Water

On days like today and all the other boiling hot summer days we've had, it's nice not to have to lug a watering can for miles. We're not allowed to use hoses on our allotments so carrying a watering can is the only way to provide our precious plants with liquid. We're very lucky to have the trough right near our plot. 

View from the bottom corner of our plot.

Our plot seen from the trough.

Even though it's near, we still  have to lug the can quite a few times as with the heat we've been having lately, each bed requires about two full cans. Lots of muscle workout in other words. Thank goodness we don't have very far to go!

Mrs. M.

Potatoes and rhubarb

What a weekend! Scorching hot weather and completely still evenings. Gorgeous summer weather!

Mrs. G. and I met up on Friday afternoon to check whether the new potatoes were ready to go. And they were! There wasn't a whole lot underneath each one of them so we had to dig up half of the plants to gather enough for a traditional midsummer meal. Never mind. 

We celebrated midsummer at Mr. and Mrs. G.'s house on Saturday evening and enjoyed these delicious, home grown potatoes. What a feast!

I had found some more courgette plants and some Brussels sprouts at the local farm shop yesterday so I took a trip to the allotment today and planted the lot. It's very dry now so I had to water everything and then really soak the newly planted plants. I put the sprouts where the new potatoes had been and hope that they'll be ok there. They'll be at the end of the plot, just next to the shed and so a little bit protected. The plan is that we'll dig over the beds this autumn and not leave it until next spring. 

 The rhubarb isn't doing as well as last year but there is still enough to pick now and then. I have a few stalks in the fridge and fancied a bit of baking today. I decided to make rhubarb muffins. Well, muffins with rhubarb bits in that is. I found a plain muffin recipe in an old cookbook:

2 eggs
2 dl sugar
3 dl flour
2 tsp baking powder
50g butter
1 dl milk

I mixed it all, put it in muffin cases and added chopped up rhubarb. I then sprinkled sugar on top, put them in the oven at 225 degrees Celsius for about 15 minutes. 

Mr. M., older Master M. and moi then had some tea and muffins in the sun. Lovely!

Needless to say, there aren't any left after younger Master M. and Little Miss M. and friend came back from the beach and raided the tin...

Mrs. M.

Tomatoes? I don't think so.

I love tomatoes! Especially home grown tomatoes. Therefore it's quite natural to plant tomato plants at the allotment, n'est-ce pas? I bought 5 plants a while ago and planted 3 at the allotment and 2 in pots in my garden.  This is what's happened on our plot:

A rather sad collection if you ask me. I guess they might be too exposed up there and they don't like wind that much. The ones in my garden look quite different.

 

I have a feeling I know where I'll be picking tasty tomatoes later on this summer. And I have a feeling that we won't be growing tomatoes at the allotment next year. 

Mrs. M. 

Harvesting

Today was a day for allotment work. I met up with Mrs. G. in the afternoon for some serious weeding and planting. The sun shone and the sky was blue. Wonderful!

The soil was easy to work and the weed came out easily. I tackled a bed and then planted onions. The onions we planted last autumn will soon be ready to harvest and the garlic was actually sitting there waiting to be dug up. So that's what we did. 

  

We split the harvest and these beauties will hopefully last for a good while. 

Mrs. G. planted leek and beetroot as well as got rid of the spinach that had gone to seed. We decided to try out the celery so she dug those up and they ended up in our bags. 

There was a notice up on the hut saying that somebody's potatoes had got potato blight. Oh dear. Ours look really good, though a touch on the small side compared to everybody else's. We'll have a go at digging some up at midsummer for the traditional meal. 

Last week when I went to water I thought that Mrs. G. had planted something new and she said today that she thought I had planted these plants:

It took me a while to remember that I had actually planted them and that they are shallots. Hm, this had totally slipped my mind... We didn't plant shallots last year so I had no idea what they look like. Apparently they grow in clumps. We had a peek at another allotment and they looked exactly the same, though obviously much bigger!

The rhubarb isn't doing as well as last year which is slightly disappointing. Most of the strawberries have also been "picked on" by either slugs or birds. The harvest wasn't very impressive so there was no point in sharing it. It was Mrs. G's turn to enjoy them I thought.

All in all, a lovely couple of hours spent in good company was just what I needed today. Now it's time to freshen up, cook dinner and then meet Mr. and Mrs. G for a pub quiz. We haven't been for months so maybe we're back to beginner's luck :).

Mrs. M.

Neglect by me

I have just come back from the allotment where I haven't set foot for a couple of weeks. Rain mixed in with too much to do at home have made me stay away voluntarily. I was meant to meet Mrs. G. yesterday but had too much planting to do in my own garden that I ran out of time. Therefore I signed up for watering today and planned to plant onions that I had found in B&Q.

I knew that Mrs. G. had sorted out the shed as she called me while doing it. I didn't realise how hard she had worked. What a transformation! She definitely puts me to shame and I almost couldn't step in for fear of messing it up.

