Saturday 7th July 2007

Today, Tim cut down the majority of the brambles on our second plot. It had overgrown again and was looking like Ant and Dec might show up at any minute with a bunch of D-list celebrities. I fell down a hole that I'm sure Tim had covered up purposely with some bramble cuttings. I think his hunter gatherer instincts are starting to impede on our gardening. We took a look around the plot to what the latest was. With all the rain pouring down some things seemed more advanced than others.

  
                                             
 
                                             
The peas were starting to die back while the others we had sown were not getting very far because we hadn't staked anything in the ground to allow them to grow up and up. We still managed to pick the last of them, though. We also got to pick some courgettes and runner beans, which were doing really really well. The beautiful white cauliflower head had gone purple. Weird. What's going on? The green cabbages were doing really well but then so were the slugs as they seemed to be chomping the tender leaves with relish (and I don't mean the condiment). The Cherokee Trail of Tears beans were beginning to flower which means that it won't be long until we have our very own delicious beans. Hurrah! The potatoes were dying back, which was really sad. The foliage looked all brown and dried out. Boo! Carrots needed thinning out quite desperately because they were entwining themselves around one another due to the lack of space.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
We used a couple of methods to get rid of pests recently. One was using a soap and water solution, which we sprayed on some blackfly on our runner beans. Two weeks later the blackfly were nowhere to be seen. We can only assume that Fairly liquid not only cleans dishes but is the perfect remedy for ridding blackfly. However, the magical CD we put up on a string on a stick did not deter the pigeons from nibbling our sprouts. Those feathered rats! If only the allotment committee would allow us to shoot things. There's a rabbit we saw that was around two feet long that needs to be put into a nice tasty stew.  
                                             
The rubbish pile had grown to huge proportions. We couldn't even burn it because it had been so damp. It's now taller than Tim and he's around 7 foot tall. We were about to add to it too due to us digging up all of the spuds and chucking all of the foliage on top. We started off with the potatoes that were planted last and dug our way up the plot. First off were the Shetland Blacks and they were pretty prolific. These also tasted excellent as roast potatoes, rivalling King Edward for his crown as top roasting spud. This was a heritage potato and had a black ring in the flesh, rather like the writing in a stick of rock.  
                                             
 
                                             
Next up were the Yukon Golds, which were large but not very prolific. They were meant to be good baking potatoes but they only taste okay. A slug seemed to have enjoyed one of our Yukon Golds very much. After this we had Highland Burgundy Reds, which have red flesh. These weren't very numerable and are very floury so disintegrate easily if you boil them too much. The Salad Blues have blue flesh and these were more prolific than their red counterpart. Again, they are quite floury and while neither these nor the reds have much flavour they certainly liven up a meal with blue or red mash. My personal favourites were big in size, prolific and tasted fantastic. Marfonas. I cannot recommend these enough. They are waxy and are great for everything, especially jacket potatoes. Yum yum.
                                             
 
                                             

After this we had some Mayan Golds to dig. Last year we planted five tubers and none grew. This year we planted twenty and we had loads per plant. Some were small and some were large but they were all waxy, tasty, lovely. Apparently, high profile chefs love these little beauties. Well, they can't have ours! We dug the reliable spuds in the way of the Desirees and they were big and there were lots of them. We didn't dig them all because we didn't have enough hessian sacks. Finally we dug some Pink Fir Apples, which were very nobbly and amusing to look at and had... an old fashioned flavour. Well, they are the oldest variety of potato in Britain afterall.

Digging potatoes still feels amazing. To reap so much for so little effort is still an incredible feeling. Tim and I really did feel like pirates (gardeners) digging for our treasure (potatoes). By the end of the day we both left with four sacks of potatoes each. Wow.
                                             
 
                                             
  Saturday 14th July 2007

Today was a day of cropping, thinning out and sacrifice.

Our patch with swedes, fennel, beetroot and parsnips had been overrun by weeds. They were also far too overcrodwded. Nothing was going to grow well when they had no space to stretch out.

Tim and Suey were thinning out the swedes, beetroot and fennel and putting their roots in water so that we could hopefully transplant them successfully. The chard had grown better this year but still needed thinning out. Suey took this job on and the patch soon looked amazing compared to it's weed-ridden state. It was incredible that it took so much time to thin everything out and de-weed. As you can see by the two pictures on the left, what a transition!

I went through some carrots and the foliage soon went flacid. I began to think that we had left some of them “unthinned” for a little too long, hence their unhappy reaction to my thinning. Other carrots were fine about it, however, so maybe some varieties are more stroppy than others.

                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
The swede, beetroot and fennel thinnings were re-planted in the spaces where there were gaps. We know that root crops don't like to have their roots disturbed but the same is true of peas and sweetcorn and we still got some fantastic crops from these.
                                             
 
                                             
 

The biggest disappointment for me was that the tomatoes had got blight. With the stems covered in brown patches and tomatoes starting to go brown whilst still green, even the Dithane solution I had used on them last week had failed to save them. Perhaps Dithane is for prevention rather than cure? At least last year we had managed to get a large crop of tomatoes from all the plants.

