"Winner is weeds"

It was The Wife who mentioned these words. This year the only winner is the weeds. The recent rains and floods has sent the weeds into overdrive. Also the fact that we've had to cull a lot of the beds due to the blight has meant that the weeds have pretty much taken over. We have a very poor harvest this year (apart from courgettes) but if we were growing weeds commercially then we'd be rich.

But the weeds are not what we want. We want food for the table and flowers (to make The Wife happy), so the weeds have to go.

Three of these beds were to tomato beds. I'm going to dump a barrow full of manure into each of them over winter and use them for beans next year.

The Chillies in the greenhouse are also suffering. They have only just started flowering, so they are way behind this year. I don't know if they'll have time to actually set some fruit, let alone actually ripening them.

And then there is the apple tree that is absolutely bursting with loads of luscious red fruit... until you get close enough to actually see the fruit up close and then... meh, not so good.

They have the usual maggots in them, but also this year they appear to have some sort of disease of blemish on the skins of them all. I suspect the rains has also had an impact on the tree. But once you cut that off and cut out the good bits they're pretty tasty. It's a shame that they're so much work to get at the very small edible portions.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

36

A gift from the Fox?

Looks like Foxy likes us and left us a gift in the middle of one of the beds.

In actual fact it's pretty common for foxes to grab leather gloves and run off to chew them. After all they are opportunists and will try and eat whatever they can. The leather of the gloves tends to make them think that there is something tasty in there. Unfortunately this turns out to not be the case so they'll leave it lying around. Much to the consternation of the allotmenteers who lose their work gloves. So make sure things are kept out of Foxy's reach.

The chillies are somewhat stagnating in the greenhouse now. Although they have a few flowers on them, I don't think they'll actually manage to produce any fruits before the "summer" is over.

This years summer seems to have been pretty much a washout. The recent floods have proved that somewhat. I'm not sure what this bodes for the future of the plot. Especially as climate change seems to be having a detrimental effect on growing.

But the recent rains have kicked the Buddleja into flowering and the bees are swarming all over it.

I just wish that it would have kickstarted the chillies.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

26

A forest of canes

 They've all fallen over.

In the recent downpours, all of my outside tomatoes have fallen over. OK, I always knew that I should support them, but they've been growing straight and true for a while now and I never got around to putting in the support canes. But now they have all flopped and need the support.

The Chillies this year are not doing as well as previous years. Not sure why, but they did seem to have the same germination problem that all of the other plants had this year. I'm wondering if it was the starting compost, the weather, or just the way the year started. Anyway, instead of putting them in the separate large pots that I normally do, this year, I ousted the remains of the Pak Choi and put my chilli plants into the troughs.

Hopefully they'll put on a growth spurt (if the changeable weather lets them) and we get a few chillies on the plants. I can only hope.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

11

By the pricking of my thumbs...

So the correct term, before it obtained such lewd connotations, is Pricking Out. And we have a lot of plants that are in dire need of just such an activity. First off we have the Chillies. After a very slow start I thought that we wouldn't have much in the way of chillies this year as nothing sprouted. But I suspect that it was the cold April that caused everything to be slow, and I was almost considering throwing out the tray of seeds are starting all over again. But when May started rolling round, things seemed suddenly trigger into action. And now I have a tray of about 20 seedlings all requiring their own pots.

After I had finished here, The Wife got to work clearing up. As you can see this task was done on a pallet balanced on the end of the flower bed. A bed which was growing more weeds than the afore mentioned flowers. So The Wife started clearing it to plant a few remaining flowers such as Calendular that we had growing.

Meanwhile I was still doing battle with the couch grass around the big beds trying to get a bit of space to start planting out some of our courgettes.

So I don't know if my thumbs are aching from just the digging or the pricking out, or maybe it's simply because in amongst all the grass were a whole load of thistles and my gloves are not the thickest (cheap Wilko gloves, £1 a pair) and the thistle spikes kept digging into me. I certainly don't need to be a great detective to figure this one out.

