We had rain...

Not the small splatter that only settles the dust, we actually had a decent downpour for a day or so that has given us a respite from the endless watering.

The courgettes are still cranking out far more than we can eat. So they're being given away to anyway that can take them away. But now the Toms are starting to crank out some decent sized fruits. And for a change we managed to get some of the sweetcorns that are edible... however the popcorns have only produced small powder-tasting cobs. Guess they're going to be ground into cornmeal.

But we thought we'd have a go at pulling a few carrots and see what they're like this year. Now we haven't really had much success with carrots over the years, and this year is the first time we've tried planting directly in soil, so we did wonder what we'd end up with.

So these are four carrot plants. They look like a cross between and alien from outerspace and a dodgy hentai movie. Still I reckon they'll taste pretty good anyway.

Working Party

There are times when work on the actual plot has to be put on hold for the work on the site for the good of the community. Today we were working on fixing up one of the central pathways across the site. It took a couple of hours to get through it but with everybody helping we soon managed to clear out the old carpet and weeds and laid down a nice thick pathway of woodchips.

Once we managed to fight our way through, we ended up with a pretty decent path.

The Workers then stopped for tea (and brownies courtesy of Sue) and posed for photos.

The workers (left to right): Hiroe (aka The Wife), Pippa, Greg, Brian, Julie, Jasper, Simon, Michelle, Abby with Yours Truly taking the photo.

The whole thing probably took a shade under three hours (including tea and snacks). It's one of the benefits of everybody pulling together. Many hand make light work as the saying goes.


Once we all disbanded then we could face some work on our own plots. For my part I planted out Beetroot and Purple Carrots, into what we're calling the Purple Bed. The Wife potted on some of her beloved Cape Gooseberries. After that it started spitting with rain, so while we packed up and sheltered in the greenhouse we had a visit from the local Vixen.

We've been told that she has two cubs but we've yet to see them. Unfortunately it seems like we've lost Ben as we haven't seen him for a few months now. Now we have to choose a name for this little lass.

Back to the plot tomorrow as I have Shop Duty, and there is still much to do.

Almost the end of the season

Things are coming to an end now. The plot is definitely starting to look a little worn and bedraggled. Not surprising since this year has been pretty productive.

The Cape Gooseberries outside are still pretty green. But the ones we had in pots (outside) and all those in the greenhouses have certainly ripened enough to harvest. Fortunately they do keep well. But considering the total amount (or at least the potential total amount) then we should be on course for a very good harvest, and possibly jam. i think we'll probably wait a couple more weeks for the ones outside to see if they are ready. If not then we may be forced to pull them and work with what we get.

The outside sunflowers are also starting the die back and go to seed. rather than let the seed scatter, we decided to start pulling the heads off. We'll probably make sure they are properly de-seeded then we can make seeded fat balls for the birds over winter. And of course keep some seeds back for next year.

Remember the dodgy carrots from last week? Well, the Wife made them into soup. Plenty of onions and carrots boiled up with seasoning.

Then a blitz with the blender and it made a delicious thick soup, the colour of which is not done justice in my poor photos. Purple carrots at their best... no matter how they look.

Add some tomatoes from our stock and you have a meal fit for kings. This is what allotment good food is all about.

Carrot failure (again)

It seems we never have much luck with carrots. Our carrots this year were grown in just coir. In previous years we've tried soil, compost, sand and various combinations in between. We thought that keeping it loose and free from the normal rich mix you'd expect in a growing medium, that we'd get something different. But alas we ended up with the same branching a splits that we've had in previous years.

Hopefully though, they'll taste just as good.

The Corn that we pulled last week has been sitting in a large tub in the greenhouse. I was hoping that they'd start to dry out. Bad move. Looks like the mould and the wood lice have started to move in. So instead we opted to pull all the outer leaves off and take the cobs home to dry in the kitchen. Apart from those which were not fully formed or a bit scrappy. They'll be offered to the chickens.

These make some pretty damn good popcorn. But I also am going to try making cornmeal for baking cornbread.

And finally the time of the courgettes is coming to an end. There are still a few last little ones growing, but the leaves are definitely past their best. Perhaps one more week before they all get culled.

Doing odds and ends

After the discovery of the frost damage, there is not a lot to do, but plant more and wait for them to germinate. We have two courgette plants which have survived as they were mixed in with the strawberries in the greenhouse and the tough strawbs managed to protect them from the frost. The ones which were hit in the second greenhouse may recover somewhat because it seems that only the leaves may have caught the worst of it. The heart of the plants are still green and seem to be putting forth a few (admittedly very tiny) leaves. Only time will tell whether they recover.

So in the meantime, it's plant more sweetcorns and tomatoes and hope for the best.

