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.

Allotment 19/4/10

I could go on and on about what I’ve planted and what I’ve done at the allotment (peas and beans by the way) but that would be boring and not as important as this,



That, Ladies and Gentlemen, is my first ever spear of Asparagus. Oh yes, I planted the bed last year and now it is paying dividend. I am so very proud.
Let’s just look at that again,



When it is ready I am going to enjoy it soooooooo much.

Allotment 1/3/10

Quick! The sun is out! Get outside and do stuff!

 As you may have guessed I got to the allotment and, finally, got those seeds in that I wanted to last week. Just to remind you, this is my attempt to grow early salad leaves and radishes under plastic cloches. I think it will work just fine as a few plants that were covered have survived the winter here. Yes I know that my winter wasn’t as bad as yours, I had much less snow, but it was cold so I am happy about the survival. Let’s see if it works.

 That is not all I’ve done today either (I love not working on Mondays) oh no. Off to the allotment shop to get onions sets (because they sell out really fast) and seed potatoes. I also got a little over excited and bought some early peas and some sweet corn seeds (yes I know I am supposed to be using ones that I save last year but I didn’t store them in correctly. I put them in a plastic thingy, so they were mushy when I looked last week, which was less then nice). I popped them in a mini-greenhouse thing as well.

 So now it is not just seed trays in the garden, oh no. On the windowsill of our dining room are 2 egg boxes that contain 3 types of potato that are “chitting”.

Chitting is one of those odd things that we allotment types do but we are not sure why. Basically you pop the seed potatoes somewhere sunny and warm until they start to sprout a bit. The theory is that this gives them a better start in life but there is some debate as to whether this makes the slightest difference. I am agnostic on this point.

  The 3 types of spud that I am going to try and grow are Pink Fir (a salad type), Duke of York (first Early) and Valor (main crop). Last year (and the year before) I tried growing them in bags but that wasn’t super successful so this year they are going in the ground. Let’s see if this works better.