout, but more plotholders than committee members, so that's good! And we had a nice drink and chat after the hour of talking 'business'!

Cloud Watching

A lovely sunny afternoon on the plot yesterday. It wasn't a quick visit, but this is a quick blogpost. Apart from weeding and hoeing I sowed some radish (black ones) and turnip (Atlanta) in the little raised bed on Plot3. It's next to the curry plant, which has such an amazing smell! I think we shouldn't have let it flower, but look how pretty the buds are.
I made this timelapse using Lapse-It on my phone. Just watch the clouds and get lost for a minute....

We planted out calendula and marigolds. The poor plants were all rather pot-bound, but they should recover, although they may not be as bushy as the plants that were planted a couple of weeks ago. I cleared some of the enormous fallen stems from the rhubarb - a real haven for slugs! Right beside our strawberries.

But are these the slugs that do the damage? I'm not sure. These are more interested in decomposing matter, according to the DEFRA slug site - where they mention the UK's largest slug....25cm long - Aaarrgh, lucky it's a woodland slug so we shouldn't stumble across that on the allotment!!

Is it Summer yet?

It's easy to be disheartened as an English plotholder this year. The England flags were taken down as soon as England crashed out of the Euros with an awful football performance :-( The slugs are eating anything and everything; The weather has been as grey as the mood of half the country, but... Taaa-daaaah! Here's a welcome scene we haven't seen for a while! Blue sky - yay!

Of course you can't see from the photo that it was blowing a gale, but it was still lovely and warm and we got a lot done. Because of the wind we're leaving protection around our runner beans, pumpkins and the Rocky cucumbers which have today been planted in their pots on Plot3.

We planted up some tubs with flowers. The plan for an amazing display of 12 tall sunflowers has been scuppered by slugs - it'll now be an amazing display of, at most, 5 shorter sunflowers.
The sweetcorn grow quickly once they're planted out. We'll leave their cloches on for now, they may appreciate the extra warmth.

Quite a lot of the parsnips haven't been nibbled so we weeded the area - hope that doesn't make it too easy for the slugs to spot them - there they are, behind the little fence. Beyond the parsnips we've planted the Valeriana Officinalis which we grew from seed. The flowers are meant to smell of vanilla so I hope they grow as intended.

The broad beans are looking ok, but some of them have been got at (probably) by slugs and (possibly) birds, but there should be a few meals-worth of tasty beans for us.

And who's been eating our strawberries? Looks like everyone's having a go!

Never mind, still enough for us too. There's a tiny garlic bulb and a yellow courgette going home too. The feeble garlic looked like it had been pulled up by a bird, along with some of the remaining silverskin onions. The courgette had its end nibbled, but we'll add it to our dinner.

Most of the garlic is fine. It's in the raised bed, behind the onions, which are just beginning to bulb up.

And the loofah is slowly beginning to climb up its trellis in the greenhouse. It likes hot humid weather which it isn't getting at the moment, but now it's July so surely...

Jamie's sowed some Speedy dwarf french beans. We'll germinate them at home and then they'll be planted around the sweetcorn patch. Speedy beans are meant to be harvestable in 8 weeks - hope so! These are our Scarlet Empire runner beans - just beginning to flower

It's Hungerford in Bloom allotment judging next weekend - our plots aren't entry-worthy (it's a bit too early for us) but I like to support this type of thing so the allotments get a bit of publicity. Fingers crossed for just the right growing weather and no slugs over the next week....hmmm!

Plot3 will not be in Hungerford in Bloom!

Dark Clouds

We forgot to put our Flag of Europe up to show our support before the referendum, and now, I'm VERY sorry to say, I don't feel like we are part of Europe. The cloudy skies behind certainly a sign of something brewing...

The sad photo includes the marigolds in a small trough that I put by the allotment gate. They were eaten down to stalks within a couple of days - what a year! Our pots at home are going through the same slug-abuse, but I'm pleased with my Night Sky petunias (even though Beechgrove Garden poo-pooed them recently!).

Thunder was rumbling around us while we got on with various jobs on the plots. And heavy rain showers were interspersed with bright, warm sunshine.