It seemed that the weather conditions have been perfect for blight to spread throughout the plots. Nigel was growing some tomatoes in his greenhouse and even these had succumbed. I dug all of these up, feeling very disappointed seeing as I had planted some out only two weeks ago. We could grow a blight-resistant type but this limits the varieties to maybe one or two and the Pomodorinos last year were fantastic.

In retrospect, the potatoes that we thought had been dying back were probably hit by blight, as they had similar brown patches on the stems and some potatoes, after a week or so in the hessian sack, started to get brown bruises on them. The blighters! The potatoes probably contaminated our tomatoes.
                       
 
                                             
On a lighter note, the Jerusalem artichokes were growing so large that I am concerned that they are actually trying to find their city namesake. Tim is being dwarfed by what seems to be a jungle of artichokes. The Chinese artichokes, however, are small and very un-jungle like. They look like glorified mint plants.
                                             
 
                                             
We also got to crop some cabbages, which looked like perfect spherical green footballs just asking to be chopped and cooked. Courgettes were prolific, sweetcorn were doing really well and the chard looked beautiful. In fact we managed to crop so much veg that I nearly had to buy a new wide angle lens to fit it all in.
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             
Saturday 28th July 2007

Tim and I got to the plot at around 10:30am and started the day off by having a nice cup of tea. We took a look around the plot and saw all our lovely veg growing. The first things that struck us were the fact that we had some pretty good sized grapes growing on the grape vine. We also had some tomarillos growing finally. They were very small and very few but we've been looking forward to these for over a year now.

The beans were doing extremely well up their wigwams. We had both come up during the week and picked a load of Cherokee Trail of Tears beans, only to find that there were a load more to pick. We got a good bagful and also got a load of runner beans too. Whereas tomatoes and potatoes have had the perfect conditions for blight, beans really have enjoyed this hugely wet weather. Another vegetable that loves the rain is the squash. This was proved, if proof were needed, by the gargantuan courgettes that had grown since we last picked them on Tuesday. Jeepers! They were nearly marrow sized.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
 
                                             

The onions didn't seem to be enjoying this weather, however, as the necks of the plant seemed to be quite soggy and we hoped that this wouldn't mean that they would rot. We decided to pick the onions now before the rain ruined them completely. The Kelsae onions I had planted as seedlings so many months ago had grown to huge proportions. They were bigger than the sets that had a head start on them and had been planted outside earlier. That's not to say that the standard onions sets we had planted weren't big, they just weren't as big as the Kelsaes. Red Barons were a good size compared to last year but they were all rather squidgy around the neck. Fingers crossed that they'll be okay. We managed to reap a lot of onions, so this should keep Tim happy because, "you can never have enough onions".

Another thing that was doing really well was the plum tree. It was laden with plums. Last year we had NO plums whatsoever so to see the branchs literally bending right over with the weight of the plums is extremely impressive. They weren't far off from being ripe. It should be late August or early September when we can start picking the fruits. As you can see below, the raspberry frame made out of bamboo canes is straining under the weight. Even Tim seems to be straining under the pressure of a plethora of plums.

  
                       
 
                                             
 
                                             
We picked out Elephant garlic, which was gigantic. Our Polka raspberries were also ripening up again and they were as big as the crop we had last year, if not as plentiful.
                                             
 
                                             
The sweetcorn would also have been fantastic had it not been for some hungry blimmin' pigeons (or “sky-rats” as I like to call them) wanting to strip our cobs bare. Suey and I constructed some protective netting during the week to stop the little blighters from getting in from the side. They could still get in if they fly directly down but I'm hoping that the pigeon's pea-sized brain won't b able to figure this out. I bet I'm wrong though.
                                             
 
                                             

We needed to dig up the remainder of the Desiree and Pink Fir Apple potatoes because we had left them in the ground, having cut off the foliage. We dug the Desirees and they looked free from blight. The Pink Fir Apples too looked blight-free but you never know. The spuds we dug two weeks ago had begun to get a little blighty and rotten. We had an Ikea bag full of the two varieties and the Pink Fir Apples were very successful.

As soon as there was some space available on the plot we fill it up and it was true for today. We planted out some beans where the potatoes had just been with two varieties. The seeds for one of the varieties were pure white and as Tim pointed out, looked like Tic Tacs. We had five rows of each and watered everything in the greenhouse.

We looked in the greenhouse and were very pleased because the peppers were growing really well. Because of all the rain, the greenhouse was the only thing that needed watering. Last year everything needed watering!

We left at around 4pm because we were both feeling tired from a hard day of digging potatoes and picking vegetables.