A poor harvest

Well today is a pretty poor harvest. We pulled the remaining Edamame beans, dug out a third of the potato bed and got 6 courgettes. We also grabbed a dew apples off the tree - those will have to be carefully cut up before being eaten.

Oh, and the very last cucumber.

Seriously though, we seem to be having a very poor time of it at present. Far worse than we've ever had before. Not sure if it's the way we are handling the plot or the weather. I suspect the latter, especially after the blight.

Things have just not been going well. Everything we have left in the greenhouse (Chillies and Aubergines) have flowers but no fruit has set and the plants now seem static in that state. The overcast weather just don't give any impetus to plants to grow.

I've received a whole load more seeds for next year (DT Brown were offering a free postage over the recent Bank Holiday weekend which I took liberal usage of), so hopefully next year will be better.

It remains to be seen though.

The 2021 Courgette Tally:

46

In a bit of a pickle

A while back I started counting the number of courgettes that came from the plot. The old "Courgette Tally". Well I'm not sure how many that I've collected this year, since I neglected to start counting right at the beginning, but I am drowning in them. We've had them fried, souped, grated, baked, and now I've tried pickling them.

And we still have loads left. I tried de-hydrating some a couple of years ago, that didn't go so well. Well, that's to say the drying went OK. It was the re-hydrating and cooking that failed. I just ended up with a slimy mess that tasted foul. So it would seem that the best way is to keep them is by turning them into another product... hence pickles.

But we still have loads to give away...

Our potatoes kind of finished early this year. Maybe it was the heat? But I pulled the main stalks off a couple of weeks ago, and today I finally up-ended the bag to see what was inside. Plenty there, but they were kind of small.

Still better than nothing. But we still need to keep on top of the weed situation. Turn your back for two minutes and there are a thousand more weeds to pull.

Guess that this winter I'll have to get most of the beds covered... I just need to get enough weed membrane from somewhere. Somewhere that I can go shopping that is, because as it stands at present, I can still only go home and the allotment. Not allowed to go anywhere else until I'm vaccinated.

2020 has been an "interesting" year so far.

Bucket'o'weeds

The plot is doing well. Of course most notably the weeds are doing better if the number of them is any indication. So we went to the plot early today (to avoid the heat) and started pulling.

We have a wild area at the back of the plot, which was supposed to have been turned into a seating and picnicking area this year, but a certain pandemic meant I couldn't get the materials that I wanted. So once again it's been left to go wild. Perfect place for throwing all of the resulting weeds, after all no green thing should leave the plot. It'll all compost down.

So we emptied loads of buckets into the back. I lost count, I think I did about 4, and The Wife did about 5 or 6. Anyway, it seems like we've hardly made a dent in the totals in the beds. But things do look a little tidier.

And we have yet more courgettes. Can't give them away fast enough.

...and sweetcorns, and beetroots, and tomatoes, and potatoes....

Soon we'll get round to apples. The tree is creaking under the weight of them, but they're still rather small, and also, sadly, rather moth eaten.

And somewhere hidden in the Crown Prince patch are a few CPs growing there. Considering that we almost lost them all due to a late frost then I think this is rather remarkable.

Anyway, time to avoid the heat and head for the hills. Also known as home.

(Incidentally, have you noticed how bad the new UI for Blogger has become. It's now "optimised for mobiles" and because of this they have completely forgotten the usability of the system. Where before it was easy to select the tags for your posts, now you have to scroll down a huge list to select them. You can't type them in or pick from a condensed list any more. 

They have also blocked you from uploading images in the old interface. So you're now forced to use the new system it you want to include images in your posts. And any images you do upload no longer auto-scale. So now you have to upload images fro the New Interface, switch back to the old one to add them with the scaling, select them by choosing the option "from this blog" and scroll down to the very bottom - that view should really be reverse date ordered - to add them with the scaling.

This is very badly thought out. As somebody who works in the tech industry I find it appalling.)

Dealing with weeds

There are three main ways to dealing with weeds.

