OUR ALLOTMENT - Life on the Weald September 2018

Our allotment - Life on the Weald September 2018 

As expected, I did encounter a delay at security at Gatwick airport in August as I had packed one of my oversize courgettes to take to Spain.   Sure enough it caused some queries on the x-ray screening and I had to open my case.  "Oh is that your prize one?" asked the security officer. "No," I said, "the prize one wouldn't fit in the suitcase".  I presume that once we have Brexited; it won't be permissible to take an oversize courgette into Spain and I won't be able to bring more than 2kg of lemons back!

On my first September visit to the allotment on 5th, one of the first things that I noticed was the pumpkin which had more than doubled in size since mid August.

5 September - pumpkin 

It was a plant that I had bought at the allotment holders' sale in Portslade and I'm not sure what variety it is.

I also noticed the plums which looked good, but unfortunately most were diseased and grainy inside.

5 September Plums

The rest of the plot looked fine.  There were several courgettes of reasonable size...

7 September courgettes

...and a plentiful supply of runner beans, French beans and cucumbers.

7 September beans and cucumber

The purple kale was coming along nicely......

7 September kale

...and the leeks looked healthy but in desperate need of hand-weeding!

7 September leeks 

The late peas were also looking very healthy and will possibly be ready for picking at the end of the month or early October.

7 September peas

We avoided growing tomatoes on the allotment in view of past year failures and instead grew several varieties in pots in the garden at home.  It was a very good decision and we have had a very successful crop.

7 September tomatoes

The leeks and the kale certainly looked a lot better after a spot of hand weeding.  It's hard on the knees but hopefully with a bit of hoeing we can keep the annual weeds at bay although we will face the constant battle with couch grass, bindweed and brambles.

9 September kale

9 September, hand weeded leeks 

Spinach and chard are naturals on our patch and love to self seed all over the place. Once they have taken hold I'm reluctant to pull them up so we have a surfeit.  We eat it regularly, we feed family and friends - and we have a freezer full!

10 September Chard

It's almost possible to actually see the pumpkin growing and I hope it doesn't suddenly explode!

10 September

We are still harvesting courgettes and carrots and there are still a couple of cucumbers.

13 September

Always thinking of new things to do with courgettes, I found a recipe for a courgette puree made principally from the skin....

14 September

...which I served with some pan fried fillets of John Dory

14 September

We had a reasonable crop of chilli peppers this year, grown in pots in the garden at home and in the conservatory.

16 September

This is my second crop of chillies and these will go the same way as previous ones - straight into the freezer so they can be used as and when needed (I still have some frozen habaneros from last year which I rarely use as they are too hot for most people).

My son, Damien, seems to have had a better crop than me this year, grown in a pot in his garden in SE London.

Damien's chillies growing in a pot in SE London

Damien's chillies harvested

Not the freezer for Damien.  He's a bit of a purist and has threaded his to hang them up to dry as they do in Spain, southern Europe and South America 

Damien's chillies threaded for drying

A few last minute rushed jobs as we will miss the last weekend of September as we'll be at the Serpentine open water swimming to cheer on Sylvi's nephew, Matt, and then we are off to the States and Canada for three weeks and won't be back until mid-October!

We have tided up the area near the shed where the wormeries are kept and cut back the brambles and it is looking much neater.

We have also emptied the bottom trays of the wormeries into the raised beds where the onions and garlic will go later this year.

contents of the wormery

There were certainly plenty of worms!

I have covered the compost from the wormeries with a layer of grass clippings from the lawn at home and covered that with some riddled soil rescued from the couch grass dug up last month.  I will dig all this in when we get back next month.

I lifted the last  remaining row of the Nicola potatoes and planted a new double row of leeks where they had been.....

Newly planted leeks - 19 September

...tidied up around the pond and then took a last fond look at my pumpkin which I hope will still be there in October! 

Pumpkin 19 September

And headed off to San Francisco.

John Austin

Hove, September 2018

OUR ALLOTMENT - Life on The Weald June 2018

Life on the Weald, June 2018 

June is very much a month for harvesting with an opportunity to make some late sowings.

We have had several pickings of raspberries - the taste was excellent but because we have had one of the driest couple of months on record they were not as plump as last year....

the first raspberries of 2018

....but they were delicious

The raspberry canes are a bit choked by couch grass in some areas so may need digging up and replanting in the autumn.

