Yeay! Pumpkins!

It just keeps raining, doesn't it? We managed to pop down to the plot on Saturday in between showers to harvest our mini pumpkins, not quite in time for Halloween. We B Little, they're called. And they are - about the size of a grapefruit. Just right for two, in fact. I got a good armful for a picture. (Would have been a shame not to, seeing as how I'd managed to colour co-ordinate myself!)

After the pumpkin plucking it was obviously time for a sit down and a cup of tea (so soon? Well, it was quite cold.) Adam took some time to give his Grandad's old dibber which - he's inherited along with some other handy tools - a bit of winter protection with some beeswax. After a spot of weeding, Adam flung some of our home-made compost on one of the beds and then we planted lots of garlic, using the dibber of course. We'd bought 3 white bulbs from a garden centre - for improved disease resistance an' all that - and then bought 3 more from our local Italian shop, which have a pinkish tinge. So we'll see which ones work out best.

Discovered a tiny purple (PURPLE!!!) cauliflower nestling among its leaves at the bottom of the plot. I'd guessed that the 'Cheddar' cauliflower variety might be yellow, but purple is much more exciting!!! I'll have to check what type it is next time... I think they keep their colour better if you steam them, right? Although that might be purple sprouting broccoli, I'll have to check. Also had to do some more caterpillar flinging. Little bastards. Gerroff! How on earth are you supposed to stop the little squidgy things from getting onto the brassicas? Obviously the netting didn't stop the butterflies from laying on them.

We picked our first decent sized swede too (ok, it looks quite small here but honest, it was a proper size, like you get in a shop!), and ate it mashed with half a dozen small carrots for Sunday lunch. Along with a roast chicken, a good handful of spinach and chard, and oven-roasted pumpkin on the side it was really tasty. Real sense of achievement, after that meal (until I saw the washing up...)

Oh my god - it's nearly November

No, we haven't died. Or been cruelly neglecting the allotment. Our computer broke and I can't access the blog at work so that's the reason for the long silence.

And then, when we finally got a computer up and running, blogger was unavailable. Typical. So sorry for the long absence.

But I'm back. For now anyway. And I'll try not to ramble on for too long about what we've been up to for the last few weeks.

The first weekend of October we went to London for a spot of sightseeing and a stay in the Waldorf Hotel (as you do... One of the benefits of working for a big travel company is being able to use your concession on a nice hotel!) So, that was great fun, but no allotmenteering!

Since then we've harvested all the sweetcorn (mmm, yum, delicious - sorry to those of you who we promised to give some - it was too nice and there just wasn't enough to spread the wealth... so maybe next year...) The final courgettes, cucumbers and squash have also been eaten, and we've composted the remains of all the plants. Adam dug over the now-empty beds at the far end of the site, and we've now got lots of space ready for us to plan what's going in next year. Hee! Look at all that nice fertile earth! Now I'm just waiting for the seed catalogues to drop through the door so we can start dreaming of the veggies to come in 2009!

While Adam was wrestling with the cucurbit plants I dismantled the runner bean poles which was an epic task to say the least, as the beans stubbornly refused to let go of their sticks. Then I dug over the bed which had also had the pathetically tiny dwarf French beans in.

The red onions which Sian planted at the end of September are poking their heads above the surface. They're an overwintering variety but I need to find out whether they still need a bit of protection for really cold weather or not. A week after the red onions went in I planted some regular white overwintering onions too, so we should get a decent amount next spring.

We've got some more spinach growing and the chard is going great guns. I've also been pulling beetroot now and again (that reminds me, there's a couple boiling on the hob as I type) and it's great just sliced in sandwiches.

I also dug a little bed next to the shed where I might put some sort of climber to ramble up and over. I mentioned before about getting some honeysuckle in, but I need to find out what sort of conditions it likes first - the soil next to the shed is quite shallow and rubble-y and doesn't get much moisture or sun...

Erica, a friend from work, came to stay last weekend and we took a quick trip to the plot to get some veggies to roast for dinner. Erica pulled some carrots and seemed sufficiently chuffed. We also sacrificed the first leek (it was a bit small, to be honest, but we just HAD to try one!) and had a swede. The first swede! Excitement indeed!

Adam did some more weeding (good man) while I made tea, and then we all had a traditional Bedfordshire Clanger for lunch. (For anyone who doesn't know what a Bedfordshire Clanger is, think of a rectangular Cornish pasty, made with suet pastry, with a hammy-meat-and-veg filling at one end and a stewed-appley filling at t'other. Main and pud all in one!)

We've got some tiny cauliflowers growing, nestling down at the base of the leaves, hiding from the chill it seems. But, see - they look great! I do have to keep picking off caterpillars though and I'm too squeamish to squish them so I fling them into the undergrowth on the deserted plot next door, hoping they'll perish before they find their way back, or get eaten by a hungry sparrow.

