Lettuce flower and nature..

This is what lettuce looks like if you let it go to seed and then leave in the ground for a year - really quite beautiful! The flowers are on long spikes of stem - over a metre tall - amazing!

And this is what I found living in our compost bin - eek! He's probably helping in some way and as long as he stays there and doesn't get too close to me then no problem!

Rather prettier was this comma buttefly I managed to snap before it took off again...

A long barby afternoon

We spent all afternoon having a barbecue. It was such a lovely day, just perfect weather!

We had shallots and courgettes from the plot but had to buy tomatoes - ours have flowers and tiny tiny fruit but it'll be a while...
I was going to pick my first patty pan but will wait and maybe have that stuffed.

Turnips planted for winter

Another warm day and annual leave meant we spent a few hours up the plot this afternoon.

We've moved some of the better looking shallots to dry onto the metal cage - we'll pickle that lot first. In the space on Plot 7 we sowed 2 rows of turnips - Atlantic and Oasis (which are melon-flavoured, apparently).
I took all the grotty-looking leaves off the onions and tickled round the bulbs and you can see they look really healthy!

The runner beans have climbed to the top of the wigwam and have lots of flowers - no sign of beans setting yet, a good job really as we've got plenty of broad beans and peas to keep us going.
Tonight we're having our first ever baked spuds from the plot - 2 lovely big Orlas.

First Orlas

It was lovely and sunny this afternoon so we spent a few hours sitting and pottering. We watered everything as the ground dries out really quickly and we haven't done a proper water for a few days.
We pulled our first Orla potato - lots of lovely big potatoes, which should be good for mashing and baking. Also picked a load of broad beans for tea.

Whilst wandering around the site I spotted this pretty gingery moth - a Ruby Tiger apparently. The whole site is covered in Cinnabar caterpillars, so expect to see a mass of the pretty red and black moths soon....

BBQ weather

The sun shone for much of the day and it was lovely and warm, so we had a barbeque on the plot - just me and Jamie, though Malcolm and Richard joined us for a bit and our neighbouring plot holders, Sue & Chris, Jane and Dave were around so it was unusually busy at our end of the allotments!

Earlier in the day we saw this Common Footman moth sitting on our potatoes.