Not just a bit of watering

Popping down to the allotment to water the greenhouse plants can take longer than expected at this time of year. There are quite often nice surprises in store.

The strawberries are ripening fast now and every time I go to the plot there are more to be found. There are always more than I think, they hide under the leaves to reveal big clusters of juicy red fruits. I have to pick the strawberries as soon as they are ready as they won't stay there for long, the slugs or the birds will have  them if I don't.

Looking at the vegetables I can see that the first little cauliflower heads are appearing, the calabrese have heads forming too and after all the heavy rain we've had this week the sweet corn seem to have grown several inches taller. The sweet peas are flowering now so I need to cut them regularly to keep them coming.

Some of the surprises are not so welcome though. Some of the  kale which I planted last week  have been eaten by slugs. But considering I have been so busy at home recently and haven't had as much time to spend on the allotment, things are not doing too badly.

Rushing around

There's lots going on at home at the moment as we continue with the house moving process.  And when the days are busy with sorting and packing, getting stressed over why things aren't proceeding quicker than we want, it's good to get down to the allotment for a break. This is where we find peace and quiet. It's our retreat place, a place where we can take ourselves away from the stresses and strains that are getting to us at the moment.

We haven't been able to get down to the plot as much as we would like, but I don't want to let things go and miss out on all the lovely veg which we look forward to. So it's a busy time trying to keep up with all the jobs. The allotment is looking good though. The second lot of peas and broad beans are now showing through. The French beans I sowed in the greenhouse have germinated and will soon be ready to plant out.

The greenhouse is a busy place. The tomatoes are ready for planting into their final big pots or growbags, I must do that soon. There are also flower seedlings to be transplanted. I love to grow flowers on the allotment, I am behind with that job but I have at least got the sweet peas planted.

At the weekend I planted out brassicas into the borders, cabbages, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, kohl rabi, calabrese. As I was planting, Richard was setting up frames with netting to protect against the cabbage white butterflies and pigeons.

We  have had what seems like  weeks of dry weather, the ground has been so dry, but this week the rain came and hopefully, the newly sown seeds of radish, carrot and spring onion will have the moisture that they need to germinate.

As I rush around trying to do jobs, although some things may not get done, I know that the allotment is looking good and if things get bad it is still a place where I can get some time out to relax and enjoy.

Sweet peas at the allotment

If I had to choose a favourite flower then sweet peas might be the one. They flower for a long time over the summer and their fragrance is exquisite.  They are easy to arrange, just pop them in a vase and they do their own thing.

A lot of people say they have trouble growing them and I used to have problems when I grew them in the garden.  But since I have been growing them on the allotment they have been great.  What's the secret to success?  I'm not sure, but at the allotment they have soil enriched with well rotted manure or home made compost, they have plenty of space and an open position with sun. I don't do anything complicated, just plant them to grow up a netting frame and let them get on with it.

I have been picking sweet peas for weeks and weeks now and over the last few days have wondered if it is finally time to cut them down.  They are looking a bit tired, the stems are shorter, there are aphids on them, the leaves look a bit mildewy and there are not as many flowers.  But short stems doesn't matter, they can be put in a smaller vase. When I bring them back from the allotment I give them a rinse  in a sink full of water to get rid of the aphids.  They don't last as long now, just a couple of days, but they still smell wonderful. I won't cut them down just yet.

Sweet peas

The sweet peas at the allotment have been brilliant this year. It's the first time we've grown them on Plot8 and they really seem to like growing there. When I planted them I didn't have much hope for them. They looked a bit straggly and weary and for a while didn't do much  but after what seemed like weeks and weeks they really took off.  They've grown so big, climbing up the support frame that it's difficult to get past them on the path.

People have often asked me what the secret of growing sweet peas is. I really don't know. I have grown them in the garden at home successfully for a few years but then in recent years they have not done well. We grew them on Plot 10b last year and they did well, but this year's crop on Plot 8 is probably the best ever. They get plenty of sun and the soil was  manured last autumn.  They seem to be very happy with that.

