I meant this to be a monthly snapshot, but there has been slippage, my last allotment post being at the end of July. That was just after we'd had the first rain for ages but before anything was showing any benefit from it. My runner beans had cropped well through the hot spell, sustained by…
Allotment & vegetable growing
Dahlias
The honest truth is that I don't have much to say about Dahlias. I grow quite a lot, I love them. When I say quite a lot, I have around two dozen in the garden, almost all named varieties that I've bought, plus 56 seedlings that I've raised myself which are growing on my allotment. The…
Allotment update – 29/7/2018
We have finally had a decent drop of rain, accompanied by quite strong winds. I don't know what I will find when I next go up to my plot, likely a mix of reinvigorated growth and devastation. Once past midsummer a sense of running downhill slowly settles in, with more crops being removed than sown…
Six on Saturday – 14/7/2018
Growing your own food is very satisfying, eating it even more so. When you can pile a plate with salad, accompanied by a baked spud, nine different crops in total and all harvested that day from your own garden or allotment, then follow it with blueberries and raspberries, well that is hard to beat. This is…
Thoughts from two hours of shelling peas.
Water and the lack of it will be of concern to all gardeners while this hot weather continues. I’ve seen a couple of myths trotted out already and I haven’t really been looking. Water droplets on foliage do not act as a lens causing scorching. This is nonsense and can be safely ignored. Not that…
Continue reading ➞ Thoughts from two hours of shelling peas.
Allotment update 18/6/2018
It's a day under four weeks since my last allotment blog and it was the comparison in the pictures above that prompted me to do an update. The growth rate in the last few weeks has been something to behold. I am now harvesting quite a range of crops and a few more are very…
Allotment update – 22/5/2018
The weather has been settled for a week or two, so I'm more or less up to date on where I want to be on my plot. Peas, potatoes and parsnips are the only things I've sown directly on the plot, everything else has been raised under glass and planted out. Peas and potatoes are…
Allotment update – 11/4/2018
I read allotment blogs out of curiosity about what other people are up to rather than to learn how to do things. Now and then an idea will come up that I will try out but on the whole I have found ways that work for me and am reluctant to depart from them. This…
Allotment update – 28/3/2018
I’m into my fifth year of recording seed sowing dates for both veg and flowers. It gets a bit more patchy at the pricking off stage and worse still for planting out. I thought it would tell me how far behind I am this year, but it actually tells me very little. It feels like…
Allotment update 11/2/2018
I made a quick visit to my allotment earlier. The wind was slicing across the very open site and, seeing very little that needed doing urgently, I didn’t stay long. My leeks were a dismal failure; almost all of them produced flower stems. Sown too early seems to be the verdict. Spinach beet is OK,…
garden ruminations 