Rain Rain Go Away

This is how big the plot is getting! The rain hasn't stopped and everything just get bigger and bigger, unfortunately so do the weeds.

We spent a couple of hours down there on Sunday, all we managed to do though was weeding, weeding and more weeding. But I did rip all the peas up as they have failed, so i'll use the bed to plant our Japanese Onions in a couple of weeks.

Sunday dinner was made up of our own potatoes, carrots, parsnips and spinach and it was delicious, plus there's plenty left over and I made some extra carrot and parsnip soup whilst I was at it - happy days!!!

What can you do with a marrow?

We were desperate for rain at the start of July but now heavy rains have made it hard for us to even get to the plot. I've been up there tonight and all the veg is growing well, trouble is the weeds love the weather too and some of our beds are a right old mess. We've got a beautiful row of sunflowers in the middle of the plot now (it was too rainy totake a decent picture!).

I filled my basket with goodies, all the British Queens have gone and now we're on the Pixies which are equally as tasty. We've got 5 massive courgettes/marrows that are all over well over a foot long. What on earth are we going to do with them all?

Some More Pics....

Please rain!!!

Our tomatoes are gasping!!!

Happy Birthday!!!

It's been exactly a year since we got the plot! We're further along than we've ever been and it all really exciting.

We've worked really hard this last week. We've managed to clear and prepare a decent size of ground (with a little help from Sanj's whirly gig!). We've now got brocolli, cauliflower, cabbage, 6 different varieties of tomatoes and broad beans on the go.

The focus now is to clear the rest of the plot because the remaining area is becoming more and more overgrown and i've not managed to remove all the bramble roots let alone finish the composters properly yet!

British Queens

Our British Queens taste even better than they look!!!

It's about time for an update!!!

After getting well and truly stuck in, we left the plot all by itself for two weeks, mainly because of the rubbish weather, what a mistake that was, there are weeds every where!!!

We broke the hoe out and now it's not looking too bad. At least we have somewhere to put all the rubbish now as we have a half built compost bin. It was a very hot day though and I ended up getting mild sun burn.

As for the veg, well apart from being scorched, the potatoes and garlic look awesome and are coming along really well. The parsnips and carrots are coming along, but our rows are a bit sporadic as not everything has survived or come through. Our courgettes have suffered too and we've even lost a couple of plants.

The peas look great and we've now got a little wig-wam to support them. We've given up on the beans though, as with last year they're really poor and we've decided that we will use the bed for something else.

The salads leaves have 'rocketed' and our sunflowers are already a foot high, we'll have a colourful plot even if we have nothing to eat !!!

Great weather...

The weather recently has been fantastic. That means that me and the wife have been able to get stuck in a bit more.

We have now dug as many beds as the whole of last year, and tonight we managed to get out peas and beans in, plus a few salad leaves and little pepper plant.

Charlotte has burnt off all the old brambles and the top of the plot is looking bare, theres a lot more groundwork left to do, everything left has been untouched for some time, I feel the back ache coming on already!!!

Hard work...

We've had a really busy bank holiday, the weather wasn't great for the first couple of days but Monday came good. We worked really hard to get a number of beds dug over and we now have carrots, parsnips and courgettes on the plot.

Charlotte also spent a lot of time stripping the brambles back at the top of the plot and they are all but gone apart from some roots.

We've also commandeered 8 pallets courtesy of AXA, so after a bit more clearing i'll get on with building 2 big composters.

Next up are our legumes and once they are in I can proudly say we've planted as much already this year as we did in our first year. We've got a long way to go though and we've got plenty of room for some more, we just need to do all the groundwork.

We've also been careful to rotate our beds so there are no two types of crops in the same beds as last year.

Oh yes and i've put a nice row of sunflowers in to brighten up the place, apparently the petals make a tasy addition to salads!?!? We'll see!!!

Happy Easter!!!

The Easter weekend is here so hopefully we'll get some half decent weather so we can 'crack' on (Easter - Eggs - Crack - get it?)

Here is a picture of the plot as it looks currently, Charlotte planted some marigolds and geraniums at the front to give us a bit of colour. I'm also going to put a row of sunflowers somewhere in the middle of the plot.

We have our plot inspection on the 19th, by then we should have been able to dig over as many beds as we did for the whole of last year, hopefully they'll all be planted up too.

We're on the forage for palletts this weekend so we can build some composters

A new season for us

Well we're back in the swing of things and have started working on the plot again, we've spent an hour or so tidying up, just getting rid of a few weeds and burning brambles and rubbish in our new incinerator.

Fortunately, the weed control blanket I bought last year worked really well and it hasn't taken too much effort to get the first beds ready so this evening I have managed to get our first potatoes in. We've got British Queens (second earlies) and Pixies (early mains) which we bought from Ryton Garden Centre.

We've already sown some courgettes and aubergines at home, i've learnt my lesson though and will only be doing 2 or 3 courgette plants this year!!!

Next thing is to crack on weeding and preparing the beds, we really need to plan our planting and timings properly this year, last year was not disastrous but we learnt a few things that will help us this year.

This year I would like us to be able to clear much more of the plot, including the rest of the brambles at the top to make way for our compost heap and hopefully a shed....especially has someone has been using our rake and our fork has gone missing....

Get ready.....

New year, new start, watch this space for imminent allotment updates....

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!!!