Harvest

We needed a wheelbarrow to take our tatties home today. Ok, not a massive wheelbarrow, but still, not bad for a couple of hours' work in the sunshine, and it feels like we've got all this food for free!

As Adam re-insulated the composte heaps with lots of dry grass, I picked the last of the tomatoes and the squash. Then we spent an hour or so digging up the last potato bed, and we ended up with half a barrowfull of Cara potatoes, as well as nearly a dozen winter and butternut squash, a bag of tomatoes and another big handful of dried borlotti beans.


I'm looking forward to eating these. They're not massive, but perfect for a meal for two, which is great as, well, we are two, and we eat meals. They should keep pretty well - especially if we can cure them a bit more in the sunshine - but that iddy biddy one on top isn't going to see the inside of a cupboard, as it's going to be roasted along with potatoes (ours), carrots, swedes and parsnips (all not ours, sadly) and a pheasant from the local market for our lunch. With lots of garlic and lemon. Yum.

And I wonder if I'll be able to resist making a Halloween lantern out of that orange one...


Update - ickle squash tasted goooood.

Blight.

Gah! The evil blight has struck.

At the weekend Adam pulled up all our Marmande tomatoes. They were just starting to turn orange, too, the majority having survived the attack of the chavs. (Please note I am speculating wildly here; the vandals could as easily have been embittered old folk as delinquent yoofs... but somehow I doubt it.)

Anyway, it doesn't seem to have affected the other two tomato beds yet (touch wood) and we ate our first red tomato straight from the vine. Now we need just a bit more sunshine, please, to ripen the rest and help the sweetcorn along.

And we have beans, beans and more beans. We're leaving the borlotti to ripen and will dry the beans for storage. The French beans are delicious, crunchy and juicy, even the ones we missed and picked when they were six or seven inches long. But the runner beans are not great - a bit stringy and fibrous, even when we get them when they're tiny. We're thinking we may not bother with runners next year and go for different varieties of french beans instead.

We have a baby butternut squash, 'ickle and green but still that recognisable skittle shape. And a handful of winter squash, some green, some yellow, as well as summer squash and courgettes.

Oh, and potatoes! Still un-blighted, and we're working our way through digging up the second earlies - delicious.

The damsons have ripened (sorry Mum - forgot to tell you! The damsons are ripe!) and we've picked some, but not as many as we'd hoped. Enough for just about two bottles of damson gin for Christmas. And the blackberries on the giant bush next door were plump and juicy, so I've made some bramble jelly (which hasn't quite set so will probably end up swirled through some yoghurt, at which point I'll pretend it was intentional) and some blackberry flavoured vodka. Mmm.

And I haven't mentioned the parsnips for a while, have I? Well, after all that faffing around with kitchen roll and windowsills and toilet roll and greenhouses, two (count them!) have survived and seem to be doing well. Now I'm willing them to grow big and strong and pointy and hope they don't just put all their effort into pretty leaves.

Bank holiday weekend coming up... lots of weeding in store. And does anyone know when is the best time of year to move strawberry plants?

Sunshine!

After my moan about the weather last time it seems Mother Nature listened and pulled some fantastic sunny days out of the hat. What a couple of scorchers! In fact, it was almost too hot to do anything at the allotment, so we were grateful for Dad's help, as he came for a visit and strimmed our nearly-overgrown pathways.

Over the weekend we... added more supports to the peas, planted the courgettes, cucumbers and squash (winter, butternut and acorn), weeded the carrot bed - there are some carrots coming through, I'm sure of it! - earthed up the potatoes, weeded the garlic and onions, sowed about a million brussels sprouts - a bit late, I know - and watered everything, which takes many, many, many trips to and from the water butts.

The early potatoes are flowering, as are the broad beans...


We also picked some mint to take home and made some mojitos - Cuban cocktails with white rum, mint, lime and lots of ice. Refreshing and delicious. If anyone wants the fool-proof recipe, let me know and I'll post it.

Now we just need to go and do a serious weeding session to get rid of the couch grass around the edges of our beds, and it'll look neat again!

The chard has bolted with the warm weather. Need to sow some more now, and some more spinach. And we have to plant out our tomatoes which are hardening-off in the garden at home.


Wonder if we have any ripe strawberries yet... yum.

Bloomin' marvellous

I've decided the allotment needs a bit of prettiness so I'm adding to my tiny flower bed and making it more permanent. I've been wanting to grow sweet peas and tulips since we first got the plot, but vegetables have always taken priority. Plus I've been more than a little useless in getting organised. I bought a pack of sweet pea seeds last year, and then I lost them, and I couldn't force myself to buy any more, knowing that they were around here somewhere. And Adam's mum Chris gave me some dwarf sweet pea seeds last Easter, and they just sat on a shelf too... until now. A few weeks ago (or it may be a couple of months now...) I planted some dwarf allium bulbs in the empty patch of earth in front of the compost bins which was to become my flower patch, and today I sowed three rows of the dwarf sweet peas too, and started edging the bed with bricks.

The raised beds we're building using old pallet wood look really good, they're pleasing, but not really very pretty. Functional. So I want my little patch of our patch of earth to be a bit more rustic. We only had enough bricks lying around to edge one side, but I might start recycling beer bottles and embedding them neck-down. God knows we'll have enough of them... And I'm sure I have friends who would be only too willing to help provide me with a few more empties.

Adam planted our first early potatoes - Arran Pilot. We've got 5 rows of about eight, so that's 40 potato plants which we'll hopefully be digging up in June for our first potato crop. Mmm. Next week well put the second earlies in - Wilja. Not so many of them but they seem to be bigger seed potatoes. Has anyone ever tried cutting a seed potato in half - with a chit on each half - so you can double your crop?

I chit you not

Our potatoes are chitting in fruit boxes under the front window. And the chits (chits? technical term? anyone?) are different colours.

Stormy greys and moody blues on the 'Arran Pilot' first earlies...











Spring green above a plummy-purple for the 'Wilja' second earlies...











Pretty in pinky-red for 'Cara' maincrop...











Pretty potatoes... Who'd've thought?