Its been a while . . .

I think that is a bit of an understatement. Family wedding and holidays got in the way a bit as did the refurbishing of our bathroom.

We have had a bumper crop of gooseberries and also blackcurrents this season. The picture shows just the results of one trip, we had at least 3 of both. It is nice because we had a poor crop of both last year due to the fact that we moved them and they didn't get the chance to settle before they blossomed. I think the snow has helped kill the bugs.

We had an alright crop of Broadbeans in the end. Didn't get enough to save the beans for next season though so I will have to buy another packet or two again. Will definitely start them off in cells and wont put any directly in the soil this time around.

My Swiss Chard has been attacked by the Flea Beetle and we only had 3 plants, but they have been nurtured and are producing enough for a few meals. This just goes to show that I usually grow too many plants - something to contemplate for the future.

The Garlic was amazing and I have enough to last me a few years, if only it would survive that long.

The onions were poor, the winter ones just got to the size of small pickling onions. The summer ones are marginally better.

Our Tomatoes just didn't produce much and most of them stayed green. In fact I have just made some chutney with them as I didn't think they would turn red now!

The sweetcorn is going well. We have eaten some cobbs and we have more tonight.

Our potatoes went to Australia, ended up with just enough for 2 meals. I keep digging in the hope I will find some more.

The Broccoli went to flower, we only had a few heads off them. Cauliflowers look 'blind' so not sure they will do anything - darstedly pidgeons, eating them! Lesson learned, cover them as soon as they are planted, no time to go home for lunch before doing that job!!!

Leeks look amazing, cannot wait for them.

Cabbages - no good this year. They still look like seedlings - What am I doing wrong? Any help gratefully received.

Runner beans coming out of our ears, no French beans to speak of.

Strawberries and Plums just didn't happen.

Bumper crop of carrotts. Covered them with fleece until they started growing and then we earthed them up like potatoes. I think we were the only ones not to get hit by the dreaded carrot fly. This was a tip told to me by a non gardening friend. Some friends are amazing!!

This year has been a mixture of failures and successes, but then you will always have years like this, so I am hoping for better things next season.

Hope your crops did well.

Cheryl

Is Spring Here ??

Just got back from the Allotment. The sky is blue, the sun is still shining and we have made a start. I managed to dig up some Cerleriac and Leeks. I also picked the last 2 Savoy cabbages. They are very small (about the size of a grapefruit) but together they will make a good meal. I also dug over where the cabbages were and I weeded it as there was some very large ones growing under the netting. The ground was still frozen in places so it was a bit hard to break up the soil, but where the sun was shining on it, it felt quite warm.

I have re-checked my Broadbeans and there is only one solitary little plant. My beans that I have put into cells ended up in my conservatory and are poking out. There is not 100% germination yet so I will give them another week and then we can think about planting them out next weekend, weather permitting.

The Garlic I planted last year is doing well, but the row of Autumn King Carrots has not germinated at all. Not surprising really considering the amount of snow, frost and generally cold weather!

We also planted out some over winter Onion sets that are about 2 inches high. Not all have grown, but we should get some early ones. I have now bought our maincrop Onions and they are ready to go into the ground soon. See what the weather does for the rest of this month.

I bought some first early seed potatoes a couple of weeks ago and they have been chitting away on the windowsill in the conservatory. We planted them out today. They are called Swift and I will be interested to see how they perform. I chose them because when I went to The Country Store to buy some, there was only a few packets of them left in the bin all the other bins were full. Working on the theory that they were popular because they likely grow well in our soil, I chose them. I am sure you will agree it is not a very scientific approach, but it will do me.

We did as much as we needed to today as we need to break ourselves in gently. I have already managed to pull a muscle in my left shoulder which is causing me a problem when I turn my head, and I must make sure that Mick does not hurt his back.

February 2010

Well, February has come and nearly gone and I have not got anything started. Everytime I think I will get out to the shed to sort out some pots, trays and compost, it either rains, snows or is bitterly cold. As I want to put my filled pots and trays in the shed by the window so that the plants don't get too much heat (like they do in the conservatory) and then get leggy, I thought this would be the perfect solution. When will this cold weather end and some sunshine show through?

