And so it begins

Last year turned out to be a little hectic. The terrible weather meant surviving at the allotment, trying to grow what you could rather than enjoying the summer days. Perhaps unsurprisingly this meant few posts for the blog. Now as the days lengthen and the temperatures increase it's time to start growing once again. Hopefully this year will be more like the summer I dream of. As always the first thing to start the year is the potatoes being laid out to chit. I'm going to try them in the shed this year in the hope they'll stay a little warmer in the still freezing temperatures. This year I'm going to be growing: - Charlotte, always successful and always delicious. - Sarpo Mira, blight resistant and grew well last year. I'm enjoying using the stored tubers for roast potatoes - Mayan Gold, new to me. I'm hoping for some excellent roast potato from this one. - Vitelotte, another new one for me. Known as the truffle potato in Germany, I'm very excited to sample this one. For the first time I have bought all my potato seeds from Otter Farm. The seeds look excellent so I'm hopeful for another good year of potatoes (more on this later but I had an excellent potato year in 2012, despite the rain).

The beginning and the end

Today I picked my first tomato, it was a 'Latah' which is an early ripening variety from Real Seeds, warmed from the sun it was delicious. Sadly today was also the end of my tomato bed because all the plants are showing the dreaded signs of blight, I had hoped that evening waterings and the blistering hot heat would delay the inevitable but sadly not. The are plenty of also ripe and unripe fruits which will be turned into sauces and chutneys; the bed will be used for some over-wintering kale and next year I will be growing blight resistant varieties.

The hot and wet weather should hopefully provide perfect seed germination conditions so I have sown Pak Choi, Mizuna, Fennel, Swede, Endive and Mispoona to hopefully provide crops in the coming months and over winter.

The new potatoes are continuing to delight, 'Charlotte' has proved to be an excellent masher so we are enjoying plenty of potatoes in all forms. The courgettes have started to go mad, I returned home today with 1 marrow, 1 very borderline marrow and a baby courgette as well as 6 cucumbers and another pot of raspberries. Now I'm off to dig out my stash of courgette recipes to turn these beauties into something truly delicious.

Enjoy your plots.

Journeys, fruit and the first potatoes

The last few weeks have been very hectic; we have spent 2 weekends away visiting friends and family, I have been training for and then running in several races and then the rest of the time I have been flopped from the heat! Luckily I have managed to fit in a few morning visits to the allotment to keep things ticking along.

This year there has been a bumper crop of berries, first with the strawberries and now with the raspberries. Today I picked the first of the gooseberries, hopefully the rest will be ready soon, and also a glut of blackcurrants from just from 1 shrub. Strangely I have some raspberries growing under the apple tree and about 4 metres away from the actual raspberry bed, I have no idea how they got there but they seem happy enough and are fruiting already; I just wish I had cut the nettles back before I started picking the fruits!

The potatoes are flowering which is a relief after the poor chitting and then the late frosts, we enjoyed a few of the Charlottes last night but they were a little small. The peas were delicious but a little sparse and are already nearing their end; I grew Karina with were very early and then 2nd Early which did lengthen the picking season a little but from reading your blogs it seems this just wasn't the year of the pea.

I have followed Toby Buckland's advice regarding sweetcorn and them into modules a month apart, sadly the 2nd batch were planted out just as the weather started to get really hot but also when there was a very cold wind so they decided to give up the ghost. The first batch are now about a foot tall and look very sturdy, and I actually have quite a few plants anyway because Toby also said that sweetcorn is quite happy growing close together so you can sow 2 seeds to a module, I hope he's right.

Seed sowing is in full swing

It seems like we have skipped early spring and gone straight into the mad rush of late spring. Suddenly the weather is hot but wet and things are growing like crazy, the weeds in particular. This weekend I had a mammoth bindweed clearing session, there is still plenty to do but I cleared enough space to start with the direct sowing. 2 rows of carrots and 2 rows of parsnips are now in and badly covered with a piece of fleece that has seen better days, hopefully it will shelter the seeds from the heavy rains we've been having recently.

I have started some peas in pots but I know they don't like root distrubance so I have also sown the first of several successional pea sowings direct on the allotment. Now I need to construct some serious rabbit proof protection to shelter the seedlings as they grow. Next week more peas will go in along with the first of the beans, I have runner beans as usual as well as several varieties of french beans and Borlotti beans, which I will allow to dry before picking.