We weeded, sowed a few seeds (mangetout, to make up the current weak show), transplanted some lettuce, planted another Disco Summer squash, fed the birds and Jamie made up the pots for the Rocky cucumbers.

I re-sowed some Eskimo carrots as only two germinated from the previous sowing, but the Primo look quite good.

And then there was a flash of lightning and the loudest thunder clap that I've EVER heard, so we went home!

The hedge is covered in dog roses - so pretty

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!

Footie and Foodie

Unfortunately the flags didn't help England win their first match in Euro 2016, but there's plenty of time and plenty of other matches which will keep us away from the plot over the next 4 weeks.

We had a nice time weeding yesterday and drinking elderflower cordial, which a friend at work gave me as payment for some strawberry plants earlier in the year.

We've planted up most things now so it's pretty much time to sit back and wait for food! Especially if we get the rain that is being forecast. Our squashes and cucumbers will be ready to go out quite soon.. This is the luffah which has started developing more leaves in the greenhouse.

We were being rained on today, but it was just drizzle so we planted out the sweetcorn that had just popped up yesterday - they're tiny. We've protected them with cloches - the magpies (there was a family of 6 hanging round today) are likely to be the biggest problem, once the cobs have formed.

The Tender & True parsnips and the Primo carrots have germinated and hopefully some will survive the slugs - we sowed more than previous years. Only one coriander plant survived so I'll direct-sow some more near the carrots - well, it's traditional, even though our carrots are under enviromesh. My most recent salad sowings have been more successful than earlier sowings, so I should hopefully be eating home-grown salads quite soon...

Strawberries and radishes are our main harvest at the moment. They look pretty, but don't make much of a meal!

I was hoping to get 15 tall sunflowers but only 6 have germinated so far. However with some of the short sunflowers, the area we've planned for them should look pretty.

Aah Summer Arrived!

Just in time for me to enjoy my last 2 full days on the plot before returning to work. And look what came out with the sun to join us - yay! And the warmth has encouraged the sunflowers to germinate in their modules.

A little scrunched up

2 days of sunshine helped it open up

We dug manure-filled holes over the weekend and today the four pumpkins (Jack-be-Little and Jack-of-all-Trades) were planted out. And our Scarlet Empire runner beans are also planted on Plot3. So there shouldn't be quite so much empty space in a couple of weeks (hopefully!)

I couldn't wait any longer for my courgettes to germinate so bought a yellow courgette plant from the garden centre and planted that out too. Hopefully the green courgette and patty pan style will germinate soon so they'll just be a little late.

I still get excited when I manage to pick a bunch of radish. Some are still a bit nibbled but the enviromesh offers some protection. Some salad leaf would have been a welcome addition to the salad, but that should be along quite soon. The two Rocky cucumbers have germinated so they're in the greenhouse to grow a bit bigger before being planted out. The sweetcorn (sown at the weekend) are also in the greenhouse. They'll get planted out almost as soon as they germinate.

Much of the rest of the time was spent sitting under the sun umbrella, talking and spotting interesting creatures - birds, butterflies and beetles mostly.

Savour the Flavour

The first strawberry of the year - aah, the taste of things to come...(I should mention that those amazingly straight rows of seedlings in the background aren't ours - they're Neal's, our plot neighbour).

We shared that little strawberry. We both deserved a treat as it was another cool day but we got lots done and by late afternoon the sun came out and it actually felt like June. The Florence fennel are surviving, so far, in their green bins (I don't think the pests have noticed them).

The three tomato plants - Indigo Rose (cordon), Orange Paruche and Aviditas (cordon) - are in their bags in the greenhouse. I need to be sure to remove sideshoots on the cordon plants otherwise the greenhouse will be havoc! The onions seem slow this year, but I think that's because I'm comparing with other plotholders Winter-planted ones which are much more advanced.

Jamie dug two big holes for the Jack-be-little pumpkins on Plot 7. They'll be planted on top of a lovely load of well-rotted manure - that should keep them happy. I sowed a couple of trays of Oarsman leeks and 3 (just 3) Revenge Brussels sprouts. They're waiting in the netted 'nursery' along with some other seedlings and flowers that are waiting to be planted out.