The Good Life

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:

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.

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: