Planted the celery.............
Also planted five courgettes.
Before we left I cut back the comfrey and put it into the "comfrey butt".
Even though it's forecast rain from tomorrow afternoon it is only showers that are forecast, so to be on the safe side we went down before seven again and thoroughly watered everything. We also did some planting. Planted the celery............. Also planted five courgettes. Before we left I cut back the comfrey and put it into the "comfrey butt".
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We're in the middle of a decent warm dry spell so going down when we can, just for an hour or two, to cut back and weed. Getting there eventually. Dug up some wallflowers for the front bed at home. Even though we hardly came down during the summer we seem to have an endless supply of produce. Well, we're not going to be short of things to do down the allotment over the coming weeks...... ...... and a couple of hours later...... Squirrels have been having a nice time with the sweetcorn. As well as weeding....... and weeding....... we found time to pick some produce. Went down and picked more produce but once again did little else down there. The weather has been extremely erratic this year and some crops have done a lot better than others. The weather has also prevented us doing as much maintenance as we would have liked. Still, we're doing OK on the crops front with decent amounts of most fruit and vegetables.. The sweetcorn especially looks good. We've now dug up about half the potato bed and this has been an exceptionally good year. The variety is Charlotte. Picked another selection and also all the remaining onions. What with Becky moving house, the school holidays, and just things generally , we haven@t done anything significant down the allotment for three weeks. Luckily the weather has been in our favour and even though we have some decent hot weather it's also rained at the appropriate time. Just spent an hour down there today and picked 5lb of potatoes and 8lb of courgettes. The courgettes seem to be all growing at the same time but not getting excessively large. Picked some other produce as well. The combination of hot sunny weather alongside regular rainfall has created an impenetrable jungle between the fruit cage and the compost heap and shed. After some decent rain we picked a decent amount of produce. Starting off with some nice looking potatoes. There were loads more mange-tout to pick. Gooseberries, raspberries and the first courgette of the year. More beans as well. Artichokes are ripening nicely, even if we're not overkeen on them.
Difficult to believe that a couple of weeks ago we'd had three months worth of rain in about three weeks but already some of the beds look dry on the surface. It hasn't helped that we've had a couple of really hot days and as many of the plants are quite new we need to water, and possibly feed too. Already two outdoor cucumbers have perished, though that may be as much to do with the earlier cold and wet as the hot and dry. Sweetcorn is looking excellent. Potatoes, hopefully, will be better than we've had for the last few years. Onions, too, are looking really good. Carrots are also a lot better than last year. We have our first two courgettes of the season. The comfrey leaves from last week have dried out so we placed them around the tomatoes as a mulch - looks a mess but very effective. Some more produce. First blueberries of the season. Just popped down to weed and generally tidy up and pick anything that's ready, although it's early in the season. Also just checking up on everything. Potatoes are looking very promising. We're looking to pick some tatties in the next fortnight. Sweetcorn is looking very good. Tomatoes doing well. Onions look huge. Carrots are doing a lot better this year. Celery is doing very well. Mange-Tout and Beans are coming along nicely. Should start getting a few of both of these in a few days. Leeks look good, if still a little small. Squashes............ Courgettes.......... The wallflowers are growing strongly. We've stopped picking the asparagus so that they can prepare for next year. The wild garden area is looking lovely at the moment. We picked some comfrey to dry out in the sun and we'll use it as a mulch on the tomatoes. The roses in the wild garden are looking nice. Picked a bit of produce. Should only increase from now on, especially if the weather stays so good. We went down for a couple of hours this morning as there appeared to be a lull in the wet weather. This time last year we were sweating in temperatures nearing the thirty degree mark; for the last week or more temperatures have struggled to reach thirteen degrees and the rain has been pretty much continuous during that time. Some areas of the country have had three months rainfall in a week According to the rain guage in the garden we've had over 80mm in the last week which is almost double the monthly average. We were surprised to find that nature hadn't taken over and the plants hadn't gone berserk in the rain, but I think that the cold has kept a lot of plants from shooting up. An exception to that were the potatoes which seemed to have shot up. Unfortunately we couldn't really mound them up as the soil was just too wet and claggy. Planted a bed of tomatoes. Planted seventeen parsnip plants. Planted just five squashes in one of the bottom beds. Last year they went wild so this year we're giving them plenty of room. We also managed to plant three outdoor cucumber plants up the "Wigwam". We picked another small crop of asparagus. It'll certainly be enough to accompany Sunday lunch. This year the carrots seem to be coming through a lot better than last year. The celery is doing extremely well but then it is supposed to like it a bit wet. Elsewhere, the courgettes are doing well. As are the tomatoes. And the sweetcorn. The mange-tout and the french beans are doing well. Finally, the artichokes are starting to ripen. Bank Holiday Monday and the weather was OK, not brilliant, but OK. We went down prepared to do a full day but at lunchtime we got distracted.............. The mange-tout and the beans are looking OK. Potatoes in the top bed are doing fine but can't decide whether to "mound-up" any more. Artichokes are in flower. The Goji Berry appears to have some mildew. Don't know why so gave it a good watering as it's very dry down by the cemetery wall. We didn't do any celery last year; instead we concentrated on celeriac - but that was a bit of a failure. This year we're going back to celery, but the bed is a bit bumpy and full of weeds. Cleared all the weeds from the celery bed. Flattened out the big lumps and dug five channels for the celery to be planted in. We have about fifty plants so that equates to ten plants per channel. We were just about to stop for lunch when Mercy, Jessica and Sophie arrived to help. Here's Mercy ready to plant a sweetcorn. In fact, everybody gave a helping hand with the sweetcorn. Here we have the sweetcorn in and ready to be watered. And here's the sweetcorn planted and netted. Started putting in the courgettes as well. And here they are, done. |
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