Time to reflect on the highs and lows of the year. And this year did not disappoint. That summer! Wow! Hottest ever. Put paid to a lot of crops, and boosted others. But lets give a blow by blow account of what happened.
January - Tree trimming. There is now a new path alongside of us. Traditionally on the East Side Allotments there has only been paths between each second allotments. Which meant that there was a path between Plot 29 and 30. There has never been a path between 30 and 31. But because of the way the new woodchip and manure bays have been built, there was a small piece of unused ground. To compensate for me taking over that small section I had to build a path to the very back of the plots. Which means that the tree needed to be chopped. So it got cut back allowing you to walk unhindered along the path. But the committee were not quite satisfied with it and said that even more had to be cut off. This will have to wait until next January.
February - I was still building extra beds at the front of the plot. We now finally have our full compliment of beds... at the front and centre. We still need something doing for the rear of the plot. Guess what next Feb's job is?
March - Wow. The Beast from the East blew in. Super cold, but I was still putting the last touches of beds in along the new section by the manure and woodchip bays. I still need to do some work along there as the grass seems to have a very strong hold and it will need digging out before too long. We also held our annual spring clean down the plot.
April - Now we're getting somewhere. This is when the most of the spring planting and seeds gets done, but the month started really wet. Once again I had a week off work to do a whole load of stuff down the allotment. During that week, although we didn't know it, the seeds were also sown for the weather for the rest of the year. We had the hottest April on record since 1949. Oh dear, at the time we didn't know what was coming along in our future.
May - Now we're transplanting and potting on our seedlings. But we're also struggling under the heat. For a change we actually had a sunny May Bank Holiday. We quickly ran out of room in the greenhouse and had to start getting stuff outside. Of course, once that happened it was feeding time for the slugs.
June - Time for strawberries. Oh, end of strawberries too. The heat caused the strawberries to suddenly put forth a whole load of fruit, then stop producing altogether towards the end of the month. This also had effects on other crops as well, such as the Potatoes.
July - By now we were starting to flag under the heat. Not only the constant watering, but I was also facing redundancy from my job. After 9.5 years I was laid off at the end of the month. But we did get to see our first melon. It was only a rough trial just to see if it was possible. But it worked.
August - New month, and a new job. Had a week off between leaving on and starting the other. Spent most of it down the allotment... watering. Once again, we seem to be having issues with our carrots. They're forked into looking like the spawn of Cthulhu. Still, they were pretty good in soups. The long dry month also meant we could spend a lot of time in the evenings down there. Mostly with a BBQ. Over the year we held 5 BBQs. I suspect that we may be doing the same again next year.
September - We're in full blown harvest. The Courgettes were cranking... I didn't keep count this year, but it must have been way over 100. The sweetcorns were so-so. the "Organic" variety we had didn't amount to much, but our regular variety did well. But still no good for eating on the cob. But the Chillies... wow. That long hot summer did absolute wonders for them.
October - Now things are starting to come to an end. We did find a load of extra squashes and such. Whilst our Courgettes did they're usual thing and cranked out a shed load, our Honey Bear Squashes didn't really amount to much. Yes they produced some fruits, but to be honest the taste of them was extremely bland and... meh. But something to consider for next year, or any year.
November - By now everything was over. Yes there was the odd thing here or there to tide us over such as beetroots and carrots, but now it's mostly down to putting the beds to sleep for the winter (courtesy of a large delivery of manure and wood chips) and making sure everything is battened down ready for winter.
December - Meh. Nothing. We don't really do over-winter veg. It not something we really aspire to. Of course we keep popping down the allotment every week to drop off our compost scraps and see if Frankie is still around, but other than the Chard and the Strawberries, we don't have anything planned for winter. I suppose we could consider Kale, but the last tine we did that, the damn pigeons scoffed it all. Maybe we need a caged area?
So what went well?
Tomatoes - They took off like a shot. We ended up giving a lot of them away. Though we have kept a lot of seeds, but we're probably going to try some other varieties next year.
Chillies - The long hot summer was perfect for chillies. Like the Tom's, we've kept a load of seeds so we're going to try to lay in a stock of dried chillies for the next decade.
Courgettes - Does anything stop these? Well yes, slugs. But after they've grown too big for slugs to attack then they just keep cranking them out.
Rhubarb - Our trusty rhubarb has done it again. Well next year we may have our very own addition to jam making. We have three Ginger Plants growing in the kitchen at home, so here's to making our own Rhubarb and Ginger Jam.
Soy Beans - The trick with the toilet rolls worked wonders. We has a full crop of them and they were excellent. Same again next year please.
Pak choi - Never really had much luck, but this year, growing them in the troughs in the greenhouse worked wonders. Have to try that trick again, but of course the real trick is getting them not to bolt.
And what failed?
Onions - We've not really had good luck with onions. But we're hoping that the Stuttgarters will do better. We'll have to see.
Potatoes - The long hot summer meant that they lacked water. As such they came out rather small. On the plus side though, there was no evidence of blight on the plots this year.
Sweetcorn - Well they were OK. But especially good, but the ones meant to be best for corn-on-the-cob just didn't produce properly. Was it the weather? Lack of rain? Possibly.
Cape Gooseberries - Something else I'll have to put down to the weather. They just didn't set theit fruit.
Peas - Didn't even germinate. Maybe I should do the toilet roll trick with these next year?
Beans - Well two of them did germinate... out of 36. Not a good success rate.
Obviously there are a load of other things, such as the carrots, beetroots, grapes, apples and such that we grew. And don't forget the flowers. Our front pieces of the petunias were definitely a talking point.
Next year? Well we'll just have to wait and see.
