First Trug of the season

At last we got back to the plot. The last week has been mostly rainy and windy with a few glimpses of sunshine. Everyone's feeling down about the weather and it's reflected in our plot. It's really not looking as happy as it should as we get close to Midsummer!

First trug

We pulled our first Belana potato, just as it started to rain again today. They've been in the ground 10 weeks and the flowers have just opened. We were expecting them to have small new potatoes and that's what we got - 11 of them (just 380g). There were about 6 not-fully formed ones too so in a couple of weeks we hope to get a few more spuds from each plant.
We also pulled some little turnips, some chives and another handful of mange tout. Looks a bit nouveau cuisine but hopefully they'll be nice added to salad tonight!

The runner beans have grown a bit taller but aren't wrapping round the canes as they keep getting blown about. But some good news is that the recently sown broad beans and french beans have sprouted. Jamie planted the four leonaris on Plot 8 - they look really healthy. We just need some sunshine now so that they grow nice orange flowers!

Garden Chafer

Found this little chap sitting in the mange tout flowers last Sunday, This is one of the bugs that emerges from the white grubs that we found masses of whilst digging in the last year.

Stupid Wind!

Quick visit to the plot yesterday afternoon - while the crazy wind was still blowing. Loads of debris from trees over the roads and pavements.
When we got to the plot we saw that our netted sprout cage had blown into the hedge (again!). It seems to be just too tall so catches the wind easily. We've taken it down a level while the sprouts are still small enough to fit. Our potato plants had been blown flat and one had it's stems broken but hopefully there's enough greenery left for it to survive that breakage. And one of our runner beans had snapped, but luckily just above a joint so that should be fine too. We tied the other runners to the bean poles to stop them blowing about so much.
There were a few other casualties around site but nothing too disastrous from what we saw.
Then we put the England flag up for the Euro 2012 championship - COME ON ENGLAND!

Rain stopped play

We were too slow this morning and didn't get to the plot till lunchtime - unfortunately that's when the showers started. Some of them were really heavy so we kept having to run for cover in the container.

We did get some digging done but had to leave when we were picking up so much mud on our boots. Jamie found this little spider in the earth. We thought it may be a red spider mite (bad guy) but have found that it's a velvet mite, a good guy - eating other mites and small insects in the ground.

Velvet mite - a good guy on the plot

Back home another of our squash seeds (the 2nd Cornells one) has actually started growing. The germination of the 6 seeds has been very sporadic over the last 3 weeks. One of the green courgettes hasn't done anything (yet) but we've got 2 of each of the others (Butterbush, Cornells bush delicata and Rocky cucumber).

Nice weather for snails (again)

A very quick visit to the plot this afternoon - we just wanted to check that our cloches had stayed on and the little sweetcorn plants were still upright (they are). It's cold (about 15°) and rainy.

All we saw, in the way of wildlife, was a few birds - one pigeon which we freed from a plot holder's netted cloche - and these snails.

Both these were on the thyme flowers

Pretty - brown lipped banded snail

Tidying and weeding

After a too long walk yesterday I didn't have the energy to do much on the allotment today. Did a bit of tidying this afternoon and sat around while the sun shone.

The peppers look a bit more at home on the plot now

The rainfall yesterday has really made the site look happier, but the weeds have gone crazy on the overgrown plots! We weeded throughout the onions and shallots and have given the onions a new mesh cloche so that they're not touching the top - apparently they'll stop growing if they bend over and they've a long way to go yet (leek moth and downy mildew permitting..)

We planted out our 11 little sweetcorn plants. Protected with bottle cloches because they're only small. And Jamie sowed some Early Nantes 5 carrot seed so hopefully more of this sowing will germinate...

Earlibird sweetcorn