The official first day of spring is next Sunday (21st Feb) so we will see what that brings. I have been reading my seed catalogue and I have sorted out what I need for this season and I have now got to buy or order them. I have also had a plant catalogue through and I have read that with interest too. This year they are doing vegtable plug plants. As I have not had much luck with Red Cabbage seed and we love the stuff, I thought I would try some plug plants, alas they don't do them, just green ones - D'oh! I may give some cauliflower and broccoli plants a try though as we like them. I am seriously considering buying some Leek plants too as our crop this year has been so very weedy. The seed didn't do well in their trays and I am wondering whether the heat in the conservatory was to blame. I could really do with a green house but our garden is too small and the TC wont allow us one on the allotment. I suppose I could look at putting sheets of polycarbonite over our raised beds and sort of make a cold frame out of it; although it will probably blow away when the wind gets up.

Well, thats my ramblings for this month.

Thanks for looking

Happy New Year

I would just like to start by wishing everyone who reads this blog a HAPPY, HEALTHY AND PROSPEROUS NEW YEAR.

The snow has gone but it is still very icy and cold. Too cold for digging at the moment. I did manage to go up to our plot in the snow and dig up some carrots for our festive meal. The hardest part was getting the netting off (we need it covering the carrots because the pesky baby rabbits are having a field day eating them). It was heavy with snow that then became ice. I also managed to to pull up some Savoy Cabbage, also for our festive meal - in stead of Brussel Sprouts! I took a couple of flasks of warm water with me that I had to use to was the snow and soil away from the cabbage roots. They were too frozen to cut. I took them all home and left them in the garage to thaw out. I have to say that they were rather nice and tasty.

I was very mean to Michael and I made him go and dig the rest up whilst it was raining, as I needed carrots for our Turkey stew. He is such a good sport though and went without a moan.

I also checked on my Aquadulce Claudia Broadbeans that had been sown in November straight into the ground and covered with cloche. Another year where there is absolutely no sign of any germination at all. I am now left with a quandry - do I leave them and hope that they germinate when it gets warmer or shall I buy some more and sow them into yogurt pots on the conservatory window sill? Will have to give that one a bit more thought.

Planted up some Garlic and some winter Onion sets. They seem to be doing OK. I also set another row of Autumn King carrots for the new year, but they too seem to have gone to Australia just like the broadbeans.

All the christmas decorations are now down and I have started to get the odd seed catalogue delivered, so it is now time to look forward to Spring with warmer weather and very many jobs in the garden and on the allotment.

Thank you for looking.

Autumn is coming . . .

Well, it has been a while since I last posted. It has been a lot of hard work getting our plot back to how it was before our holiday, but we managed it. It is all under control again.

The soil is very dry and dusty as we have not had any rain for the past 2 months. The BBC weather girl has said that Bedfordshire has been the dryest county in the South East. We need rain and I am now going to start thinking about doing a native rain dance . . .

We came back from a recent trip to New York and I decided to go to harvest all our Sweetcorn as we did not have time to do anything with it before we went due to birthday and anniversary celebrations. When I got there, the sweetcorn had been trashed (see picture). Some other plot holders had the same problem and there seems to be 2 schools of thought either it was Muntjac Deer or it was Badgers. The soil is so dry that there were not any footprints for me to distinguish which was the culprit.

I have planted some Autumn King carrots which appear to be doing well, thanks to our water butts (which are now empty). I am hoping to have some of these for dinner on Christmas Day. I have been told that they can stay in the ground all winter so I wont have to pick them all at once. Had I known that before, I would have sown more! Never mind, there is always next year.

We are picking Chard as we have so much of it and I am going to try to freeze some to see how it copes. There is so much up there and I know it will get knocked out with the frosts, which makes me think it will not freeze, but I will give it a go.

I have been doing a study on the names of persistent weeds that we get on our plot, but that information will be for another post, possibly in the winter when there is nothing to write about.

We ended up with enough spuds for just one meal from our experiment with Tyres, so the moral is that you only need them to be 2 tyres high as any higher means they die. Next year we will grow 3 piles of 2 and see if that fares any better. That will please our miserable plot neighbours no end!

