The Big Chill

The evenings are shortening and the nights are getting colder. The frogs on the plot have taken to hiding under the black weed suppressant to keep warm. There was a warning of ground frost last night so I tucked the spinach and chard up in a layer of fleece. Last year the frost got there first and all the chard was killed off overnight. Things are slowing down on the plot but some plants are still producing well - picked a bag of runner beans, baby marrow, spinach and some remaining pumpkins. Nevertheless, it's clear the beds are starting to empty out for winter...

Many hands...

Yay! We had help today as a couple of friends volunteered to have a ‘green gym’ day down on the allotment. The weather unfortunately was pretty terrible but we braved the downpours in a spirit of dogged enthusiasm. Buddleia was cut back, shrubs tamed (for now), weeds yanked out, Jerusalem Artichokes cut down to size and bare ground covered over. Broadcast a liberal handful of Winter Tares over the ground where the onions were grown this year. It is rather late to be attempting to sow a green manure but we’ll see how it goes…

Keep on running...

The nights are shortening and you can begin to detect that cool stillness of autumn in the air now. Having said that we have had some beautifully warm days this September too.

We dug out our maincrop potatoes yesterday and harvested chard and a swelling yellow courgette which was a couple of days off marrow proportions. The plot needs some attention but a couple of our friends have volunteered (been strong-armed in) to help us next weekend which will make a difference.

This is the first time I have grown beans and am really impressed by how quickly they have climbed the bamboo canes and started producing. These are ‘Enorma’ runner beans.

Shall we dance?

The back yard is busy with spiders. Fat female garden spiders have been squatting in the centre of their webs billowed by the wind while their male counterparts are spinning their yarns.

As The Guardian noted yesterday favourable weather conditions have meant that numbers of arachnids are up nationally. It’s enough to give you the heebee-jeebees.

September is spider mating season and these two were caught on camera as they shook their legs and webs in what looked like a rather complicated courtship dance.

Jack-be-Little

Today’s weather seemed to give the lie to the onset of autumn but the deepening orange coats of these pumpkins signal otherwise. The skins have changed from a shiny lemon to a dull orange which means, I think, that they are ready for the pot. These are destined for a risotto. As you can see the courgette plants have finally gone into full production mode – a little late in the season but I’m not complaining…

Solitary

My two passion flower plants have only managed to produce one flower between them this year. The petals on this unfurled themselves this morning. Not sure what the issue is - perhaps I should have pruned the plants back after flowering last year or potted them on to a larger pot? Anyway, here's a piccie of the flower today.

Day Tripper

Took at trip to Ryton Organic Gardens in Coventry today. Lack of time meant we only managed to walk around half of the 30 gardens they have on the grounds. The range of flowers, fruits and vegetables has given us lots of inspiration for next year though I think it will be quite some time before our plot looks quite so organised.





Pictured here are the paper husks of chinese lanterns and the autumnal orange of the Uchiki Kuri.



As you can see the bees loved these garlic chives growing in the allotment garden. There were lots of weird and wonderful vegetable varieties growing including Red Elephant carrots and Red Russian kale which is sorely tempting me to join the Heritage Seed Library. Came away with yet more seed packets and lots of plans.

Reviewing the situation

A busy holiday weekend has meant that the plot has been neglected. I took a quick walk around tonight to see how things are. There is lots of sorting out to be done – branches, brambles and weeds to tame as well as pruning and clipping of the hedges and shrubs. Must try harder… The dying evening light brought out the drama of this courgette flower. The recent heavy rain has filled the upturned plastic lid and so the frogs are back bathing again.

It's looking promising...

The outdoor cherry tomatoes sown in February are starting to ripen. Turn your back for one day and the plants sprout about ten more branches and flowers rather than putting their effort into the fruit. But we now have some clusters of small green tomaotes and some of turning a nice shade of yellow.

Pumpkins

The sky brightened and we had a lovely warm evening which meant there were quite a few people working on their plots tonight. Our neighbours had two newly hatched chicks to show us – so cute! The pumpkins are finally starting to swell. These are Jack-Be-Little fruits. The butternut squash plant still shows no sign of fruiting but is producing lots of male flowers. Most of the courgette plants – which were really productive last year – have also been slow to develop. I have given them some seaweed feed so fingers crossed they will start to produce more.