Our redcurrants looked reasonably well, having been moved from Mile Oak in the autumn

Sadly the birds (I am assuming it was birds and not poachers) stripped the lot before we had time to pick them. Building a fruit cage is onbviously a task for the autumn.

The outdoor cucumbers which I bought from the Allotment Holders' sale were looking good at the beginning of the month but need some encouragement to actually climb up the netting which I have provided.  The ones I grew from seed are just a couple of inches high.

Cucumbers 11 June

Cucumbers 26 June

Although we have been watering regularly, the lettuces are beginning to bolt.  Some were grown from seed planted in the winter and having survived the cold and the wet at the beginning of the year, it would be sad to lose them now.

One crop that seems to have done very well is the onions and we will be harvesting and drying them off later this month or next.

Onions - Autumn sun

Red Onions - Electra

In the meantime a spot of hand weeding is required!

I have managed to clear a raised bed to sow some dwarf French Beans which hopefully will be up next month.

Raised bed ready for the French beans

Meanwhile the runner beans seem to be surviving the drought

And we have erected a new frame for some climbing French beans (and planted a pumpkin in the middle of the rows).

The purple sprouting broccoli has been planted out.  We have protected the plants from pigeons with mini-cloches made from plastic bottles and will keep a watchful eye for caterpillars.  The plants look very vulnerable!

What we had hoped was a Globe Artichoke is regrettably a Cardoon.  It's very decorative and no doubt will be stunning when the flowers open - but its not an artichoke!  Its over 2m tall and has a spread of 2m so it is taking up a lot of room and no doubt depleting the soil of water and nutrients.  So, sorry but it has to go.

Cardoon

The courgettes, marrow and pumpkin plants are all looking good.  I bought the plants from the Allotment Holders' plant sale as the ones I had grown from seed had all been eaten so I am not sure what varieties they are or which are the marrows and which the courgettes!

I have planted them in what was an overgrown wilderness of couch grass, nettles and bindweed next to the cardoon, where the previous plot holder had grown cabbages and sprouts and obviously some Duke of York red potatoes which we keep unearthing!

Courgettes and marrows

And at the end of the month we had the first courgette in flower.

Courgette in flower

We have harvested our peas - Kelvedon Wonder - and they were so good we have made some more late sowings of both Kelvedon Wonder and Boogie.

Our first peas - best eaten from the pod!

June was the month to dig up the first early potatoes and the first to crop were the Rocket variety.  This is supposedly the earliest cropping variety but various sources suggest it is not best for flavour.  They are right.  They do not taste like the freshly lifted new potatoes I remember from my youth.  They are just bland potatoes.  They also don't look like new potatoes as they are the size of baking potatoes!

Early Rocket potatoes

They do seem popular with slugs though!  Many were pitted with large holes made by slugs -some were still in residence but most had been vacated only to be re-occupied by woodlice!  I lifted one plant of later Charlotte potatoes to see if they had suffered the same and they had not.  Speaking to my colleague and fellow plot holder, Simon, I discovered he had the same problem and only his Rocket potatoes were affected by slugs and not the other variety he had planted.   Well, that's one easy decision - I won't be growing Rocket again.

We had a few surplus seed potatoes, Vivaldi and Nicola, and some old plastic recycling boxes in which we made some late plantings - so hopefully will have some new potatoes before Christmas! And we are making sure they are well watered.

Earlier in the year I had planted a mixed collection of lettuces bought from the garden centre and we have lifted our first from the crop and it was very good - lollo rosso.

Our first Lollo Rosso 

There is still no sign of rain in what has been the driest June on record and at the end of the month we're off to Spain!  Bad timing.  Urgent need to recruit volunteers for watering duties.

John Austin

June 2018, Hove

OUR ALLOTMENT - Life on The Weald March 2018

Life on the Weald, March 2018

March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb according to the old proverb and the February snow was still around as we entered March.  In the 19th century, however, the proverb was used as a prediction depending on the weather in early March - If March comes in like a lion, it will go out like a lamb.  Let's hope so, as the early March weather was cold, windy and wet and no better than February.

3 March - Broad bean sprouting

 As the weather in late February and early March were not conducive for work on the allotment, I began to sow some seeds indoors.  I soaked the broad beans in water indoors leaving them in the warm for a couple of days to give them a head start and then planted them in trays in the unheated conservatory.

By 5 March the snow had gone and I managed to get up to the plot to assess the damage.

Sadly, during the snowy period and its aftermath, the pigeons had devastated the purple sprouting broccoli.