1. Mulch to stop them growing.
2. Diligently keep pulling them out.
3. Burn them out.

The mulching is really the better choice. Whether you use a weed membrane or a spent mushroom compost, it covers the seeds and stops them germinating. Thats all well and good it you have the spare finances and time to deal with it. But we don't spend a great deal on the allotment. It more for a little bit of veg here and there and a way to escape the house for a short period of time. Something which is well and truly appreciated in these current times.

Pulling them is seriously time consuming and you need to do it regularly. Well we only go to the plot a couple of times a week. It's quite a hike from where we live and a busy schedule doesn't really allow us to spend a lot of time during the weekdays done there.

So I opted for the burning. I have a weed gun which deals quite easily with seeds on the ground.

Last year the plot was seriously neglected due to ill health and the weeds well and truly took over. So now we're kind of fighting back. A lot of our beds have been infested, and although we tried to keep on top of it there was just too much. Our crop of New Zealand Spinach either didn't germinate, or failed to compete with the weeds in the soil, so we pulled it a few weeks back. And the bed has been lying dormant ever since. So it's time to kill the seeds and get something else in there.

So what started as this...

Ended up as this...

These are side-shoots from the many rogue tomatoes that we've had poking their heads up throughout the plot. Technically they're weeds too. "A weed is a plant growing in the wrong place." But they're useful weeds.

The trough you can see there is actually part of the framework built over the Kale bed and holds up the netting. London pigeons are the worst and they have decimated our attempts to grow Kale in the past. This year we're keeping them at bay and having a massive crop of Kale as a result... when the butterfly caterpillars aren't munching them that is.

Elsewhere we're gathering in Courgettes in huge numbers (again).

And we pulled the last of the peas. We've had a good crop this year, enough for several meals. But now the plants are dying so it's time to clear the bed. I'll let it sit for a while before hitting it with the weed gun and getting something else in there. You can see the old pea bed at the back of this shot.

As this is where I've started digging out some of the potatoes from earlier in the year. It was an unexpected find we thought we wouldn't be able to do anything with them, but I stopped digging when we had enough for a meal. The rest are (hopefully) still in there.

The next major crop we're expecting though will have to be the Apples.

The tree is bending under the weight of them. But sadly a lot of them appear to have been hit with the moth again despite putting up a trap. There is only one thing worse than biting into an apple and discovering a maggot...

An unexpected Potato harvest.

So I did the usual "drop The Wife off for shopping and head to the plot" thing. Following on from yesterday's digging, I dug out the small bed in the middle of the plot which was last year's dumping ground for odds and ends.

So imagine my surprise when I find stumpy old carrots, half eaten beetroots, nettles, thistles, and a load of spuds.

Now, I'm not sure whether they are edible as they all seem to have sprouted and many have a zillion little roots. But one thing I can do, is plant them again, with a little more space and care. Normally I use bags for planting potatoes but these ones seem to have done OK, in the bed. It's just a matter of making sure you dig them all out, because you have spuds for life otherwise.

It's all rotten

Not the produce... the paths. This last week has seen heavy rain, and as the temperatures are dropping at the end of summer that can only mean it's mushroom season. And boy are they coming out in force. Almost every path on the plot is sprouting little brown conical caps.

That's the reason I use woodchips for the paths. Well at least one of the many reason. I hate grass. You have to keep cutting it. You can't eat it. (OK technically you can but... meh). The wood chips rot down and make the nutrients available to other plants that need it. ie. the veggies.

Not that we have much veggies left these days. We "cleared" the old sweet corn bed of the stalks that we harvested last week. Well it's not fully cleared as there are some rogue Cape Gooseberries that have sprouted in there, and also buried somewhere in the middle is probably a whole load of potatoes.

Back in June I simply threw a whole load of potatoes into the middle of the sweetcorn bed because I was simply too exhausted in trying to do any kind of work. Threw them in and hoped for the best. There are some down there. But I won't dig them out just yet. I may end up regretting that and I'll probably end up with rogue potatoes in the bed for many years to come. Ah well.

But we did manage to scavenge a few last minute goodies from the plot.