My intention to plant onions disappeared as soon as I saw the weed in the bed I had intended to plant them in. I just have to invest a few hours of weeding and doing my bit of allotment work this coming weekend.  The potatoes are growing nicely and the celery is certainly a lot bigger, though if you can actually eat it I don't know. 

There were quite a few strawberries but the very teenage like master M. and I didn't have anything to put them in so we just picked a few and ate them. Despite having covered them with netting, a lot of them had been half eaten.

I really must make more of an effort this coming weekend. I seem to have forgotten about the poor allotment for all the work at home and school. Time for a change I believe.

Mrs. M.

Sunshine!

A beautiful weekend and a long over due session at the allotment. I was ill last weekend (I had a really bad cold for the first time this school year!) so Mrs. G. had to be plant mistress on her own :)
She did a good job! We now have several courgette plants under cover from slugs and birds.

We don't seem to have planted very much this year. Not that it matters that much. We planted lots of things that didn't really take off last year and that we weren't all that bothered about anyway. The potatoes are doing well and even though they're not as big as the potatoes on the neighbouring plots, I'm very confident that we'll get lots of spuds this year. 

I planted 3 tomato plants to the right of the potatoes in the the first bed a while ago. I put cut off plastic bottles around them to protect them but something (birds?) have eaten a fair amount of the leaves. Very irritating. We covered them loosely with netting, hoping that'll do the trick.

We also got rid of one of the two composts as we don't really need more than one. All we did was remove the sides, cover the ground in old carpet and put the sides on top to weigh it all down. Hopefully the grass underneath will wither away and die and we can work that area into an extra bed ready for next year. 

The spinach we planted last year was very successful. To our surprise it has just kept on coming. According to one knowledgeable neighbour it could be perennial spinach (we clearly didn't check the label) and so Mrs. G. cut it all back a couple of weeks ago. It's come back no end! This time we need to pick it asap as it will otherwise bolt. The celery we planted last year never really happened and died in the winter, i.e. we never got round to removing it, and believe it or not but that has also started to grow. I suppose it's all because of the mild winter so there's no magic involved but nevertheless, we're quite chuffed. On a more negative note, the rocket seedlings I planted two weeks ago have all died...

The yellowy green plants are celery and the green row in the middle is the spinach.

The autumn raspberries are looking fabulous but the summer ones we got from a friend don't look too happy. We're not too down about that though. They probably need a year to adjust and will give berries next year. 

We did a bit of weeding as well and then sat down on the grass for a chat. The weather was glorious! It does mean that we need to water in the evenings but that is a really good thing for me. I need an evening walk! Getting up at the crack of dawn every weekday to get some report writing done leaves me very tired in the evening. A walk to the allotment might do the trick. 

I love having flowers on the kitchen table and always buy a bunch when I go to the local farm shop on a Saturday. My favourite flower, the tulip, is now gone so yesterday I bought some very unusual smelling pretty things. There was a label of course but I have forgotten what it said. They smell quite strongly of something similar to cloves. Very nice!

I feel like I'm a student again with the report writing hanging over me. I tend to think of lots of other things to do. Last year we painted a blackboard on Little Miss M's wardrobe door and the other day I got the idea that I could use the paint to make labels on jars. Completely unnecessary but good fun!

As if we didn't know that we only have muesli in that jar.

Well today is yet another fantastically beautiful day so after I've finished some reports I think I'll do a bit of gardening. 

Mrs. M.

A bit of planting

We're a bit late planting this year. Mrs. G. has gone away for the weekend and I saw this as an opportunity to get things done at home. Until I took at trip to the allotment and saw how hard my buddy had worked in the week. It made me feel very guilty and lazy so I decided to make an effort on this last day of the long weekend. 

I didn't want to go ahead and fill the remaining beds without Mrs. G. so I only got plants that I was pretty sure she'd want us to grow. I started off by digging in some horse manure before planting some shallots. I bought two bags at the local garden centre as they were half price. No wonder they were cheap. I could only use half of them as the rest had gone rotten. There were no onions left so I assume we're way too late for that. Luckily we've got a whole bed full of them that we planted last autumn, ready for picking in June. 

Quite a lot of onions and garlic!

I also planted some rocket and both mixed lettuce and iceberg lettuce. We'll stagger this so that we'll have lettuce throughout the summer. 

I  bought the rocket at the local farm but the lettuces are seeds from a packet. 

Finally, I bought some tomato plants at the local farm and fingers crossed that there won't be any frost as I decided to plant them out. I put cut off plastic bottles around them to protect them a little bit but I doubt they'll keep the frost out should we have a cold night or two. 

The potatoes are emerging, though they are a long way behind the spuds on the neighbouring plots. No that it matters. As long as we'll get potatoes I'll be happy. 

 

Hopefully we'll get some more planting done next weekend and then we'll have to focus on weeding until harvesting. 

Mrs. M.