watervole: (allotment)
Judith Proctor ([personal profile] watervole) wrote2010-07-24 09:58 pm
Entry tags:

Allotment update

I've been so busy with morris stuff that I haven't posted much about the allotment, but it's still going fine and we're going down almost every morning at present to do a bit of weeding and collect food.

We've had a really good potato crop this year, the runner beans are coming on great and so is the perpetual spinach.  The mange tout were okay ,but not as good as last year.  The drought caused them to suffer in spite of lots of watering.

The squash plants are the best we've ever had.  We're tying to give them lots of water this year to encourage them to produce more female flowers ( the ones that end up with fruit) and it seems to be working.

The pigeons made a real mess of the blackcurrant bush. The last two years they've hardly touched it, so we hadn't bothered netting it.  THis year, they not only got most of the fruit, but also did a lot of damage to the bushes and broke a lot of the branches.  Next year, we'll net as soon as the fruit are all pollinated.

The redcurrants were very tasty.  The bushes are younger and this was the first decent crop. Here's hoping for more next year.

We need to plant more rocket and also more cabbages, and beetroot if we can.  The drought got too many of our beetroot seedlings, though we also lost some when my knees were bad and I wasn't getting down the allotment enough.

Next job will be transplanting leeks into the ground freed by the potatoes.  Then we'll need to start looking for good strawberry runners to move the strawberry bed (which you should do every few years) into the space where we've just dug out the onions.  We had a good onion crop too.  The strawberries suffered a bit from the drought.  We watered them a lot ,but not enough for all the fruit to swell properly.  Still, the glut was glorious while it lasted!

[identity profile] vjezkova.livejournal.com 2010-07-25 01:16 pm (UTC)(link)
This is a real pleasure to read. Congratulations!!!:-)

[identity profile] raspberryfool.livejournal.com 2010-07-26 12:39 am (UTC)(link)
That's interesting news, my strawberry plants were affected by the dry weather too; i lost about half of my crop and some plants got crisped up in the sunshine. I've got an excellent crop of whitecurrants, which the birds don't seem to have bothered with this year, so it's jam ahoy. I think they've had some blackcurrants but i've enough for my needs so that's okay. Covering your bushes is a good plan, it's worked for me in the past.

Garden/allottment

[identity profile] sweetheartwhale.livejournal.com 2010-07-27 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)
It must be a good year for stuff like squashes - we have had a *huge* courgette harvest ( about 15, 5 still coming) from one single plant in a trug. There've been so many that I have been distributing them to work colleagues ( so now I'm a real gardener, having to give the stuff away..:-)). One of the courgettes has overnight decided to become a marrow, acquiring a big bulge in the middle and then rapidly expanding. I've always wanted to grow a marrow since I was a kid and fascinated by the ones in my grandad's garden in coldframes. We've also had a good run on raspberries and are hoping for or a good potato harvest. tomato's ( last years star grow) seem much slower this year though there are plenty starting to appear. And we'v ehad 6 really good cauliflowers off small plug plants from the Garden centre. But the courgette plant really takes the prize!

Advice on the marrow would be welcome. How long do I leave it before harvesting - it already has a girth of about half a foot...?
ext_15862: (allotment)

Re: Garden/allottment

[identity profile] watervole.livejournal.com 2010-08-02 05:30 pm (UTC)(link)
You harvest it when it reaches a size where you'll be unable to eat it all if it gets any bigger!