Grapes from the vine (at least the ones which weren't stolen) and the last of the cucumbers. The sweetcorn was from last week. I thought I could leave them at the plot but the damp weather has started to rot the outside leaves so I thought it better to strip them and take them home to dry out a bit. And I still have to get round to making that cornmeal and cornbread.

Maybe this weekend? Nah. Don't think so.

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.

3 hours to plant Sweetcorn?

You can tell how still unfit I am. It's a long recovery process and these past few weeks have definitely taken a huge toll on me.

The Sweetcorn has been sitting in the greenhouse for ages now. The are becoming potbound. But we do have a nice plot for them. It was last years courgette heap that has been covered all winter. The soil underneath has broken down and composted into a really good tilth so it's relatively easy to break up and rake level. Which is just as well.

Now one other thing that has been sitting in the greenhouse is the potatoes. I put them out to start chitting back at the start of April and since then, I haven't been able to do anything with them. So it's kind of a waste. Fortunately this bed is rather large and can easily accommodate having some spuds in as well. If they survive and come up then thats OK. If they just rot and die, then thats OK too.

The only drawback is that it took me nearly three hours just to rake over this bed and get everything planted. And yes, there are still a shed load of weeds and grasses still lying around because I don't have the strength to clear them out as yet.

Meanwhile, elsewhere The Wife is plucking strawberries and weeds in equal measures. The bind weed is poking it's head up everywhere. Mostly though it's managed to weave itself in and out of the rhubarb. Only one thing for it... clear out some of the rhubarb.

4.3Kg of rhubarb later... I guess it's time to make a huge batch of Rhubarb and Ginger Jam.

Sunday Night Update: 4.3kg of Rhubarb, an equal quantity of sugar, a shed load of ginger and a bottle of pectin later... and there are 18 and a half jars of deliciousness waiting to be given away to my colleagues at work and neighbours.

Cleaning and seeds

What a difference a week makes. So last week was nice and sunny. But then suddenly the temperature changed and took a downward spiral. This does not bode well for the seeds that I sowed last week. So, I was a little surprised this weekend that there was actually some sprouting action going on.

The Pak Choi seems to be off to a start. Also the spuds are starting to sprout a little.

No change from any of the other seed trays. Perhaps when the weather gets a little warmer.

So in the meantime, it's time to do a bit more spring cleaning. We've already done the greenhouses, so now it's shed time. It's quite a mess in there. (And this photo was taken after we already started.)

After a few mins we emptied everything out and could sweep out a years worth of detritus.

And then put it back in, in a little more orderly fashion.

At least now we can get in there to the very back of the shed.

So, we have beds prepped, greenhouses and shed cleaned, seeds planted. Now we just need to wait for the weather to warm up a bit. Can we have a bit of last year brought forward to this one please? Just a smidge.

Rainy day

It seems odd to be posting about a rainy day when we've had one of the longest and hottest summers on record. But it's nice to have the change.

We're now at the tail end of the season and things are starting to die off. Firstly the courgettes have just about run out of steam.

There are just a few left buried in the dead foliage.

Then the petunia troughs have finished.

Mind you, one of them did succumb to the high winds we had recently and fell over.

Not a major issue though. Just stand it upright and throw the dead petunias in the compost. We have more than enough seeds.

The courgettes were sorted out into those destined for food, those destined to become "Georges" (ie seeds for next year) and those to be given away to anybody who wants. We simply leave them of the water tank lid next to our plot and people can help themselves as they walk past.

We also grabbed a few of the remaining cherry tomatoes and thought we'd dig out some spuds from bags and buckets for dinner tonight. But we weren't happy with the quality of the spuds. A lot of them that we dug out were the tiniest spuds you've ever seen.

We barely got a decent plate's worth from 3 buckets and a bag. I think we might have a reason for that. Normally we find bags to work better than ground spuds. They're certainly easier to harvest anyway. However, as we have already mentioned in the past, we're on London Clay soil. Now we've put a lot of organic material into the soil, but that still doesn't solve the problem of the fact that the clay is there. Being bags and buckets, they're raised off the ground, where they can dry out and more to the point, they can be hit by the sun.

