Gold! Gold! Gold! Even a GOLD Post Box!

Well Gold is definately this month's colour. With the unprecendeted number of olympic gold medals being won by Team Gb, and also the prospect of Golden Sunshine this week things are starting to look good again. We've also been digging up some Gold treasure down the allotment in the form of our maincrop potatoes. We took advantage of the mid-day sunshine to dig up a row of our main crop Maris Piper's. I was expecting them to be a good size for Jacket Potatoes and also for mashing but in reality the size varied greatly with small to medium potatoes and then the occasional whopper. We decided to only harvest the one row and have left the other 5 for next week!

We easily got 5-6kg off the small row. Our rows are only about 1/3 of the size of the allotment's width so it was a very good haul indeed.

The rain in recent weeks has ruined crops such as onions and shallots, but it seems to be doing the majority of the cucurbit family a world of good. We've had Golden Yellow courgettes to pick daily and the monstrous marrows keep coming too. Here's a picture of our marrow and courgette harvest from one day last week. This was a particularly bumper day but we are picking at least 3 courgettes per day...

The Pumpkin patch is also looking great too. We have at least 6 pumpkins which have set and are forming nicely. A couple of the hundredweight variety are already past an acceptable size for a jack o'lantern at halloween and seein as they have the best part of 2 months left to grow then we shall see what they are going to do. It could all be very exciting...



After 6 years of trying, this week brought me one of my greatest triumphs as a vegetable grower. I finally managed to grow, harvest and eat one of my own cabbages. I had told Amy that for years I have failed to get my cabbages to heart properly, they have always ended up with open leaves and not tight hearts. Well this year I changed my growing method slightly and I now have 2 rows of perfectly hearted cabbages and delicious they are too. I bet you think I can't keep up my gold theme now, well I kid you not but this variety of cabbage is called 'Golden Acre'..

I am very pleased with the final results. I had said that if they didn't grow properly this year then I might give up on brassicas next year. However, this delicacy has given me some hope at least. Sods law indicates that they will not heart properly next year, but I will try!

The allotment is abundent with growing produce and plenty of weeds too. The forecast is good for the rest of the week so I shall be going up to tidy everything up. As we harvest these cabbages it is a good reminder that it is time to sow some for spring time. I will be doing that in the next week or so, as I continue to plan for next years 'hungry gap' already.

On my way back from the allotment today, I popped by my town's new golden glory...



With 3 bags of produce in tow, I think they probably thought I was coming to sell it to passers by, but in reality I was only getting a picture for my loyal followers, who keep coming back to read my blog even when my posts are slightly infrequent.

The post box outside our post office has been painted Gold as a result of the success of local equestrian rider Nick Skelton who won a Gold medal in the team event at the London 2012 olympics.

Well done Nick and thanks to everyone else for reading.

I am way behind on blog reading but I hope your harvest are as good as ours.

Enjoy the sun,

Martin

British Summer Time is here..

It's raining! Again!

I almost went with the title 'Rain stop's play' but I must have used that over a dozen times since I re-started blogging last year.

I was up the allotment for a very short time today, whilst Amy had a phone interview for a new job in fact. I was going to stay for a bit longer but then the pitter patter of rain droplets started hitting both me and the ground, so I knew it was time to go.

Despite the rain, I did manage to sow a few more rows of dwarf french beans. I had spoken to a couple of allotment holders and they were having a nightmare getting them to germinate this year. The site's 'Allotment of the Year' holder even had a mere 7 beans germinate out of a whole packets worth he had sown. Knowing this I sowed very generously, and guess what! It looks like they've just about all come up! Typical! However, I do find that if your soil has enough nutrients in then you can sow them very closely together and still get a good crop from them.

You can see the two current rows of dwarf french beans from the last sowing. Then from the row of beans to the wooden plank is another 3 rows. Hopefully this will give us a large quantity of beans but in two harvests rather than all at once. Although they do freeze well, it is a real treat to have them fresh.

I did gloat yesterday about my cabbages, which are really flying. I can only see one allotment holder on the whole site who is having as much luck as me. I didn't realise until I published yesterday's blog entry that I hadn't posted a picture of the cabbages. So lucky you, here is a sneak peak...



Looking good aren't they! It is quite apt that I did say to Amy that if the brassicas didn't grow well this year then I wouldn't try again. So that means they will grow again so that I plant some next year and they won't be anywhere near as good! Watch this space.

I'm trying to catch up with all of the blogs I follow. This is a great time of year to be in the garden, rain or shine!

I am also giddy with excitement like a child at Christmas with the prospect of going to Gardener's World Live on Friday. I can't wait!

Enjoy the rest of your week!

Martin

I swear that veg is growing...