We're still cutting big  bunches of them every time we go to the allotment and it's lovely to always have vases of them around the house. As the days start to get cooler I'm wondering how much longer they will keep looking so good. I will enjoy them for as long as I can.

A summer of flowers

I've always liked to grow flowers in the garden which are good for cutting, but quite often don't have enough blooms to cut without spoiling the display. My garden also has a lot of shade so some flowers don't do well. So now we have the allotments I decided this year that I would try having a cut flower bed.

We decided to use  two beds, one on each plot which weren't going to be used for growing vegetables this year. I ordered seeds from Higgledy Garden, then I rummaged through my seed box and found a few packets of seeds which had been given free with gardening magazines. Also, tempted by the pictures on seed packets in the garden centre I bought more.

On Plot 8 the prepared bed is  triangular in shape and has a bit of shade from a big sycamore tree late in the day. Here I sowed calendula, ammi majus, escholzia, poppies, cornflower, lavatera and nigella. The bed on plot 10b  is in full sun. Here I grew, echium, larkspur, bupleurum and sweet peas. All of these were annuals and could be sown directly into the ground. I started off some half hardy annuals in the growhouse, some of these were a bit temperamental and had poor germination. I didn't have the time to give them any special attention, plants have to be tough to grow up here in the north. But the ones which did grow were zinnia, cosmos, aster, rudbekia and candytuft. Everything had to be easy to grow because I have two allotments of vegetables to look after too. I also bought some dahlia plants from a plant fair, no labels so I had no idea of colour, height, type. Surprise dahlias!

My enthusiasm for flowers took over and eventually we had more flowers to plant than we knew what to do with. So some got planted amongst the vegetables. The flowers grew and grew and the triangular bed became a tangle of colour. I forgot to support the flowers early on so I stuck in some twiggy sticks which helped a bit. We hadn't expected the sweet peas to do well as they looked a bit weak and weary when we first planted them, but they really took off in the sunny bed. We had put in a cane and netting support for them but they outgrew that and toppled over.  We rescued them by shoving in more canes and hoisting them up. Some of  the flowers planted amongst the vegetables took over a bit causing some shade. The dahlias were amazing, they were planted in a separate bed and I remembered to stake them! The zinnias were stars, standing upright, needing no support and such variety of colour. 

 I made some mistakes--getting carried away and sowing too much, not staking, but generally I was pleased with the results.  Next year though, I will probably not grow as many, I spent a lot of time on the flower growing when I needed to have been doing other things on the allotments.


So here we are in September, the flowers are still in bloom and  I have had a constant supply of cut flowers for the house all through the summer.

Back from the holidays

Whenever I return from holiday, although I always look forward to getting back to the garden and allotment, I'm usually a bit worried as to what sort of state they are going to be in. We've recently returned from two weeks away and I was quite pleased that everything looked quite good on our return. 

Before we went away I had a good weed and cut back in the garden and all that hard work seems to have paid off.  I was expecting to see plants flopping all over the place and lots of dead heading needing to be done.  Instead everything was looking quite perky, some of the plants I had cut back had bounced back to produce more flowers and the borders were full of late summer colour from the rudbekias, heleniums, sedums and phlox.

Down at the allotments the vegetables were growing well. The tomatoes are now ripening daily, the courgettes are growing faster than we can pick them and the french beans are growing fast too.  There are cabbages, cauliflowers, swede, kale, leeks and raspberries all ready for picking. And lots of flowers too.  Everything seems to be ready all at once.

The sweet peas which we had not expected to do well have been flowering for weeks now and had grown so big that they had toppled over.  We hoisted them up,  fixed some more canes in place and tied them all up with thick string. I'm hoping they will sort themselves out, at the moment they look a bit trussed up, but they are still producing flowers so it seems a shame to pull them up yet.

The rest of the allotment just needed a good weed and we started with plot 10b doing all the raised beds and the paths during the week. This weekend Helen and I started weeding plot 8.  We didn't finish but it's all looking much better.