It must be Autumn

 Autumn is mushroom season. And we have a load of woodchips paths all over the plot, which fungi really love so when autumn rolls round they start sprouting.

Although we're coming to the end of our time on the plot for this year, there are still a few last things to harvest. There are a few Chilli that have ripened.

Not sure how many more we'll get. Although there are a few still on the plants, they may not turn even though they're so close.

As for the rest of the plot, that it. We're not planning on growing anything over winter. Here's hoping that next year we can go shopping to buy so many things we need. New wheelbarrow. Marine plywood for building the seating area. So much to do, but we can't go anywhere because if this damn virus.

End of the Season?

 It was rather cold and blowy down the allotment today. I guess Autumn has finally turned up to say "Game over peeps". Certainly the courgettes are now just a pile of dusty and dead leaves.

But hidden in amongst them are the odd one or two. Plus there are a few tomatoes hanging around slowly ripening, and in the greenhouse the chillies are still turning out the odd one or two spicy delight.

But as for the beans, well they never really amounted to much this year. I guess the cold weather when they were just sprouting kind of stunted their growth, but we got a few. The rest we've left to turn into bean seeds, hopefully for a better crop next year.

Either that or I'll just throw them in a stew and be done with them. It's not like they're magic beans.

On the subject of Beans... I guess we should consider the year effectively over. I probably won't grow anything over winter but I am tempted by Steve's suggestion of Field Beans. Of course I have to be careful which bed I put them in because the lower beds of ours have a tendency to get flooded in the winter months. But we do still go to the plot at least once a week (mostly to off-load our compostable waste) so having a ready source of greenery to eat might be a good idea.

(Incidentally... 400th Blog Post!!)

Coming to the end of the season.

It's coming to the end of the summer season on the allotment. That doesn't mean that we're out of produce as the plot is still pretty plentiful.

Firstly we have the classic courgettes which are still putting out a load of fruits. I've totally lost track of just how many we've had, there have been so many. We also grabbed a few beetroots. The big beetroot at the front was a rogue one which must have self-seeded from last year.

Loads of tomatoes too. The yellow ones are Ildi which have also self-seeded from last year. A few chillies which are ripe enough to pick (still more to come) and a Crown Prince which we are going to try out. We have a few CPs which managed to survive the cold snap earlier in the year, so hopefully they will last us a little while.

We're not really planning on growing anything over the winter. But we might plant a few turnips just to see if they come to anything. We planted a whole load back in April, but the incredibly hot spring forced them all to bolt to seed so we didn't get anything. Hopefully slow growing over winter may produce results.

Potting on and harvests

Quite a few of the plants are starting to get a little pot bound. So it's time to move them to larger pots.

The Chillies are definitely first on the list. As you can see they're still in their small pots and are in need of a little more wiggle room. The pots they're going to will probably be their last move. I have two sets of chillies, and although they were planted at the same time, one set was kept in the large green tray (above) with a permanent half inch of water, and some were left in trays which did dry up occasionally. The ones that were kept in the water were twice the size of the others. Which is odd, because I've always been told that Chillies don't like to get their feet wet.

Meanwhile outside, The Wife has been weeding. The New Zealand Spinach bed has been sitting for a while, and to be honest, I'm not sure that it actually sprouted properly, because I have never seen any sign of it. Which is somewhat disappointing really. But we decided that it was best to cut our losses and plan to put something else in there. We're not sure what. But The Wife really went to town and pulled it all... except for some poppies.

She also found a few rogue Tomato plants which she had me pot up as well. Ah well, free tomatoes are always welcome.

Elsewhere on the plot, the Kale is starting to pick up. We're still keeping it under netting, because there are a large number of pigeons flying around (it is London after all) and those "Rats with Wings" love nothing better than to help themselves to tasty Kale.

All of this work was supervised by our resident vulpine, Fiona, who stopped by to check up on us and make sure we were up to scratch.

So, now we're harvesting. First off we have a load of Rhubarb. This is going to be used in a new batch of Rhubarb and Ginger Jam.

Next the Strawberries are still on a major roll. We have loads of them. And we are also harvesting some Micro Greens (Sweetcorn) for dinner tonight.