The cold frame is full and I am busy moving things in and out each day, hopefully some of the seedlings will be ready to stay outside soon because I still have plenty of seeds to sow. This weekend I have put my propergator to good use protecting lots of kale, cabbage and Brussels Sprout seeds as well as some borage. Some of the Kales are more unusual varieties from Real Seeds, I'm looking forward to tasting the "Red Ursa" and "Komatsuna" which is a Japanese Kale.

There is still no sign of the potatoes, hopefully they're busy doing something down there. On a positive side I managed to plant out the last of the strawberry runners on the allotment, these are an early variety and are already flowering. The salad leaves are looking very healthy and the radishes have come through after only 7 days. I have planted out the first lot of white beetroot and sown some more radish, now I'm counting down the time to the first salad!

Potatoes are in

This week has turned out to be rather hectic and it is already Wednesday! The weekend was just incredile, two days of sunshine and as it looks set to stay. I finally got around to planting the potatoes, which turned out to be a bit more stenuous than I had anticipated. Somehow the potato area always seems to need to be twice as big as I planned but after 3 hours of digging and lining and measuring I had the four rows planted up. No doubt we'll see just ho9w wobbly my lines are when they start growing!

This year I bought my potatoes from the local garden centre, mainly because of the cost of postage, this limited choice a little but I have Charlotte as usual and Desiree for Maincrop. I don't think the quality of the potatoes is as good as the ones I have had in previous years, the chitting was certainly slow but hopefully now they're in the ground they'll get to work.

At the same time as buying the potatoes I treated myself to a bag of Shallots, it was quite late to be buying shallots so I started them off in modules and planted them out this weekend. They have put on great growth and had excellent roots so hopefully they'll cope with the transplanting and I'll be on course for a bumper shallot harvest (well you gotta hope).

The coldframe is almost full so I have started to harden off the salad leaves, white beetroot, leeks and celeriac which should mean that I can sow some more seeds this weekend. Finally it seems the growing season is on the go.

A short gap

So it has been almost, but not quite, a month since my last post. July really was a very busy month, OH turned 30 so we had lots of birthday celebrations and somehow I just didn't manage to fit much allotment time in.

There is plenty to be eating at the moment, the onions are good and the garlic is very tasty. We have almost finished the Charlotte potatoes but hopefully some of the maincrops will be ready soon. There is plenty of spinach and at the moment the courgettes are supplying just the right amount for us to get through, no doubt that will all change soon.

Hopefully tomorrow will be dry enough for me to have a go at reclaiming my allotment, yep you guessed it the weeds have taken over.

First potatoes

The first potatoes have been harvested and eaten! They were Charlottes, which although not technically an early (they are a salad which I think makes them a second early) still produces enough baby potatoes to be eaten as new potatoes.

I managed to harvest them by rummaging around the roots of the biggest plants rather than actually pulling anything up, hopefully they plants will continue churning out the beauties.

So this is it, the official start to the summer accompanied by a bit of butter and plenty of fresh mint.

Slow but steady progress

Today I managed to earth up the potatoes, I only covered the leaves with a very thin covering of aoil after reading this on Pumpkin Soup's blog. This year I will be aiming for little and often and hoping for a bumper crop. Strangly the Rooster potatoes (a maincrop) are far more vigourous than the Charlotte (a salad crop). Go figure.

I also got around to sowing 8 more squash plants, the batch sowed 3 weeks ago came through ok but then I lost 3 so hopefully I will have a full set before the month is out. I have also sowed my courgettes inside, two plants this year and also a full list of couregette lovers from work, well you need to have somewhere to ofload the excess.

No sign of the carrots or chitted parsnips on the allotment, hopefully they are just biding their time. Managed to get the dward beans, pak choi and beetroot sowed but sadly no extra carrots because I left the seed at home, doh!

With 2 more days of the bank holiday stretching ahead I am hopefull that more sowing will happen, some weeding might not go a miss and if the weather stays like this there will certainly be more watering.

Potatoes are in!

I didn't have as much success with the chitting as I did last year, for a start the bookshelf had more books on it so there was less room for potatoes, the addition of a dehumdifier seems to have left the potatoes a little wrinkly. Still I am thinking positive so lots of digging later and the area which was a nettle patch just 4 weeks ago has been turned into a potato bed. The potatoes should also help to prevent the return of the weeds.

This year I am growing lots of Charlotte, these did very well last year and kept us well supplied with lovely new potatoes. Being a salad potato and therefore a potatoe which holds together well when cooked I found Charlotte to be very useful for putting in Spanish Omlettes as well as for potato salads.