Blimey!

This rain is certainly increasing the amount of foliage on the plot. As you can see below the potato bed is now a sea of green leaves and small flowers. A very promising sign indeed, the cabbages, well, they are certainly flying along and the lettuces don't seem to stop.

It definately looks like an allotment now doesn't it. Onions and potatoes in the foreground then beans and brasiccas just beyond.


We'll start at the back and move forewards in today's blog post.

In the soft fruit area there is plenty of growth amongst the raspberries which now present a huge green canvas of lushious leaves, with the not so glorious bindweed wrapped around it of course!

Our grape vine has finally started to get a shift on too. Everybody has a vine on our site and they all started off as cuttings from my plot neighbours single vine he purchased 31 years ago when he first got his plot. Everybody's elses have been running wild for the last month or so, however mine hadn't even broken out of it's winter dormancy, until now! The weeds on our site really are rampant due to 5 or more years of neglect. I have put some black tarpaulin over the grape vine area and cut a hole for the vine. This should supress the weeds and give the vine more of a chance. Here is what the area currently looks like, it is certainly  a work in progress!

Just in front of this area we now have 5 pumpkin plants. 2 hundredweight and 3 smaller Jack O'Lanterns. Amy and I are having a competition to see who can grow the biggest one! They were planted on top of heaps consisting of a mix of horse manure, farm manure, multipurpose compost and top soil. I've got a few tricks up my sleeve to make sure I'm the winner...

The thing I am most pleased about is the brassicas. I am the envy of the whole site. My cabbages are hearting already and my brocolli have heads! Unbelievable, I've never grown a good brassica in my life, I hope my luck has changed and we'll be enjoying some delicious greens in the future....

You might have noticed my home made net tunnels before, they are fantastic at keeping pests out and also shading the crops from the blazing soon. They also allow perfect ventilation on moisture to enter. They are a real secret weapon..

They're not massive weeds between them either, they are actually rows of fast growing Cos Lettuce, to allow us to maximise our space!

Opposite the brassica bed is our bean bed. Our broad bean plants are starting to produce a few bean pods now and the dwarf french beans have germinated plentifully. I also managed to get my runner beans in today at last. They are a real staple for all allotments, plots don't look the same without them!

With the amont of horsemuck I put in their trench I really do expect a good harvest from them!

Here is a picture of the potato sea. Lots of foliage, let's hope there are some good tubers underneath..

Elsewhere, I was very glad to see Monty cover dealing with bolting onions on last Friday's gardener's world. Many of mine had repented the recent weather conditions and decided to bolt, thankfully I've now nipped them in the bud so there is still some hope.. I hope!

Although the allotment is being stocked well, there is still plenty in the mini greenhouses including kale, red cabbage, savoy cabbage, more lettuce, sweetcorn and french climbing beans. They'll all be making their way out in to the ground over the coming weeks...

Final installment of this update, is a suprising advancement. Remember those 19p Asparagus crows I bought from a large supermarket chain...

Only 2 more years to go and I might be able to taste some. At least they're growing! Best 19p I've ever spent, that is for sure!

Enjoy the rest of your week. If their is a break in the rain make sure you are in your garden or on your allotment!!

Martin





Cabbage Patch Kids

You wouldn't know the trouble we've had trying to find some cabbage plants this late in the season. We wanted to get something in the ground at the garden share plot. We've tried numerous local garden centres and all of them proved fruitless. It seems that garden centres think the vegetable growing season ends when the final strawberries ripen. All those grow your own banners have been taken down, the vegetable plants have gone.

We were lucky to find a single pack of cabbage plants and a single pot of leek plants on a shelf by some limp and lifeless strawberry and chilli plants. We felt quite lucky to get these as they were just what we were looking for. 

They were a bit pricy though, but what do you expect from a fancy garden centre in an affluent shopping village..

Having all of that space just to simply over winter at the garden share would be a real waste. We've been up there a few days this week to clear all of the raised beds, and cover the two side beds for over the winter. The middle bed has been dug over and is ready for the cabbage and leek plants as well as some late salad.
I was hoping that we'd have some more brassica plants  but some wretched caterpillars have eaten the lot, and there is nothing worth saving which is a real shame. We were lucky to have a few to plant at home, but that is it.

Next year it is really important that we plan properly, we will have 3 spaces to plant up, and ideally we don't want to spend a penny on seedlings and plants because we haven't planned properly. If we use saved seeds and the ones we already have then it will be much more cost effective all round.

I hope you enjoy the remainder of your weekend and a good week is in store for you! The football season has just started again., which excites us both (well one of us more than the other), let's hope for some good weather for the first few matches. We shall see...

Martin and Amy