Pumpkin Day

Today we went to 'Pumpkin Day' at Ryton Gardens with our good friends Matthew, Sara, Lottie and Amelia.

They had a few things going on such as cooking demonstrations, some beardy bloke talking about gourds, barn owls, creepy crawlies and stuff for the kids. It was a bit cold but we had a really nice day all in all and the gardens were really quite inspiring.

I even snook into the orchard and picked a 'sunset' apple. It was delicious, I wasn't sure you were supposed to help yourself, and stealing is never a particularly good example to set the children, but they had loads of them, so I decided that they wouldn't miss the odd one. Anyway I did my bit by putting the core in one of the compost heaps.

We're still enjoying our peas...

Latest Update...

Sorry it's been so long since our last update....

Well, the courgettes are finally gone, but we still have a load we blanched and put in the freezer!

Our carrots are coming along great, we've had a few dinners already and there's loads left to come, our beets and turnips are growing fast too so hopefully it won't be long before we'll be getting stuck in. The radish are still coming, but to be honest we don't seem to be able to eat many of them at a time, they're tasty, but if you eat too much you pay for it later!!!

I've started clearing the top of the plot, hopefully I can get most of it cleared and dug over during the winter ready for the off in spring. Yesterday though I managed to snap a pair of shears on the brambles!!! I think it's going to be hard work!!!

Tonights haul....

Not exactly farming on an industrial scale but this is the start of our October glut....

The highlight tonight was eating our own celery for the first time. Big thanks go to our neighbours who donated the plants to us 3 months ago!!! Before we started I didn't even like celery or radish and now I can't get enough!!!

Radish...

The first radish of our crop has been devoured!!!

I'm not even sure why we started growing them because I don't even like them, but these 'inside out' Chinese variety are delicious. Can't wait to pull some more out!!!

Welcome Back....

Firstly, a big massive thank you to Philip and Susan who kindly attended the plot 'everyday it didn't rain' whilst we were sunning ourselves in Menorca.

We went there for the first time in over a fortnight last night and we were pleasantly surprised that the carrots, beetroots, celery and radishes are coming on a treat. Hopefully, we'll have a nice glut of veg next month.

Unfortunately, some of the turnips took a battering in the rain but there's still hope and it's doubtful that the beans will mature into anything worthwhile.

The courgettes are slowly dying off, we're still getting the odd few but I doubt there will be much more to come now. We've still got plenty of spinach too, but I reckon there's some fat slugs around Ashington Grove!!!

Some more pics....

Philip with his bag of spinach....

Us pair looking smiley...

Holiday

We're off shortly to enjoy some sunshine, meanwhile, Charlotte's folks Susan and Philip will be looking after the plot. Fortunately for them they'll have nothing to do but pick courgettes and spinach!!!

Peas.....

We've got some peas!!!

Tiny Tumblers...

Our first little tomatoes!!!

Where's Wally?

Turnip for the books...

Sunday saw us undertake what felt like the hardest work we've encountered to date. We spent 4 hours preparing the beds for our turnips and my god it felt like hard work, my back was killing and I have blisters on both hands. At least, we are now officially growing turnips ready for the late autumn.

It was made more pleasurable though by the fact that we picked 4.5lbs of courgettes and the rest of the plot has never looked greener.....

Giant Blackberry Courgette

I've eaten so many blackberries and courgettes over the last fortnight I am now being told I am starting to resemble a 'giant blackberry courgette'. Whatever one of them is...

I've made two crumbles (which Charlotte liked), courgette bread (which Charlotte didn't like), fried courgettes with garlic (which Charlotte liked) and some courgette chilli and garlic salad thing (which Charlotte and our friends liked).

3 out of 4 ain't bad and it's a good job really as the courgettes keep coming and the freezer is stuffed with blackberries....

Oh yes, and we now have two perfect rows of little carrots, and a row of beetroot and one of radish all now poking through. Happy days....

The harvest begins...

These are our first courgettes and the first thing we've ever grown on our allotment!!!

I think we'll call them John, Paul, George and Ringo.

Seeing as we're gonna be over run with these things, the first lot will be donated to my parents

Rainbow over Ashington

Spot the difference exactly 6 weeks in....

Carrots....

Are finally in!!!

Hopefully it's not too late, but I battled through a my hang over yesterday (after doing a 37 mile cycling pub crawl the previous day) and we've dug over and weeded a nice bed for our Samurai and Ideal carrots. Can't wait to give those red carrots a go....

We're also waiting for our courgette explosion, which will happen any day soon...

Some like it hot

We've been away camping for the weekend and we thought that the plot would be just as sun burnt as we are. Quite the opposite really, we returned to find that everything had had a massive growth spurt while we were away. Unfortunately so had the weeds, but our peas and beans are now all poking through and the spinach is growing really well too.