Which leaves us with just small jobs to be got on with. Making a cane support...

(Yeah, I did have a cane storage underneath the shed, but it turned out to be a bit awkward.)

Plugging the gap in the No. 2 greenhouse with temporary polystyrene found in the rubbish.

Put carrots into the coir pots.

We tried planting carrots into soil (they forked), compost (they forked), sand (they forked) and now we're going to try coconut coir which basically have almost no nutritional value. We'll see how they go this time.

Whilst we were rootling around in the rubbish we came across a whole load of pots that somebody had thrown away. I've said before that one persons trash is another's treasure, so we grabbed them. But the Wife insisted on washing them all.

Anyway, we have pots to spare, and we have new seeds planted. Maybe we'll actually have something to plant after all.

Still getting a harvest

The nights are drawing in now... especially because the clocks have changed. But down at the plot there are still some goodies to be had.

The potatoes have been sitting in the bags since August when I took all the tops off them to stop blight from spreading. But down in the cool earth they're still happy.

Wish I could say the same for the carrots though. We've never had much luck growing carrots. Tried all sorts on methods, but we just can't seem to get nice true, straight carrots. They always end up knobbly and branched. They taste fine though. The spuds and carrots we're used in a nice Japanese Curry. The Cape Gooseberries... well they're dessert.

On the plot though, we're now onto boring jobs which aren't very photogenic. Emptying and re-locating the compost bin is not the most glamorous work. So I didn't bother taking photos of that. But trimming to Buddleja turned this...

Into this...

Which I'm sure you'll agree is a lot better. It also won't be bothering the neighbours anytime soon. But there is still much to be done. But it gets dark early these days. Darker now they changed the clocks. Can we just leave the clocks alone for once? If you want lighter "evenings" then get up earlier. I still wake at stupid'o'clock in the morning. But my times have to fit to everybody else, so now I can't go to the allotment in the evenings. :(

Potting on

So we're in the middle of the growing season at present. Not so bad, considering that what we're growing has reduced somewhat, considering recent events. But we do have some things which are doing really well.

The sweetcorn for example are nearly a metre tall.

And the Cape Gooseberries and Carrots are doing well. (You can just some of see the carrots at the back, whilst the other carrots are in separate pots.)

And the Blue Berry bushes are weighed down by the amount of fruit forming.

The Strawberries are coming in thick and fast now.

But we still have some stuff in the greenhouse that we've kept protected. Now it's getting pot-bound and needs potting on. So most of today was spent doing just that.

More Cape Gooseberries, Chinese Lanterns, Fox Gloves (grown from seed from last years flowers), Mint, Tomatoes, etc. We're getting rather crowded in the greenhouse these days. As such, we have asked the Committee for permission to build a second greenhouse.

The floods have necessitated a change in thinking and layouts. We want to re-build the flower bed, but make it easier to access and raised up. So we're planning on building a large 'U' shaped bed that's 3m long and 1.8m wide. This will extend from the leading edge of the current greenhouse, back to the boundary line. We'll have to dig up all the Daffodils, but they'll get re-planted in the new bed anyway. So thats one project for the autumn/winter.

Adding a second greenhouse, will add an indoor growing bed, where we can grow protected crops. We want to focus on things like Chillies and Pak Choi, which are often susceptible to damage outside. We'll have the two doorways facing each other, and move the table out of the first green house and use it in between the two as a work bench. I might build a simple lean-to shelter up the path side and up to the roof gable as protection.

But it's not all rosy... the flood followed by the warm weather has allowed the spores to take hold and re-introduced the dreaded BLIGHT.

I've now chopped all the foliage off the spud bags before it get too invasive. The spuds should still be OK though. Well at least I hope they are. The last lot were just blobs of mush in the ground. But the bags avoided the flood. Guess from now on, all of our spuds will be grown in bags.

The 2016 Courgette Tally:

8

I hate bindweed

Not only is the grass growing, but also the bindweed.

If you break off the bindweed roots whilst they're in the ground, then those little roots can sprout new shoots.

And thus it spreads itself around. Not only that but it also has some large white flowers that eventually produce small black seeds that get blown away by the wind to spread itself again. Do NOT let it flower.

But fortunately it's not just the bindweed thats growing. We planted out the Autumn Wings and Zierkurbis squashes today. They have been growing very well in the greenhouse but have grown almost too well and definitely need to be outside.

Some more of our normal courgettes went into the mound.

The past couple of years, we haven't really had much success with carrots. We've tried them in the ground, in bags, used sand, but all we've ended up with is misshapen masses. They're still edible, but they sure won't be winning any prizes (unless it's for the rudest vegetable). So this year, we're going to try are final attempt. No soil... just plain compost.