Woodchips, Weeds and watering

Just as well I grabbed a few barrow loads on Thursday. They're all gone now. That's what happens when you get a whole load of allotmenteers starved for manure and woodchips. It's a somewhat vital part of growing on the allotment.

Anyhow, the pile I did manage to get has been liberally spread around (most of) the goat paths. But before that was done, I had to remove all the invasive grasses and weeds. So most of the day was spent digging out weeds. But now, the plot is looking a little better.

After that, it was case of watering, watering, and more watering. We haven't had rain now for, I'm guessing, about 2 months. The soil is like dust. Whenever you water it hits the surface and then runs away. So the only way you can make it stick is to rake a few small furrows in the soil (when you're weeding) so the water drains into them. Then allow it to filter down for a while, before going back and watering some more.

Mind you, this heat is being loved by some of the plants. Most notably the Chillies. They're coming along just fine since being potted on.

Elsewhere in the greenhouse, our spare courgettes are looking rather yellow. Not only their leaves, but they have also started producing flowers. A sure sign that they're under stress. Most probably from the fact that they're pot bound. I guess I may just pull them all out and throw them in the compost bins.

But one which we threw into a bucket half full of manure, and topped up with compost and kept in the greenhouse is looking really good.

Outside, the netting which I put over the Kale decided that it was going to all fall down. The trough is empty and as such it's rather light. So we've had a stiff wind blowing around the plot and it fell over and took all the netting with it. Well if it wants to fall over, then let it. I dragged one of the other spare trough over to join it and then re-arranged the netting.

At least it'll keep the damned pigeons off.

Repairing the damage

So we have totally lost the Courgettes. But the Crown Prince only appear to have suffered damage on the outer leaves of some of the plants. Yes, some are completely dead, and one seems to have been the victim of a cut worm, but a couple of the plants are sprouting new small leaves which means that the damage is not as bad as we initially thought.

Even so, when I reported the failure earlier in the week, I immediately started looking online for replacement Crown Prince seeds, only to find that there were none to be had. Steve from the Seaside Allotment Channel, offered to send me some replacements which I gratefully accepted. If you have not been following Steve, then you are really missing out. This is somebody who is relatively new to the allotment, but who has taken to it like the proverbial duck to water. He is doing stuff the likes of which you would find in commercial Market Gardens and the sheer amount of food that he turns out is absolutely astonishing.

Anyway, our day started off with the Divine Miss Vulpine turning up, despite the amount of people who were on the plot.

We re-planted the courgettes with some of the spares we had in the greenhouse.

Meanwhile is was transplant time for a number of other plants. The Wife did the Petunias, and a donated flowers (not sure what it was) and I later re-potted the Chillies.

We also had a damn good clear out of the 2nd greenhouse, as this will later be used for the above mentioned Chillies and the Two remaining Cucumbers. It definitely looks a bit cleaner compared to the last time you saw it.

I've nipped the seed heads out of the Pak Choi as they were starting to reach for the skies a bit. Oh and got rid of another of those pesky snails which were munching on our produce. But there are plenty of leaves on them still.

Whilst cleaning it out, we came across a few tubs of old beans. Since we also lost our beans in the previous cold winds, we took this opportunity to re-sow. We also planted out all the sweetcorns. Sine we've had to split the sweetcorns across two beds, I'm going to try a little experiment. I've dropped a few peas into the base of each plant in one of the beds, and beans into the base of each in the other bed. Hopefully they'll germinate in a few weeks and can use the corn as ready made canes. It's a bit random but we'll see if it works.

All quiet on the Eastern Front

It's a little quiet round here these days.

No I haven't been ill again. I'm really feeling a lot better. The pulmonary rehab that I'm doing at the hospital these last few weeks has really helped. I'm feeling so much better now. And the change of medicines has done wonders. I've gone from using my sulbutamol two or three times a days to two or three times a week. At my last assessment I managed to blow 500ml on my peak flow test. So yes, I am really feeling much, much better.