Early purple sprouting broccoli 5 March

Early purple sprouting broccoli 5 March

I must remember to net the broccoli next year before the florets form.

But if the broccoli was bad news there was at least some good news elsewhere in the brassica department.  The winter cabbages (which we had inherited from the previous plot owner) had survived the winter and the slugs and were ready for harvesting.  We had only discovered these late in the day when we cleared an area in the autumn which had been completely overgrown with weeds, brambles and nettles (the latter being a sign of a good fertile soil)

Winter cabbage, 5 March

The other good news was that the garlic, onuions and shallots were doing well, although in need of some hand-weeding.

Garlic

Shallots

Onions

And when I went to weed and rake over one of the empty beds where carrots and parsnips had been grown last year, I noticed some fresh green growth - in clearing the bed, we had left a parsnip behind!  I suspected it would be tough and woody, but surprisingly it wasn't and was a sweet and delicious addition to our Sunday roast!

A late parsnip

 I tried to do some digging to remove the couch grass from the uncleared areas but this proved impossible on a clay soil that had seen so much rain.  But I did manage to dig two shallow trenches about 3 - 4 inches deep, on an area previously cleared, to plant my first early rocket potatoes  which had been chitted in the allotment shed. I then covered them with soil and will rake more soil over as the shoots begin to show to ensure they are completely covered until the risk of frost has reduced.

Shallow trenches for potatoes

First early rocket potatoes

 The rhubarb was also showing through at the beginning of March but doesn't look as healthy as on the Mile Oak allotment from where it was transplanted.  I think we should have given it a good mulch of manure in the autumn. We have provided it with some nutrients from the wormery and have applied a mulch.

Rhubarb

In the middle of the month we had a few bright days and Sylvi and I were able to do a bit of digging and couch grass and bindweed removal and we dug one trench on our new plot and two on the old to plant some more early potatoes - Charlotte and Vivaldi. The potatoes on the old plot were planted where the brassicas had been last year in accordance with our crop rotation

Vivaldi early potatoes 14 March

Vivaldi and Charlotte early potatoes 14 March

Vivaldi and Charlotte early potatoes 14 March

Just when we thought the weather was improving, the beast from the east returned and I looked out of my window at home on 23 March to see this.............

the back garden at home 23 March

So a few more days were lost!

By the week-end the snow had cleared and there were a couple of dry sunny days.  Sylvi and I managed to clear a little more and we were able to plant a row of 2nd early Nicola potatoes.

first row of Nicola potatoes (second earlies)

I also managed to clear an area of nettles and plant the third and last redcurrant bush to be transferred from Luke's old plot at Mile Oak.

the third redcurrant bush is planted

There had been a delivery of fresh bark and wood chippings which gave us an opportunity to mulch some of the fruit bushes and start to renew and repair the paths.

With the brief period of sunshine came another ray of good news - despite the best efforts of the pigeons to destroy my crop, the broccoli showed some resilience and sprouted again and we had a modest picking of one of my favourite vegetables.

Early purple sprouting broccoli

 We were very far behind due to the weather but managed to draft in family members for the last Sunday before Easter and they did sterling work.   Luke and Sylvi did most of the heavy work, digging out brambles, bindweed and couch grass; Nicole did a great job of hand weeding the garlic, onions and shallots; Jerome brought 5 or 6 wheelbarrow loads of chippings to repair paths and to go between the raised beds and Letty provided much needed massage for all our weary limbs.

Things are looking much better and we felt more optimistic (despite weather warnings of more snow for Easter).

Now weeded and tidied the onion beds were looking good

Garlic 29 March

red onions 29 March

onions 29 March

I also managed to plant out the broad beans which I had sown at home and hardened off in the shed.  I used these to fill in the gaps where we had lost the plants which we had sown in January.

 broad beans planted 29 March

For the Easter weekend 30 March - 2 April we went to Sheffield for a family event and almost got snowed in on the Sunday night/Monday morning with 0C temperatures - fortunately when we returned to Hove on the Monday, 2 April, there had been no snow and the temperature was 8C - but there had been more rain!

Before Good Friday, however, I had managed to plant another row of Nicola potatoes, a row of perpetual spinach, two rows of carrots, a row of parsnips and two double rows of Kelvedon wonder peas.  Indoors I also sowed some cavolo nero and early summer sprouting broccoli.  Let's hope the weather is conducive to planting out in April!

John Austin

Hove, 3 April 2018

first early rocket potatoes