Alotment Update

It's proving to be a busy week so far, this post was supposed to be online Monday morning but time simply got away from me, we're also off on holiday on Friday for a week so there's a million and one things that need doing in preparation for that.


Before all that however there was last weekend and what a scorching Sunday is was too. finally a chance to cut the grass after what seemed to have been a couple of weeks of daily showers. As well as that there was chance to spend a few hours up at the allotment getting caught up on all the weeding after all the rain.


It wasn't actually as bad as it could have been, half an hour with the hoe and it was looking pretty good again. All the crops seem to have come on leaps and bounds too with all the wet warmth we've had. It's got to that time of year when, as you can see from the above picture, everything looks full of life and its hard at first glance to see the order amongst the chaos of fresh green growth.

The parsnips are looking amazing, loads of healthy growth up top that, with any luck, means similar is going on below the surface.

The maincrop potato's are looking great too. It's the first time we've managed to grow 'proper' rows of healthy looking plants (other years have always looks a bit bedraggled and higldy-pigldy) so fingers crossed for a bumper harvest. We've also started eating our first earlies over the last week or so. They taste really good but I was a tad disappointed with the yield, perhaps the second earlies will be better when we get to them.

We also finally got some beans in the ground thanks to a friend at work who supplied us with her left overs. Taking up the space left by the garlic the dwarf french beans in the front of this pic went in on Sunday and seem to have survived despite being really pot bound while the runner beans at the back of the pic are perhaps looking a little weak and wobbly at the moment after their re-homing, fingers crossed they pick up soon.

The corn has put on a growth spurt over the last week or so and seems to be back to its best  after sulking a little when it was first transplanted. The courgettes too are just starting to produce (just in time for us to go on holiday, d'oh!).

The Oca seem to have survived the transplanting process, they got a bit damaged by the wind when they first went out and looked a bit sickly but now they seem to have settled in and are thriving.

We've also got our winter brasicas all planted out and netted over so fingers crossed for some lovely veg ready for Christmas. The netting is a bit cobbled together but it seems to be serving the purpose at the moment. The real test will be when the ground inside needs weeding...

In the fruit cage the blueberries are finally starting to ripen as well, fingers crossed they don't all do it in the next week or so and end up spoiled on the bush when we get home.

All in all things seem to be going really well this year, it's by far the most in control we've been since we started the allotment. It'd be good to get another few hours tidying under our belts before we go away but generally we're very happy with things for once.