Allotment 17/8/10

Previous on Allotment blog,

“I’m impatient, is this melon ripe yet?”
“How do I know if it is ripe?”
Damn it! I’m just going to pick it and see!”

And now the concluding part of Melon of Destiny.

3 or 4 days after I picked the lovely looking melon I finally plucked up the courage to cut it in half and see what was inside. As the knife pierced the slightly unattractive skin of the melon juice flowed. This I took as a good sign.
I cut it in half and gazed upon the orange flesh. Well it looked lovely and smelt of ripe melon. So to cut myself a slice for the final test. To cut an unnecessarily long story short, it tasted bloody lovely. I rule!

One of the useful things about going for a run, apart from the getting fit, reducing the chance of heart disease thing, is being outside and watching the seasons come and go. You get to see the various blossoms of the hedgerow in spring and then as the year progresses different things flower and fruit.
As I have been running around Dorchester I have built up a little mental map of where various useful and edible plants are.
In late spring and early summer I can always find some elderflower but as we head into late summer and autumn more fun things start to reveal themselves in the hedges and on the trees, if you know where to find them.
This week I have found 2 plum trees in the hedgerows and the blackberries are coming on nicely, in some places they are ready to pick. There are also plenty of apple trees around that are covered in fruit.
Go on, go for a walk around where you live and see what you can find, you might be in for a pleasant surprise.

Allotment 9/8/10

I love this time of year. All the hard work that you have put in is literally bearing fruit (and veg). Just yesterday, for instance (and I use it as an example because it was a really good day) we bought home onions, peas, mange tout, 3 types of bean, radishes, lettuces, cucumber, courgette (anyone want a courgette by the way?) beetroot, carrots and my special prize, more on that later. Basically at this time of the year we can feed ourselves with vegetables. It is a joy to behold. Yes, you have to keep weeding and looking after things but it is so much more rewarding when come home with a bag full of things.

 And now back to my special prize. When I was looking on a seed selling website at the beginning of the year for tomatoes that don’t get blight (I bought a bush variety called Koralik and so far so good, fingers crossed though) I noticed some melon seeds that the website claimed would grow outside in the UK, I think I have mentioned this before. Anyway the seed were 99p so I thought I would loose less then £1 if they didn’t grow. I can confirm that my investment of 99p was well worth it,

To be honest I was a little inpatient. Some websites said that I would know when the fruit was ripe because it would smell of melon; well I think I may have detected the slight whiff of melon ness but that was probably wishful thinking. It has been looking the same for several weeks and I just wanted to pick it and see. Yes it is childish but I do have another 7 fruit to be more patient with if this one really isn’t ripe. We are giving a couple of days in the fruit bowl to see if we can make it smell melony. I tell you how it goes.