Saturday 11th August 2007

Tim and I began the day off with a work party. I hadn't been on one for months but Tim, being an allotment committee type guy, has to do this once a month. We used strimmers to cut back some overgrown paths. As usual, the same faces turned up to help on the work party; Roger, Tim, little Sam. It really does amaze me that on a site with hundreds of plotholders, only the same four or five people turn up each month to better the site in some way. I know we all have better things to do. Tim and I would much rather sort out our own plot but if we didn't help out the site then no-one would... and in my case, I hadn't for quite a while.

At around 12:30pm, Timothy and I surveyed our plot and enjoyed the delights that would soon be within our grasp. The plums were looking very good indeed. I remember last year that plums ripened up late-August/early-September so it wouldn't be long until we got to sample a massive glut of plummery. The raspberries were doing well again after a short spell of doing nothing. We have been inundated with beans and courgettes this year. Perhaps this makes up for the lack of tomatoes, but it's been such a soggy summer that nothing else has really grown that well. You really do need some sunny days intermixed with the rainy days in order to get some half decent crops.

Having said that, our sweetcorn had been doing very well until the blasted magpies managed to swoop on in and eat their way through our crop to fill their crop! That's the second year of not getting any of our sweetcorn. Sometimes it feels we are growing all of this veg for the wildlife. Next year it will all be caged up and nothing will be able to get in. Not even us!
                       
 
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
The French beans were growing well under their netting. Nothing seems to have been attacking these. Butternut squashes and fennel also seem to be doing well. The weeds were doing extremely well. All of this rain seems to have germinated every single seed ever set in the ground. How we are ever going to keep on top of things I will never know. I'm sure weed suppressant is the future. It certainly helped the cabbages from getting inundated with nettles and other assorted rubbish.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
Nigel had brought the perfect remedy for a hot summers day – a barbecue. What a spiffing idea! Sam, Tim, Katya, Nigel and myself all sat at his picnic table for a spot of lunch. It was lovely. I had brought my own vegetarian sausages and burgers, of which Nigel was very derogatory. My sausages and burgers were referred to as “tent pegs” and “frisbees”, respectively. To be honest, I don't think vegetarian meat-substitutes stand up to be being barbecued. Nigel had a point.
                                             
 
                                             
Tim and I spent some time weeding the beetroot and the swedes. The weeds had overgrown quite a lot but they looked a whole lot better once we'd disposed of those useless little unwanted plants. The heat of the sun was ridiculous. I always find it quite frightening by the amount of liquids Tim and I both consume on a hot summers day and the lack of any toilet breaks. We must sweat all the tea and squash right back into the atmosphere. What a horrible thought. The sun got a little too much to the point where we both just felt drained working in the weather. I know I've moaned about the lack of sun but there never seems to be some middle ground where the weather is just right for working outdoors. We left with a bag of beans, courgettes and sweetcorn. Hurrah!
                                             
 
                                             
Saturday 25th August 2007

Tim and I got to the plot and found that the plums had grown to a good size and that they were ripe and ready to be picked. How fabulous. This was the polar opposite to how the tree was last year with absolutely no fruit whatsoever... apart from three over-ripe ones. We thought it best to leave it until the end of the day, however, due to the fact that as soon as you pick plums they start to go all squadgy. We decided to get on with some other jobs instead... not before looking around the plot to see the progress of our veg.
                                             
 
                                             

The sweetcorn were all stripped bare. The magpies and pigeons must have used their equivalent of wire cutters to get through our defences. Damn those feathery pests! We did manage to eat some sweetcorn a couple of weeks back but they had a few patches where the kernels should have been. Oh well, maybe next year. Our chard is doing fantastically well, with red and yellow looking particularly striking. Chard tastes good too. We're still getting an abundance of courgettes. They are just thriving and doing so well that the plants have grown to huge proportions. They are easily up to waist level right now and there are some courgettes that have grown to ridiculous sizes because we have missed them when picking veg. They just get BIGGER.

The butternut squashes were doing okay now, with a squash even growing up the wigwam. About bloomin' time. Talking of squashes, our pumpkins are getting pretty big too. They look great and we should have quite a few for Halloween. French beans were doing well and the fennel pictured here are quite big and looks like a scene from Gladiator. These are the ones we transplanted. The fennel that we left in the ground where it had been sown was beginning to go to seed in some cases. The transplanted ones where getting bulbous at their neck and they really smell of aniseed.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
Apart from a mole that seems to keep resurfacing, the sprout patch was looking a little crowded. Weeds had overcome this patch, which also hosted the pumpkins and some butternut squash plants. We started to weed around the sprout plants and there were just loads of unwanted growth. It took us a while to remove the weeds and eventually it was a job well done. I couldn't believe how big the sprout plants had become. It was very impressive seeing as we couldn't even see them beforehand.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
We moved onto the asparagus patch because that was overrun, again. We took a little time over this and then realised that the day was escaping us, so we thought it best to pick the plums before we ran out of time. We went to the plum tree and with a little help from 7 year-old Sam, we managed to pick a plethora, a multitude or even myriad of plums. They were gorgeous. The colour was delightful with a bright yellow skin and some red-blushed areas and a few red little spots. Some plums were out of reach for the stumpy shortarse that is myself, so Tim had to use his extra reaching abilities to get them. He also climbed the tree to get to the really awkward ones. By the end of the day we had an Ikea bag full of plums along with 3 carrier bags, not including the ones we gave away to Katya and Nigel. We left feeling pretty pleased with ourselves at a decent days work and a very decent harvest.