I am also growing Rooster and King Edward as my maincrops. Rooster is a red skinned variety which is very popular in Ireland, the Potato council rate it as a 6/10 for flouryness so it should be good for mashing. King Edward is also rated as a 6 but it is more suited for roasting. Both are good for chips.

Hopefully I will also have some volunteer Arran Victory potatoes overlooked in last years potatoe bed. If I do then these should crop much earlier than a normal maincrop, they might even miss any blight.

Home grown food for Christmas

Today we are heading off up north to spend Christmas with OH's family. Yesterday I made a quick visit to the allotment to dig up some more potatoes, there is now just 1 and a half rows left (probably about 100 spuds), and more importantly the first harvest of this year's parsnips.

The potatoes are doing really well, I reasoned that since the soil is peat I could effectively store them through winter by not digging them up, a few were slug damaged but I still have more than enough for Christmas dinner. Mind you, I think I'll do the digging up and storage thing properly next year because washing wet mud off potatoes in December is really no fun at all.

The parsnips have somehow morphed into monster veg, sadly the photo I took before eating the really big gnarly ones was rubbish so I'll spare you the pain. I expect that some of the ones still waiting to be dug will give a better photo so be patient. Last week I dug some parsnips from the beds in the garden and they were very small, about the size of a large carrot so I was unprepared for the allotment versions, planted at around the same time. One of them was more like a swede with a long root! Luckily a few look like real parsnips rather than the more common multi rooted thing so they have been selected, and washed, ready for the Christmas dinner. I'm not sure OH's family are keen on muddy veg, or small holes in their potatoes so there has been more washing and selecting than usual.

I love being able to share home grown veg with friends and family, this year as well as the potatoes and parsnips I'll be taking a few Crown Prince squash as gifts. I think I am more generous with the root veg too, maybe it is to do with the fact it grows underground so I don't impatiently watch it ripening whilst salivating. All requests for soft fruit are ignored.

Blighty

Life suddenly turned busy and a weekend trip to Edinburgh last weekend (yes very nice thank you) contributed to the lapse in posts but the allotment never sleeps so plenty has been going on.

The tomatoes have succumbed to blight, disappointing but fairly expected given the amount of rain we have had. I was lucky and did have some fairly hefty harvests before the blight arrived. About 50 semi-ripe tomatoes are now covering the windowsills and actually seem to be ripening up quite nicely. The Sungold variety were the outright winners this year, the small size meant they ripened up very quickly and tasted great.

I was concerned that my potatoes would also be affected by blight so I have pulled all the plants up but left the potatoes in the ground. I am hoping that they will store in the soil over winter without problems, but just in case I have a large supply stored in the shed. The Pixie potatoes are a bit bland but the Arran Victory are stunning, they are a purple skinned variety so look lovely and they taste divine. Hopefully they have also succeeded in suppressing the weeds too.

Courgettes are still going mad, I harvested 14 this week from just 2 plants! I am running out of recipes for them now, especially the marrow sized ones which are a bit too sqidgy for my liking. Luckily I have uncovered some courgette lovers at work so I am going to palm them off.

The globe artichokes are fantastic, the plants are huge and look lovely, even when rising out of a nettle patch. I have decided to let the remaining buds flower because they look so nice. Isn't it a shame that courgettes don't spoil into something so pretty?

Sweetcorn update

The sweetcorn I planted out in May is doing amazingly well, due to the plot being flat and exposed I was worried they might be damaged by the wind so staked them but after just a few weeks they were strong enough to support themselves. Yesterday I went down and saw that several of the bigger plants are already forming cobs! I have 16 plants growing so if the sun continues it looks like I could be in for a bit of a glut, not bad considering these are from my 10p seeds!

Elsewhere the tomatoes are forming at amazing speed, I am having to nip out the side-shoots every couple of days. I think I was looking in the wrong direction and have missed a few which are now whole new branches, so I have left them, hopefully they won't shade the tomatoes too much.

Potatoes are cropping well, we got another bag of Charlottes and there is still a row and a half of plants left to dig. I'm not sure how the maincrops are getting on, they are in flower but I had a gentle feel under them and couldn't find any potatoes, I guess it is a wait and see situation. No sign of any blight yet which is very good news.

Planting out and digging up

The hot weather has finally prompted me into action and the pot bound peppers, chillies and sunflowers were planted out in the garden. I think I might have left the chilli's for a bit long as they seem to be very small for this time of year.