Emptying out the buckets, the soil at the very bottom was like rock. I suspect what has happened is that the long hot summer has baked the clay into bricks, thereby hampering the growth of the potatoes.


The leaves are turning brown now, and starting to fall. So it's time to think about winter crops, and covering the beds ready for next year. Well some of the leaves are brown. The Blueberries are starting to turn bright red which makes a nice splash of colour on a dreary day.

Time to head for home and a nice hot cup of tea.

Bucket'o'spuds

So the spuds that are planted in the ground have seen their last. Their foliage is dying... which means it's time to dig them up.

Now normally, we do spuds in bags. In fact this year we have bags and buckets. I've already upturned a few bucket and found that the output was rather low. So I wasn't really expecting much from these. However as you can see, we've got a whole bucket of them. Certainly far more than I expected. So it would seem that the amount of spuds produced is in direct proportion to the size of the container... in this case the bed. But there is also a correlation to the amount of work necessary to obtain them. Bed spuds need careful digging. Buckets and bags can just be simply upturned.

So after the spuds were dug out I planted some of the pot bound tomatoes that were dying in the greenhouse. They were at the very back and as I didn't have any larger pots, they were decidedly sorry for themselves.

Mind you... it's still a jungle in there.

Yes, I know there may be blight issues since potatoes and tomatoes are the same plant family, but I suspect that this heat will keep the blight away by drying out the spores before they can set.

We're also expecting good things from the grapes this year as well.

And our Edamame (Soy beans) are now ready for harvest.

So today's harvest is thus (not including the bucket'o'spuds)

A typical Japanese snack is to have boiled salted edamame and a beer. Well, I don't drink beer, so I guess a Dandelion and Burdock will do instead. Cheers!

Too much sunshine

There has been a bit of a gap in the blog posts recently. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly there is an issue of redundancy. I am currently in the process of going through redundancy consultations with my current employer which has taken my focus away from other things. Secondly there is a health matter. This hot weather has not done my asthma any favours and I had to go to hospital due to getting flu and restricted breathing problems.

Happy to say that both issues have now been resolved, and I can once again focus on the plot.

I have managed to feed the plot enough water that it has escaped the worst of the solar onslaught, however not all have remained unscathed. Firstly the turnips seemed to give up the ghost and just bolted straight to seed.

Rather than waste the bed, The Wife pulled them all and planted Cape Gooseberries in place.

Despite an earlier loss of some of the courgette plants, it seems that a couple of them survived and these, along with the replacements, are now starting to churn out the little marrows in great quantity. Now despite them all coming from the same seed stock, we have a variety of types being produced ranging from the normal greens, to yellows, to a yellow/green mix with strange ribs. Just goes to show that courgettes seeds don't always breed true.

The petunias are certainly putting on a good show though. Almost everybody who walks past the plot comments on them. But then, I suppose, that was the whole point of them being there.

The spud foliage (Maris Peers) is now starting to die down, which means it's time to dig them up, or empty the bags as appropriate.

It seems that the ones in the baskets and buckets have not done as well as those in the big bags. No idea about those in the ground as yet. They'll probably get dug up next weekend.

Now one thing that has been an experiment, which seems to have worked in this weather is the melons. These were seeds saved from a supermarket honeydew melon. We didn't really expect much from them, but yes, we do have a couple of melons growing in the greenhouse.

And finally, the sweetcorn is now starting to ripen. Whether we'll be able to actually eat any this year remains to be seen, but there is a marked difference between the two varieties that we are growing.

The ones on the left are an organic variety. The ones on the right are our standard "popcorn" variety that we've been growing for a few years now. Notice the difference in the heights of the plants. The popcorn's seem to have two or three cobs per plant compared to the organics only having one.


We're used to having oddities being found at the plot. But here is one I have never before seen. An albino garden spider. It was hiding in the red sun flowers, and it certainly knew how to hide. no sooner had I turned the leaf over than it scuttled off to hide again, so this is the best shot of it that I managed.

Still, I hope Spid survives. It's certainly got a better chance than I have in this heat. Garcon! Something cool and refreshing s'il vous plait.