I've finally got hold of my Japanese Red Samurai carrots so i'll be getting them in before it's too late. Along with some radishes and various salad leaves and then in August I've got turnips and Japanese onions to plant.

Oh!! I nearly forgot that Charlotte got me some beetroot and mizuna for my birthday too. Better start digging!!!

The spinach is coming!!!

Success!!! Our little spinach seeds that we sowed last week are coming through. Perhaps not in a neat and orderly fashion, but they're definitely coming up!!!

All we have to do now is hope that the pigeons, blackbirds, slugs, mice, foxes, badgers, rats and insects don't eat them!!!

Finally...the perfect hangover cure!!!

Four hours up the allotment sorted me out. We dug over and weeded another bed and put in some peas and beans. Charlotte was really excited about having 'wigwams' across the plot, but we decided against it in the end and put them in rows instead because it was easier. Hopefully the risk of planting them quite late will pay off so fingers crossed....

I have to say though, I might not have a headache anymore but my back is bleeding killing!!!

Vegetable update....

The courgettes are coming along fine, especially the ones under the tunnel. The others are a lot slower as you would probably expect and have actually lost their larger leaves, but there is a lot of new growth coming through.

The celery has grown quite visibly since we first planted them out just seven days ago and are looking good so far.

It's only been five days since we put the spinach in so there is no sign of that yet, and today we've planted some peas (kelvedon wonder) and some dwarf beans (purple queen). We realise that time is getting on but we thought we'd take the chance with them anyway.

So we now have five types of veg in and we still plan to get some more stuff in over the coming weeks, namely, Japanese onions, chinese radish and some beetroot. Plus i've ordered some turnips, carrots and salad leaves off tinter web

Welcome to Ashington Grove

I thought it would be nice to post a pic of Ashington Grove.

There are 58 plots in total and this is the view from our plot back towards the entrance which is where the tree line is.......

Stuff the gym...

It was such a lovely evening that I decided to ditch the gym and get out in the fresh air.

I spent a couple of hours down the allotment and we dug over and weeded a new bed for our perpetual spinach seeds. It's the first crop we've sown directly into the plot so hopefully we should have something to harvest around October.

We also met another chap today called Dick, he's been at Ashington Grove since 1992, his plot is just full of stuff and again its nice to speak to someone who is willing to share their wisdom so readily. But that was not the only thing he shared because he gave us a lettuce and some onions too. What a top bloke, at this rate we'll never pay for veg ever again.

He has a strange accent though, so where is Dick actually from?

Stay tuned to find out!!!

The kindness of man

We were ready to leave when our very kind neighbours (we've not learned their names yet) rolled up and gave us 12 self blanching celery plants that they'd started growing at home so we stopped and planted them out. Something else to look forward too.

We also met another lovely couple, Bill and Shirley, they've been on the allotment for a couple of years now, and they gave us one of their first crop of cabbages (she told me what variety it was but I can't remember)

I don't know if any of you are familiar with the 'busking scene' in Nuneaton, but there used to be a bloke going round Nuneaton playing a harmonica and doing a little jig. He was really rubbish and basically all the kids just stand round pointing and laughing at him. You'd definitely know him if you saw him. Well anyway he has an allotment just up from ours. Takes all sorts I suppose......

First planting

Today we managed to work over our first beds, it was hard work weeding and digging (we both ache like hell) but we managed to get our courgettes planted out and we didn't get too wet in the rain. We've put the smaller ones in a fleece tunnel for the time being to help protect them.

Coming along....

We've still got plenty of weeding to do but it looks a lot better than it did a couple of weeks ago!!!

Mr Rotavator

Sanj has lent us this bit of kit to get us going. Sanj is now a.k.a Mr Rotavator......

Also, despite the weather being changeable I still managed to burn my baldy head!!!

A little help from Josh....

Courgettes anyone?

We'd already decided that it would be a good idea to start off a few things in our garden.

These are our 10 day old courgettes.....

Being the over excited novices that we are, we got ourselves a nice packet of seeds and planted as many as we could, not realising that courgettes grow very quickly and have a high yield.

Our mate Sanj laughed when we said we'd planted 12, he reckoned he only had a couple of plants last year and couldn't give the things away!!!

I've since read that the average yield can be between 12 and 20 courgettes per plant!!!

What the hell are we gonna do with 200 courgettes???

Strimming

David who runs the allotments is a top bloke, he's had his plot for over 50 years!!!! He lent me his petrol strimmer and last night we got started....

This is Charlotte getting stuck in, check out the raking action and her new garden bag from Wilko's

The day we signed up!!!

On 23th June 2008 we took the plunge and got found our own allotment in Whitley, Coventry.

It's a half plot of about 14 feet x 100 feet.....

This is me wandering what on earth we are going to do next!!!!