And we've been eating the kohl rabi. After neglecting it for the best part of 6 months it's not half bad roasted!

Finally - a random pic. Here's the remains of the cucumber plant on its way to the compost bin. Anyone else think it looks like something out of a Tim Burton film?

Quick plot stop

Our friends Sian, Kate, Louise and Ian came to stay on Friday for some pre-birthday fun and frolics. We had a massive dish of roast allotment veggies for dinner, with salmon, which seemed to go down well. I love preparing and cooking our home grown veg, and sharing them with others is a strange feeling. I almost feel a bit nervous to start with, in case they aren't as nice as they should be, and then kind of proud, like I'm saying: "Look! Look what our clever courgettes/squash/potatoes/onions did! All by themselves!"

Anyway, we popped down to the plot this morning to have a look - Ian and Louise had never seen it but they made all the right appreciative noises. Sian stayed a little longer, donning gloves and a healthy sense of disgust to help me pull up all the blighted tomatoes (*shudder*) so we can burn them in the incinerator. There's nothing quite so sad as a whole bed full of blighty tomato plants. I think we ate a grand total of 7 tomatoes this year... maybe 8... Although it's heartening to know that pretty much everyone else I spoke to (except Nic, grr, jealous) has also had a rubbish tomato year, either bring struck by blight or just not getting enough sunshine to ripen. I think we may have cursed British Summertime though. Ever since we've had the plot, so the last two summers, it's rained and rained and rained. But it has meant we haven't had to worry about watering so much!

Sian also planted three small rows of red onion sets which my mum gave us last week. Apparently they'll over-winter ok for an early crop. I'll just have to find out whether they need any protection from the cold.

After Sian had gone, Adam rotovated the old tomato bed and strimmed the paths, and I sowed a few rows of spinach. A bit late, maybe, but if they do come up it'll be nice to have some more winter greens. The spinach that's currently growing is doing ok, but there's not as much of it as we probably need to get a decent portion from them.


The plot is looking quite tidy 'cos the grass seed has taken well on the paths and it's just a case of getting the weeds out now. But what you probably can't see in this picture is the couch grass which is beginning to infiltrate the front beds. Any tips for getting rid of it? Or is it - as I fear - another bindweed-type-jobby where it's a case of digging it out, piece by tiny piece...?

We've also got a few flowers (a type of marigold?) which have self seeded around the place. They look lovely in the sunshine, but I have a feeling that they're just planning on taking over while our backs are turned. I'm going to transplant them, I think, to go alongside the shed wall. Just need to attack the grass there and make a little bed. I was also thinking about planting a honeysuckle or some other evergreen climber - preferably with flowers and a scent - to ramble over the sheds. Not only will it look nice but might act as a deterrent to anyone thinking about burning something down (which has happened in the past, though luckily not to us - touch wood).

All things bright and beautiful...

... well, yellow, anyway, judging by these pics.

I've been off work for a couple of days feeling ill, but this afternoon I felt like I needed to get out of the house and get a bit of fresh air, so I decided to go down to the allotment and see what was going on this week...

Here's an overview pic of the whole plot. You can see in the foreground and on the far left that a few of the squash and courgette plants are well and truly over, while others are still valiantly trying to produce more before the cold weather really kicks in.
































I picked a couple of courgettes and three small squashes today as well as the two ripe sweetcorn cobs to have for dinner. I think we'll probably have a roast vegetable omelette to make the most of the harvest.

Fingers crossed that the yellow pumpkin gets enough sun to ripen fully... it's called We B Little so it won't get much bigger than it is now (about 5 inches across) but this one and its 5 friends need to get a bit more orange before they're picked. I also want the strange pointy-shaped squash above to ripen as it's not like any of the others we've had so far.

Grow little squash! Grow!

Indian summer

Well, I have a confession. We did nothing on the plot all weekend, even though the weather was great. But we do have an excuse... Adam was laying a patio in the back garden, and I was decorating the spare room. So, we were keeping ourselves busy - just not at the allotment.

Then on Monday I was overcome with a sense of guilt and neglect. How could we have left it a whole ten days since we last went down? What about the weeds? What about the snails? We might have become over-run with squashes and courgettes, and some more sweetcorn might have ripened! So we popped down on Monday evening to find that the sky had not, in fact, fallen in and the weeds had not taken over the world. We had one big courgette (almost a marrow) and a few smaller ones, as well as a couple of small squash and lots of runner beans. Apart from that, everything seemed to have been taking care of itself quite nicely. Certainly the weeds aren't growing as fast as they were, and the courgettes aren't ripening quite as manically. I guess that's due to less hours of sunlight, plus the fact that a few of the courgette plants have succumbed to mildew and others seem to have been affected by the colder nights.