No, the reason why it's so quiet is that we just don't have anything left at the allotment that's worthy. The only trips we do is to empty the weeks bio-rubbish into the compost heap. So today's little trip was a quick flying visit during a break in the rain.

We had a frost at the start of the week, and that killed a lot of the remaining plants. The Morning Glories are now sadly done for, and the high winds we've had a while back has ruined the arch.

The rest of the plot is now rather a damp bedraggled mess. If this rain ever lets up for a weekend I might be able to get round to clearing it up a bit.

In the greenhouses the frost has ended some of the chillies. But you might just spot a bit of red in there of a couple of the chillies that have actually matured. I don't know whether you can use green chillies in the same manner, but there are quite a few of them still in there.

Other than that, there is not much to do at this time of year. Maybe if I wasn't so ill during the main part of the year, then there may be something worth having. Still, there is always next year. Time to hit the online seed shops and dream of a better tomorrow.

Help is appreciated

I'm still not well enough to do heavy work. But many weeks back I was contacted by a gentleman who is on the waiting list for an empty plot. He offered to help me do some of the more manual work on the plot. Today the first day that he helped out, and what a huge help he has been.

So, do you remember the photo I took a couple of weeks back showing the weeds at the front?

Well Micheal put his back into clearing them out. So now it looks like this...

Much better. We even managed to clear out the pathway that I put in a couple of years back.

Although moving just four wheel barrows of woodchips put me completely out of action.

Meanwhile, whilst Micheal was pulling weeds, I managed to throw the remaining unloved potatoes into the ground. These poor things have been sitting "chitting" for a couple of months. Last week I threw some of them in the Sweetcorn bed. These last ones are going into a mixed bed. Part Carrot, part, tomato, part beetroot, and part potato. Basically all the remaining leftover bits and pieces.

Elsewhere we've managed to plant up the cucumbers into buckets rather than small plant pots. They were a bit pot bound, however now they should be free to grow as big as they need. We planted three outside, and the remaining seven will be in the greenhouse. Also we planted up the chillies. Looks like we have several (27) plants that have grown true. Not bad for the seed that collected from last years crop.

Slowly, but surely we're pulling the plot back into shape. But only with help from others.

It's chilli time

The Chillies have been ripening in the greenhouse. The plants themselves are starting to look a little sorry for themselves, but they sure have put out a whole load of fruit.

I have only picked those which are red. There are a lot more that are green or just starting to turn so they will be left to mature a little longer. There are also a couple of other plants which I haven't yet touched.

Meanwhile we have culled all the remaining tomatoes. It's easier to trim off the vines themselves rather than pick all of the small cherry tomatoes directly.

We'll probably be picking through these for the rest of the week.

And finally, there are the very large of the squashes and courgettes. We have enough of these, so we're going to leave them at the front of the plot for anybody who want them to grab.

We're definitely into the tail-end of the season now, so I'm starting to clear the beds, fill those that need it with manure. But I do need to start getting some covers made to ensure Mr. Fox doesn't dig through them too much. And I supposed I also need to start thinking about next year. Perhaps once I've cleared the beds, I can put down all the Stuttgard onions sets that I got on sale at the local garden centre. Would be nice to actually try for decent onions, given that I don't seem to have much luck with them.

Is it a little Chilli in here?

This summer has been hot.

Let me re-phrase that.

This summer has been so damned hot. So hot that the Chillies in the greenhouse have gone crazy. We have had loads and loads of chillies, and they're still producing.

So today's harvest is very specific. We'll be hosting a BBQ tomorrow, (yes, another one), for a friend who is leaving these shores for Australia. We've also invited a few other friends round too. On tomorrows menu is a salsa, so we need Tomatoes and Chillies...

And a few grapes. Look closely and you might find a few potatoes hiding under there as well. They're for us though. So today has mostly been clean up and plot tidy ready for tomorrow.

So tomorrow around 2pm there should be much joviality and food to be had by all.

Sunday Update:
Yes we had our last BBQ of the year. It went down pretty well, with great food and great friends.

When was the last time you had a BBQ on your plot?