Grand Allotment Tour

Recent reflection has reminded me why I started a blog. To keep a record!  I've discovered that I have got rather too precious about revealing the true state of play at the allotment.  So I'm going back to my roots. Welcome to the warts and all tour of my plot today:

The internal path divides the plot into a broad side and a narrow side.  The path has been lost under piles of weeds that have never dried out with all the rain we've had this summer, so I'm excavating it:

Internal Path

Starting at the shed end of the wide side (on the right in the picture above) the raspberries are just finishing and the strawberries have definitely finished but require their winter tidy up now.

Next along, the broad beans and onions have gone and I'm using the space for leeks, recently planted out. Spot the remains of a row of beetroot - (lack of planning!)

Leeks + Beetroot

Moving along the three wigwams are runner beans barlotti beans and purple French climbing beans. Sadly the last one ended up as a mixture of leftovers - not a good idea.  By the way I have two wigwams at home too (neither of which is a mixture).


3 sisters planting?


Next in line, the potato patch looks a bit shambolic now that the earlies have been dug up and the maincrop haulms are dying back, but I've resown the area dug up with all sorts of autumn and winter possibilities like lettuces, corn salad, radishes, sorrel, spinach beet.  It was going to be green manure but I figured on growing an edible green manure instead! Also the remaining potatoes under the ground should be good judging from the healthy tops they grew. This was in sharp conntrast to the earlies which hardly managed any tops to speak of this year!




Potato maincrop + new sowings



Just over the wire is a riot of dwarf French beans. As usual the pods have come on strong but are rather hidden away under the leaves.  Not to worry as most of these are Canadian Wonder which dries nicely to give a substantial mealy red kidney bean.



Dwarf French Beans

 Next up is the area I reached up to when digging in manure last winter when it had leeks growing in it. It is currently my fire/compost/utility area...


Ugggh

 Beyond that there are the remains of my bumper pea crop!

Peas plants

And at the end of the broad side there are the trusty rhubarb plants that have loved the weather,  and my Cambridge Favourite strawberries.

Rhubarb + New Strawberries

On the other (narrow) side of the path there are two areas: Carrots, under the  nets, and other roots (celeriac, beetroot, parsnip, turnip and artechoke)


Carrots and "other roots"

and last but not least: brassicas under their protective net (together with even more strawberries and some othe soft fruit bushes)




Brassicas



Hope you enjoyed the tour.

There is work to be done, but this year's food returns have been secured. It remains to be seen whether in the Committee's  view this to come up to the acceptable standard.

Harvest Monday - Terrible Twosome or Royal Cousins?

The only things cropping at the moment seems to be purple brassicas.

But for all their genetic similarity and colour, how different are these two?

St Valentine's Day Brassica

I don't like adverising my failures, but seeing as I have bleated on about the pigeons you may as well see what I was talking about. And besided if Soilman can show you his manky compost heap...and yes, I just couldn't resist the pun.

Taking advantage of the lowered net the pigeons gave the cavelo nero a haircut:



When the snow weighed down the netting they stripped the curly kale:



Here's a plant they couldn't get at (just to remind me what we I'm missing)



And just to cheer me up here's this year's brassica patch. Last year's is to the right of the picture. I've dosed it with lime today. Note the sturdy posts between which I am going to stretch chicken wire. Its a narrower strip than last year and I will put in a few tall canes centrally, once I top it out with plastic netting, after planting out. Confucious said (something like) A wise man learns from his mistakes - and a genius learns from the mistakes of others.



Today's song: Lime Going To Be Your Numer One (Blondie's version of 'The Tide Is High')

Time spent this week: 2 hrs
Money spent: Nowt

Brassica Bonanza

Things have gone well under the net. My cunning plan of close planting to suppress the weeds worked pretty well, although I had some difficulty picking my way through the enclosure to harvest plants without causing any damage.



Visually the 'cavolo nero' has been the most dramatic:



But a word of warning - we expected our first picking to be very tender, but it was as tough as old boots! So allow plenty of cooking time for this Italian kale, or stick to the Scottish variety:


Here's 'Tundra' cabbage which we have high hopes for, come winter:

Bank Holiday Brassicas

Most of the holiday has been spent weeding, but I'm in high spirits because I started planting out the brassica patch! That may seem a small deal but before you plant out brassicas there are several key steps you have to have in place. It's a bit like a military campaign:

Here's the advance party



and here's 'Desert Storm'



We don't send the troops out there without training them (growing them on under protection), waiting for the right weather conditions ('summer'), protecting them from arial bombardment (nets to keep the pidgeons off), and keeping them supplied with water and food. In addition brassicas are susceptible slugs (pellets required), root fly (see collars below) and that's not even mentioning clubroot!



I tell you it's a brassica field!

Maybe I've over hyped that, but when I didn't have the time to take care of everything the brassicas were the first thing to go, because they are so fussy.