Allotment catch up

 It seems quite some time since I blogged about the allotment, but we have been so busy. At the moment we are sharing our time between making a new garden at home and doing essential work at the allotment. It's usually alternate days. We are still enjoying good weather and haven't had rain in ages. That of course means we have plenty of watering to do.

 A few weeks ago, we started putting up frames on the plot. Wigwam frames went up for the climbing beans (Blue Lake). My friend gave me the bean plants, they looked amazingly healthy, so I am hoping for good results from them.

The cabbages needed protecting from cabbage white butterflies so they got covered with a frame and netting.

The sweet peas were planted and another frame went up. The biggest frame project though was for the fruit. We moved the blueberries to another bed earlier in the year because they needed more space so Richard made a big fruit frame for them. Last year I lost a lot of blueberries to the birds, I'm determined to get my share of them this year. The other fruit frame needed repairing too. The building of all these frames involves a lot of recycling of wood which is stored behind the shed. We have bits of metalwork too which gets put to good use.

So frames done, the next thing was to sow some peas. The first lot which were planted a few weeks ago had been started off in cardboard tubes. A week or two later I sowed some straight into the ground. I did one short row of  Kelvedon Wonder and a longer row of  Onward. I covered the rows with holly branches to deter the mice. 

The Onward germinated well, but the Kelvedon Wonder only produced two seedlings. I don't know why that is but this week I sowed another row in a different bed of Hurst Green Shaft, so I will wait to see how they do. As the peas start to grow I put twiggy sticks in amongst them for support.

I planted some courgettes last week, along with some flowers--Zinnias and sunflowers.  This week I planted a few more courgettes. They are a round variety with a long Italian sounding name which I have forgotten. I always plant more courgette plants than I really need in case any get eaten by slugs. If they don't then I will have absolutely loads of courgettes, but this doesn't usually happen and I have enough but not too many. 

I also planted more climbing beans this week--Fasold and a purple variety called Blauhilde.

The rhubarb is very big now and I have harvested several lots of it. I freeze a lot of it otherwise we would be eating rhubarb crumble nearly every day. We are still eating the rhubarb jam which I made last year.

Weeks ago I sowed rows of radish and salad leaves and they are now being harvested. The radish were the best I have ever grown.

We have been cutting a few spears of asparagus occasionally, but I feel it is not enough to warrant taking up the space on the plot so I am considering giving up with them.

Hopefully soon all the harvests will get bigger. I can already see broad bean pods forming there are flowers on the peas where pods will soon form, the cabbages are getting bigger and the strawberries are starting to turn pink. That reminds me I need to net them, I have seen one or two of them have been chewed at by some cheeky birds.

Loads of lettuce

I've had a few ups and downs with my salad growing this month. The wet weather has brought out all the slugs. Well you'll know that of course, everyone is complaining about the slugs. So I am beginning to see holes appearing in my salad leaves.

We went away for the weekend and I came back to find all the mizuna tops nibbled at. The lollo rossa seedlings have disappeared and so has the watercress.

However I am still pleased with the progress of the rocket, red salad bowl, tom thumb and little gem lettuce which were further on than the other stuff so could cope with a bit of slug damage. At the time of planting I thought I may have put too many in for our needs, but at least now I have enough leaves to be able to pick around the slug damaged ones. When I look back on last month's photos of my salad bed I can see how well everything has grown.  I'm still growing pea shoots, those are in a tub by the back door.

I'm so enjoying going out into the garden with a bowl to collect a few salad leaves to go with our lunch or dinner. And I haven't bought any lettuce for weeks now.

I don't seem to be very good at growing radish. I notice every year, that I get some pathetic looking radish, so I think it must be me who can't grow them. I've sown some at the allotment to see if they do any better there.

The herbs I planted in pots are romping away too, I've used the red veined sorrell in salads.

The second lot of outdoor cucumbers seem to be doing fine (the first lot died). I shall pot them into bigger pots before finally planting out into the cold frame

So now I just need to sow more seeds to replace all those slug eaten seedlings.