Talking of compost, last years compost bay had a few rogue potatoes in it. Yeah, yeah, we thought that by throwing them into the compost bin they'd rot down and be part of the nutrients. Nope, they rolled to the bottom, sat over winter and them sprouted. No matter. They can stay there. But I've given them a new companion.., the broccoli (Bottom right in photo)

The spud bags are doing their normal duty as a a place holder for the weed membrane. We're trying to expand the number of beds, but the grass is everywhere and the only way to keep it down is to try and cook it under the black heat absorber.

What grasses and weeds we have pulled is put in our current compost bin (but no bindweed of course). But the only problem with that is that it's full.

The Mediterranean Wildflower mix that we sowed last weekend has already sprouted. Should be a good showing.

Elsewhere around the plot, the lillies are growing.

The artichoke is starting to put up flower stalks.

The grape vine is starting to leaf out.

And our blueberries, are currently greenberries.

So somethings are working out well. Just wish we could get rid of this damn bindweed. Somebody pass me the flamethrower.

The Tsunami has begun

It's been a while since I updated the blog. But that doesn't mean that things have stood still on the plot. On the contrary things are going great guns.

We are now well into the Courgette Tsunami. They are popping up at the rate of one or two a day, and have been doing so for the past 3 weeks.

The onions stagnated. Not sure what was going on with them, but the leaves all fell over and they just refused to grow any more. So I pulled them all out.

They're not as big as I would have liked, but that's no major problem. I left them to "dry" out a bit, just to wheedle out the better ones, and now I'll be soaking them in brine and turning them into pickled onions.

Whilst I'm pickling those, I may as well try pickling some courgettes too. At least the beetroot is still going strong, and the couple we've had so far for our salads are absolutely delicious. But again, I'll probably be pickling those as well.

That's the problem with the glut. There is only so much you can eat (been eating Courgettes everyday now... and there are still 8 spare despite giving some away) and given that we don't have a freezer of any capacity (just the tiddly one in the top of the fridge) it's hardly worthwhile attempting to freeze things. So we either have to pickle or dry.

Now the carrots were a bit of a shock too. We were watching them grow in the bags. And two of them we could just see poking their shoulders out above the soil and they looked to be a right old size. So we decided to pick them for dinner. Uh oh.

It seems that despite adding sand to the mixture in an attempt to loosen it up, it only compacted it even more. The roots had simply split and twisted into small unusable little tendrils, Doesn't bode well for the rest of the crop.

But one thing which has done really well is the flower crop. Not that we eat them of course, but the bees are loving the wild flowers, the artichoke flowers and most of all the buddleja.

Think I'm going to attempt to dry a courgette tonight and see how it turns out. Oh, and pickle the onions (and a courgette). And maybe make a courgette cake too.

Did I mention that we'll be having courgettes for dinner tonight?

Potatoes and Jam

Been an interesting weekend. Saturday was the more conventional "down the plot stuff to do" sort of day.

Apart from potting on tomatoes and other stuff that we have in the greenhouse, it was also time to start putting out the courgettes. The first four went out onto the "new" mound. Well I call it the new mound, but it's actually the mound I made last year for the pumpkins which got sluggified. Hopefully this year will be better for the courgettes.

But that wasn't the first lot of courgettes to be planted out. Earlier in the week I planted three at work for the canteen.

The potatoes seem to be coming along just fine. Although some of them have definitely failed. Maybe I left them chitting far too long? Either way I have a few bags left empty.

So, pick an empty bag, and put the carrot seedlings in.

Last year out carrots grew all stunted because the soil compacted and forced them to bifurcate and generally go into strange shapes. This year, this bag as 20kgs of sand mixed in which hopefully will prevent that.

The outside strawberries are now starting to bear fruit... yet they still have a load more flowers which is probably good news for when the Championships rolls around.

And our first main harvest this year is a truly heroic amount of rhubarb.

Slightly over 4kgs of the stuff once it was chopped and processed. I left it to "soak" over night in 4kgs of sugar.

Sunday was rather wet and dreary. So after a quick stint on shop duty in the morning (only one customer!) it's back to the warmth of the kitchen to get cooking. I put everything into our big cooking pot. It just fit.

Which was actually a mistake. Throw in about half a kilo of freshly grated ginger and the resulting amount, though it still looked to be able to fit, bubbled up and over and made a sticky mess all over the cooker. I had to scoop some out into an additional saucepan so that it could properly be dealt with.

Eventually a suitable amount of liquid was boiled off and it bottled into a shade over 14 jars of rhubarb and ginger jam.

Now I have to clean the sticky mess before the wife finds out I made a big mess everywhere.

Oooops. Too late. Dog house time for me.