Made some onion soup. You can’t see it for the cheese on top but trust me it was nice. My Aunty Anne bought me some tomatoes which have turned into mutants.
-
- Onion Soup
-
- Tomatoes from my balcony
I’m the king of the caaaabage.
Cider has an amazing capacity to tear the fabric of time. I was at a mates BBQ yesterday and I drank 2 litres of liquid apples while consuming half a tonne of meat. I then fell asleep drunk, woke up, had another round from the BBQ and cracked into the lagers. Two days for the price of one.
Anyway, got down the allotment today to be told that our cabbages are the best on the allotment and everyone wants to know what variety we used. Apparently I am the king of the cabbage. After last nights drunken shenanigans I would say I’m the king of getting cabbaged.
The onions were ready to be pulled so I took ‘em up and boy, what a haul. Sixty six onions out of 100 sets planted. Not bad. I think the ratio was higher last year but these ones were monsters. Cheers mum for getting those.
The usual suspects.
Blog it up blog it in, let me begin…
Right, well we are both still alive and working the allotment. After a bit of a slow start things are starting to shape up. About 1/3 of the plot is lying fallow but we’ve packed in stuff to the other part.
We’ve not had the mega crop of peas we did last year, mainly due to not sowing them properly and early enough. However, we have made up for that with loads of onions, broad beans, sweetcorn, leeks, potatoes, sprouts and cabbages.
Not had much luck with courgettes, squash or pumpkin which we sowed and the salad crop has been a bit rubbish. The mega successes have been cabbage and strawberries.
A few pics …
We’re still here
Just haven’t been bothered to update the blog. After a slow start things are starting to look good. Will be back soon with pics and rambles.
And the beat goes on …
Well, another couple of weekends digging and the old girl is starting to look her old self. About a third of the plot is now dug over, hurray. Some of it will need digging over a few more times and weeding more closely but at least we’ve made a start.
We are keeping the plot to small squares this year, rather than longer strips, as it is easier to manouevre round them and manage the plot as a whole. It also makes digging it over slightly easier cos you can leave the walkways untouched.
I was down this weekend and dug over some more, added manure to the better dug parts and also prepared the onion patch for planting by raking it smooth and adding some topsoil from our mega pile of turf.
The turf pile, like my waist, is beginning to spread out so I removed the carpets, finding a surprised frog inside and re-positioned some of it. I also used the carpets to cover the rest of the undug plot, something we ought to have done earlier to speed the weeding process.
Mum and dad were up this weekend and brought this years onion sets and also some rhubarb crowns from the neighbour across the road, Mr Marsh. No one messes with Mr Marsh when it comes to gardening, so I expect to have rhubarb coming out of our ears within minutes of planting them. In fact I think I can hear the crowns growing in the bag outside.
Into 2009
Yep, we’re still here and still digging, though we let the allotment go to seed later last year due to bad weather, bike breakages and of course, booze.
We got a good haul last year, so we hope to beat that again. However, there’s lots of digging work to be done before planting starts.
We’ve been down today and dug about a fifth of the plot over. Luckily as the plot matures under our stewardship, the soil is getting easier to work. The only bugger was the huge amount of weeds, but we’re on our way again.
No piccies yet. I took a few with a pinhole camera I got for Christmas, but it’ll be a while before I get the pictures developed and they are probably all white anyway.
Oh yeh a nice surprise was hiding under the weeds in the onion patch. Four onions, begging to be taken home and scoffed.
A days hard work didn’t hurt anyone. Except me.
Did an all dayer on Sunday. Nope not boozing, though the previous two days had been an alcoholic haze. My excuse is I’m an uncle. My sister has just had a little boy and I can’t wait till he’s old enough to hold a rake.
Arrived at the plot and it was mega overgrown, so got down to it and cleared most of it up in a mammoth weeding and strimming session. Rob was up in the Dales the lucky sod.
Dug up some turnips that we’d left for dead while weeding and had 6 courgettes and some nice lettuce to take home. There’s peas a few weeks away from a sunday roast and we now have some tomatoes. All looking good.
I’ve dug over and replanted the turnip and parsnip plot and staked the peas up better. We’re still searching for the ultimate pea frame though – for the second year we’ve got plants lolling over each other like they’d drunk as much as I did Friday.
-
- The courgette and salad plot
-
- The parsnip plot
-
- The courgette and salad patch
-
- White onions
-
- Red onions
-
- Yellow courgettes
-
- Green courgettes
-
- Our pea crop
-
- The re-seeded parsnip and turnip plot
And finally, my tea – courgette carbonara (cheers Jamie O spit spit):
My tea
Wish I hadn’t lent my camera now.
Popped down the allotment tonight to slug pellet everything. It’s thriving. Wish I had my camera to take some pics but suffice to say everything has grown a lot in the last couple of weeks.
Some strawberries will be ready to pick by the weekend and our first peas will be arriving soon. I’ve transplanted a few of my surviving courgette seedlings to new space, did a bit of weeding and checked everything else. Must put more netting down as the birds are eating all the turnip and parnsip seedlings which we planted and also get the rest of the spuds planted before it’s too late.
The biggest surprise were the mega radishes. I planted a mixture of white and red ones and they are like turnips.
Mega radishes, with my hand for scale:
Arise my pickled empire.
Had a long day on Sunday. Weeded everything, planted more peas and runners plus my backup cucumbers. A few mates came down and never one to shy away from a power tool, my mate Al strimmed the whole place.
As luck would have it Rob appeared to have missed planting over my re-seeded cucumber patches as I noticed the seedlings coming up a few inches away from his plants.
When I asked him about it he said he was only winding me up when he told me he’d dug them over. Ooops, apologies Rob for the drunken slating I gave you at a wedding reception over the weekend.
Anyway, our first crops are coming through – radishes, good old radishes – and the place is looking great.
No pics for a bit though because I’ve lent my camera to the honeymooners.
Vandals.
Never mind kids in hoodies I’ve come to the conclusion the biggest vandal of them all is Mother Nature with a little help from her wayward nephew Jack Frost. Thanks to them my dreams of a pickled gherkin empire are on the brink of being lost.
We’ve been quite busy on the allotment since March. We’ve got the spuds and sweetcorn in, planted more peas and some beans, the onion sets are doing well and we’ve got a couple of rows of tomatoes on the go. We’ve also planted lots of salady stuff. I’ve planted two rows of parsnip and turnip – the beginnings of our winter stew veg. Yum.
I got my gherkin cucumbers and courgettes planted out and I turned up a few weeks ago with my camera expecting to see a burgeoning crop and was greeted by some poorly brown and withered plants. There had been a single overnight frost which wiped them out. Gutted.
The sweetcorn didn’t look like they had enjoyed the cold either so Rob planted some more sweetcorn at home and I dug up and re-seeded the cucumber patch. Unfortunately since then the final boot in the coffin of my gherkin crop was Rob digging up and planting things where I had re-seeded. Grrrr.
We’ve both been busy with work and other things and there have been days of rain which have hampered getting up to the allotment, but we are getting on with it and things are looking good despite the setbacks. We’ve had lots of rain the last week so we need to get up again and slug pellet everything before slugs eat what’s left.
Im a bit concerned about the tomatoes I have planted so far. I had some small bush ones and some plum tomatoes. The bush plants are not even 9″ tall and they are producing flowers. I would have expected them to get a little bigger but there isn’t a picture on the seed packet to confirm this. My plum tomatoes appear to have stopped growing at about 10″ tall and I’m pretty damn sure they should be bigger, but I guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
Some pics from three weeks ago:
-
- Frost damage
-
- Onion sets
-
- Strawbs
-
- Tomatoes