My Dad very kindly got the strimmer going properly over the weekend. He took it home and re-built the carburettor, I think, as well as re-attaching the 'stop' button. (That wasn't really a necessity before, as getting the thing to stop wasn't an issue.) Anyway, this now means that we can strim our paths and edges to our hearts' content, and it'll make a big difference to how neat the plot looks, especially now that things are starting to die back and it's all looking decidedly autumnal.

Easygardener from greenforks.com left a comment saying: "One of the upsides of the end of the season is thinking about what to plant next year - and what not to repeat - in my case that would be carrots!". Luckily for us, our carrots are now doing fine, after many, many attempts. But I whole-heartedly agree with the sentiment about looking forwards to 2009. I think I get most excited when we're planning what to plant next, flicking through the seed catalogues and choosing the exciting-looking varieties. There are quite a few things that we probably won't bother with again, one being asparagus peas. Who decided they tasted like asparagus, anyway? They taste more like... well, what I would imagine eating grass tastes like.

Mildew, mould and machines

Mum called me this morning and offered (really offered - no arm twisting involved) to come and help us weed! Fab! I love it when people actually want to come and help out. As long as they don't mind taking some extra veg away with them as well!

So, this afternoon - making the most of the sunny weather - we went to the plot with Mum and Dad and got looooads done!

Dad and Adam immediately turned to the petrol strimmer and rotovator. The strimmer is notoriously temperamental but Dad got it going and strimmed all the paths which has made a huge difference. Then he and Adam had a go with the rotovator and churned up some of the already-dug beds, mixing in the manure which we spread a few weeks ago.

Meanwhile, me and mum were weeding around the cauliflower plants (looking good, the snails haven't found them yet!) the courgettes and squashes, and the chard, and pulling up some of the mange tout plants now that they've died right back. Everything looks neater and tidier now.

Here's mum among the courgettes...

We picked quite a lot, including the first two cobs of sweetcorn, which we had for dinner. YUM! This is one of the few things that I can honestly say tastes SO much better than shop- bought. You know how people usually smother corn on the cob with butter? No need. Ours are sweet and delicious, and I'm just hoping we get enough sun for more of them to ripen. Anyone who has a couple of square feet in their garden, or even in a bucket on a patio, should grow some. As Tony the Tiger would say, they're great.

Here's the rich pickin's from the plot this week... swiss chard, runner beans, a little pumpkin (picked too early 'cos I thought it was a squash!), white and red beetroot, colourful carrots, white scallopini squash, a green acorn squash, some dark green cucumbers (bottom right), courgettes, a yellow scallopini squash, a round courgette and the beautiful, delicious sweetcorn. And this isn't all of it, because we gave a carrier bag full to mum and dad for helping out.


Not everything has gone according to plan. The red cabbage and swedes are being munched to death by snails. Grr. The tomatoes have blight, I think, so we've picked all the healthy tomatoes and I'll make some Green Tomato Chutney. The dwarf beans have, frankly, been a bit pathetic, though we've had enough for a couple of meals from them. Some of the courgette plants have mildew, we pulled up the most productive squash plant yesterday after it started to die back with some weird disease, and the biggest cucumber plant has withered and died too.

But all in all, it's been an ok summer for the plot. I'm feeling quite pleased with ourselves.

Now we just have to think about overwintering things and ahead to 2009!

We're back!

Hello again one and all. Sorry for the absence but we're just got back from holidaying in Cancun, Mexico. (Not very carbon neutral, I know, but we'll plant some trees or something to make up...) It's an amazing part of the world but it's a bit depressing to come back to all this rain and grey skies.

We popped to the allotment on Monday which was very kindly looked after by our Mums while we were away...

Good things:

• there are many, many squashes ripening, which is good 'cos I like squash (as I may have mentioned before.)
• the carrots have grown, finally, and they taste really good.
• there are lots of blackberries on the surrounding bushes so I can make bramble and apple jelly again.
  
• the sweetcorn is getting fat and is nearly ready to pick.
• the beetroots are getting big and juicy-looking.
  

Bad things:

• some of the courgette plants have got mildew and look a bit pathetic.
• one of the squash plants has some weird disease which makes the fruits go all bobbly.
• the tomato plants have blight. Again. (sob!)
  
• snails are eating the brassicas.
  
• there are weeds EVERYWHERE!
• I don't know if we'll get enough sun now to ripen the sweetcorn. That would be A Sad Thing.
  
• I've realised I don't know how to cook beetroot... (research is needed.)
  

Things to do at the weekend:

• set some beer traps to catch snails.
• weeding, weeding and more weeding.
• tie up the cucumber plants.
• general never-ending tidying.
• find out what to do with raspberry canes which are getting long and whippy.
• decide what - if anything - we can plant to grow through the winter.