Well, I had better go and get on. Thanks for looking.

Early July and so many Weeds

Well, we are back from our two week holiday in France. We stayed at a campsite called "Le Pin Parasol" in the Vendee, not far from Aizenay. Jolly nice it was too, would highly recommend it to any campers out there.

This morning we ventured upto the allotment and wow, so many weeds. Of course I didn't take my camera as it is full of holiday pictures to be downloaded. Our Potato Tyres are 3 high now and one has a single spud growing up through, but not the other one. Not sure what has happened there - could possibly be too high for them or they just need more water, anyway the weeds were growing very nicely thank you.

The sweetcorn, we couldn't see for weeds, but my lovely assistant, Michael cleared that and they are now weed free and able to grow. The Leeks and parsnips are to be weeded as we cannot see either of these as the weeds are higher than our veg. At least it is easy to clear, thank goodness.

I picked the last of the broadbeans and they were surprisingly weed free and I dug over the bed so it is ready for something else to go in. Not sure what at the moment, so back to the seed catalogues - bliss.

I weeded the runner beans, sweetpeas and savoy cabbage as they are all in one bed. I have lost 3 savoy cabbages which means I have 5 left but I have noticed that the red cabbage seeds that died in their trays, 3 are still surviving so I think I will plant them where the savoys were. Don't know what happened to them as they are covered so I didn't think the pidgeons could get to them - hey ho!

Some of my Swiss Chard has bolted and my carrots have been hit by the dreaded "carrot root fly" so I don't have a crop of them this year - double drat! I was growing F1 Maestro by Sutton Seeds and they are supposed to be resistant, but obviously they are not. Next year I must write myself a note to cover them with fleece to protect them.

Our 6 Rhubarb crowns all flowered this year. Never had that before. Now they are covered in black fly - never had that before either. In fact, I have noticed that all the underside of the weeds was covered in black fly too. They must like this warm weather.

Weeded the Celeriac and the Parsnips and we don't know which is which as their leaves all look very similar. At least we have got some of both this year which is a bonus. For the past 2 years our seeds have gone to Australia so chitting the parsnips first is definitely the way to go. Will have to write myself another note next year!

As I have so much washing to do and a quilt to finish for my Mum's birthday (which is next Tuesday) I had better get on with it.

Thanks for looking

Not Easter Yet!

Well, what a great weekend it has been. Spent several hours up at the allotment. We managed to clear a small area and installed 2 tyres to grow potatoes in. Neil on the UK Allotment Forum has advised me to stuff the tyres with straw as they have toxic oils in them that could poison the potatoes. The next job will be to source some straw for this very purpose. Might use shredded paper instead as we have a supply of that. It will also mean we will use less soil to fill the tyres which will be a bonus. We have used potatoes from our veg basket that were sending out shoots, some were new salad potatoes (no name) and the other were the small ones left from our first earlies last year called 'Foremost'. They were a bit scabby because of the very wet conditions, so hopefully these few will be enough for a couple of meals at least. 4 spuds per tyre.

You can just see our Plum tree in the 'before' picture. It is in bloom, so we are hoping for fruit this year. We have tip pruned it, weeded it, fed it and watered it so fingers crossed. We have been told it is a Victoria Plum - lovely.

My lovely assistant, Michael also cleared and levelled the ground in front of our very substantial compost bins and laid some conveyorbelt fabric and then topped off with 4 large paving slabs which will make it easier for me to walk on. We will fill in the gaps with stones. The very rotted compost in the left bin has all but gone now so we are in the process of making more in the right bin and also we have 2 green plastic dalek types that are getting slowly filled up.

We took the covers off our Broadbeans too as they were getting so tall the tops were bending over. Didn't take a picture of them, so will try to remember to do it next time.

This doesn't seem very much for the 3 hours we spent up there but we certainly feel the 3 hours work. We ache!

I have added this picture which I took when we returned from the lotty and it is the first butterfly I have seen so far this year. It was taken on the step by my patio doors at home. The poor thing looks like it has a torn wing, but hey aint he beautiful - summer must be coming.

Well, that is all for now, thanks for looking.