A fistful of onions

All of the onions have now died down and are ready to lift. They have not swelled to a great size – partly because they were planted quite closely but also because I wasn’t very attentive in weeding around them. I also didn’t water them as I understand you are not supposed to water onions – but perhaps with all the dry weather we have had I should have ignored this. The taste anyhow is really good. Thanks goes to an allotment neighbour who generously gave us several flowerpots full of onion sets in the Spring after she ordered too many.

Stumped

We have had heavy rain over the past few days which has meant that the slugs and snails have been on walkabout. This is all that remains of a patch where we had butterhead and romanian lettuce growing. Notice that they have left the weeds well alone. They had also gobbled all of the fristina, aruba and raddiccio elsewhere on the plot. One thing I have learned is that lollo rossa is not the first choice for a discerning slug.

Two-Tone

I've been growing green and purple basil this year but one of the plants just can't make up its mind which it is.

Blackberry parade

Despite choping up and wrenching out as many blackberry roots as we had strength for last year some of the wild brambles have recolonised corners of the plot. They have also been sneaking their tendrils under the cover of the potato plants and artichokes with the hope of gaining more ground. Honestly, give them an inch... Anyway, the bees have loved the flowers and now these jewelled berries are ripe for picking. Not enough for a pot of jam but they will certainly make a few apple and blackberry crumbles.

Salad Days

Our first salad bowl of the year – a mixture of fristina, aruba and lollo rossa. Unlike the salad bags I often pick up from the supermarket, these leaves actually have taste. They haven’t been sprayed with anything and were on our plates within an hour from being cut so tasted really fresh. As these are all cut-and-come-again leaves I’m looking forward to more salads over the next few weeks.

Growing lettuce has made me give some real thought to the contents and cost of bagged salads. There have been a number of articles about this in recent years. Last year The Observer investigated the treatment and air miles of an average shopping bag. It discussed how ‘the insecticides acephate and cypermethrin, and the fungicides dicloran and iprodione are routinely used on salad crops’ which are also washed in chlorinated water before being packed and transported. There’s another good article about the contents of bagged salad by Felicity Lawrence on the Ecologist website. Amongst other things she discusses the lower nutritional value of salad leaves that have been picked a number of days before reaching the consumer but which appear ‘fresh’ due to refrigeration and gasses pumped into the plastic ‘pillows’ we buy.

Food for thought indeed…

Things I didn’t know…

potatoes can grow fruit!


A spot of weeding revealed these two fruits growing on one of the potato stalks. The fruits look like unripened cherry tomatoes and have a similar structure and aroma of tomato when sliced in half. This is true potato seed though I understand that it is not often used for growing. It is much easier and reliable to grow from so-called ‘seed’ potatoes. However tempting they might look the high concentration of solanine in the fruits makes them poisonous. Not all potatoes produce such seed but these developed from an early maincrop variety named Valor.

Here comes the summer

The heat was relentless today. Only managed about an hour and a half and then had to go for some shelter. The heat got a bit too much even for this bumble bee who decided to take the weight off this wings and have a bit of a kip after all that nectar foraging.


Picked our first courgette of the season and pulled up a bunch of beetroot that had been growing in a clump. One of the real rewards from the allotment is the sense of continuity and growth. Watching the cycle of plants as they emerge from seed, take strength and produce. At any point it seems something is poking up its first leaves, another is coming into flower while something else is going to seed. The trick is to work with these cycles and learn how to time sowing so that you don’t end up with a glut or a gap. Can’t say that I have cracked that one yet but I am beginning to get the idea.

Abundance

Everything is cropping really well just now. Each trip to the plot results in something to take home which is a great motivator. This week we have returned with first earlies, shallots, onions, chard, beetroot, garlic and the last of the early peas. On Friday I picked a pot full of ripe raspberries which were pureed into raspberry water ice following a simple recipe in The Observer. The result was a zingy and refreshing desert – great with a few chopped strawberries and a dollop of cream. You can find the recipe at:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,1808665,00.html

Hot, Hot, Heat

Phew, wot a scorcher! It was far too hot to do any gardening today. Just a quick trip down to the allotment this evening for a spot of watering. The chard and lettuces were looking somewhat tired and emotional with all the sunshine. Picked as many peas as I could find and then took them home to make a risotto with lots of parmesan and a good glug of wine.

A first

I dug up my first potatoes today! These first earlies were planted at the beginning of April. Some of the plants started to yellow last week and I thought that this must be lack of water or pest attack. However my allotment neighbour explained that it probably indicated the potatoes were ready to harvest. He was, of course, right. The variety is Maris Bard.