Carrots have been resown into the gaps in the garden, the gaps actually make up 3 entire rows bar from 2 seedlings. I have totally given up any hope of successional growing with the carrots this year, just hoping for a full row before winter! Anyone have any theories as to why carrots have been so tough this year? Too hot? Too wet or maybe dry?

All onions have been pulled up and are now hopefully drying in the sun, it was going well until about half an hour ago but I am hoping the rain is a brief interruption to the amazing weather we have had this weekend.

Today I went down to the allotment and planted the remaining 9 celeriac plants, this brings the total up to 29! No idea what I was thinking when I sowed this many, if they all survive I have more celeriac than I have eaten in my entire life...soup anyone?

Finally I dug up my first ever potatoes! I had 2 Charlotte plants that had died although it isn't clear why, doesn't look like blight, so they were first and provided a reasonable crop of new potatoes, I thought I would have a rummage under a couple of other plants to top it up a little and found some whoppers. Fingers crossed I will be enjoying potatoes for many months yet.

Another successful weekend

This weekend was another scorcher so I hot-footed it down to the allotment where I was greeted by the first potato sprouts, not bad considering they only went into the ground at the end of April, unfortunately the ground was baked solid after all the wonderful weather so it took some time to scrape together enough clods to create mounds. I think the finished result is quite impressive, all things considering...

The Sweat Peas are still alive, and despite the heat, and lack of watering, all are still green and climbing. I took confidence from this and sowed a row of peas, not sure anything will come of them due to mice but there were loads in the pack so worth a try. The real pea area will be with the sweetcorn so they can climb the stems rather than my wonky tree cuttings. Behind the wonky twigs you can see the Sweat Peas and their canes, the raspberries and finally the asparagus. Ignore the wilderness behind that :)

All the raspberry canes are now growing, which is a relief, only half of them were sprouting last week and I was starting to get concerned but all this sun has got them going. If I can get the fruit cage (or maybe just netting) sorted then there should be plenty of raspberries to look forward to. The dandelion was removed shortly after this picture was taken...

The asparagus is growing like no tomorrow, here is one of the spears which was just emerging a week ago. So far I have got 1 spear from all but 3 of the 11 crowns, so things are going ok. I have sowed parsley in the bed to try and prevent asparagus beetles so hopefully they will get through the year unscathed.

After all the rain and then the sun I was thrilled to see the blackcurrant bush has loads of currants forming. They are already a fair size so if the weather stays nice they should be very successful. I haven't ever eaten a blackcurrant before due to the fact that they are almost impossible to buy so I am very excited about the first harvest.

Finally, for those of you who have made it this far I was thrilled to see the first 2 tubes in the Red Mason bee nest are filled. I even managed to see the bee flying into one of the tubes which was pretty good timing. Bees are fantastic pollinators and the Red Mason bee is completely docile, interestingly this is because they have nothing to defend unlike the Bumblebee which will defend the nest, therefore they are very welcome in my garden.

Sun!

The sun has finally managed to coincide with the weekend. I spent most of the day at the allotment and have finally managed to get all the potatoes planted out, no small task when you include the actual digging of the bed first!

Elsewhere spring seems to be here, the plum tree is in blossom, as are the 2 apple trees in my garden, and the raspberries are starting to sprout. I have starting hardening off the sweet peas and globe artichokes so with a bit of luck they will be ready to be planted out over the bank holiday. I just need to get the rest of the seeds sown and I will be ready for the growing to begin.

One potato, two potato, three...

Last week my potato seeds finally arrived from Mr Fothergills, a staggering 5 weeks after ordering, it seems the delay was because the free Yukon gold tubers were out of stock, I mean who cares? If they are free then I am not really bothered about the variety so just give me something else right?

Anyway grumble over, they have finally arrived much to my joy, a parcel for me and the long awaiting potatoes, OH immediately declared me crazy on the grounds that these potatoes were exactly the same as the ones Tesco sells (for a fraction of the price of course). I patiently explained about certified growers, reliable stock and disease resistance etc to which he concluded that they were exactly the same as the ones at Tesco. I guess there is no getting through to some people!

So I now have 2 shelves on the bookcase filled with egg boxes of potatoes quietly chitting away. I have 20 Charlotte, 10 Pixie (the replacement of the free Yukon gold) and 12 Arran Victory, heres hoping for a long season of potatoes, but before than I am holding my breath for the first shoots.