New Pickings

Black Red and White currants

Finally decided that I should pick the currents at the weekend.  Not sure about the weight but must be a couple of pounds of blackcurrants.

The Redcurrants were lost at the start of the season. I think the wind got to them or possibly birds right at the beginning. I netted the three bushes quite early and lost very few. I look forward to eating them later.

 

Eschallot Grise

The shallots have dried out nicely so I trimmed them to about 3 ins and will hang them in the string bag. About 1.5 Kg (189 bulbs)  from 12 surviving plants. I lost four to rot and then another before I decided to cut my losses and lift them several weeks ago.

The broad beans plants were all lifted and some left over runner and french beans put in their place as a second crop.

Lollo Rosso and Winter Density lettuces doing well in their nursery between the leeks. Also just sown Webbs Wonderful, Ice King, Mixed Shades and Salad Bowl to give me some later lettuces.

 

Overview

Just to show that there are other things going on – a shot from the North East corner looking up and across the allotment.

In the foreground are Cabbages – Savoy Endeavour, Ruby Perfection and Candice.

Runner and French beans – Aintree and Empress

Onions – Red Baron and New Fen Globe,

Potatoes – Desiree

Out of Shot – Parsnips and Celery,

Middle beds from the bottom:

Peas – Hurst green Shaft ( almost ready to pick)

Onions,

Potatoes – Kestrel

Cucumbers – Marketmore and Burpless

Pumpkins - Crown Prince

Decorative gourds ( some of last years still going strong)

Broccoli, Spinach, Swiss Chard

Far beds:

Leeks – Musselburgh

Lettuces – various

Potatoes – Pentland Javelin

Carrots – Early Nantes and Parmex

Beetroot – Chioggia and Wodan,

Sprouts – Berwick and Cromwell

Lettuces

Sweetcorn

At the top is Sweetpeas, Lettuces, Rhubarb, Sunflowers, Courgettes – Gold Rush, Pomodoro and unknown green, Squashes

I can’t remember all the specifics so I’ll update this later!

Yet More Triumphs – Largest Pumpkin, Third Prize

3rd prize pumpkin

 

A very unexpected bonus last Saturday when Mike, one of the allotment wardens, pulled up and handed me an envelope. Inside was not the expected summons to pay the next years rent but my Hundredweight pumpkin at 40 inches diameter had won me third prize in the largest pumpkin competition judged that morning. Luckily for me Dennis was not allowed to win more than one prize or his would have taken first, second, and third! I understand Mike himself had won second.

My wife Joan has already made pumpkin pies and pumpkin soup that was perfect yesterday.

I’ve been too busy to do much on the allotment lately let alone add anything to the blog but here are a few recent goodies.

Cauliflowers

I was very pleased to get these caulis since everyone told me how hard they were to grow. They were given to me by our friends Barbara and Jim as 6 plants ( all the year round ) so I put them in to the only space available at the time along with the lettuces. The cabbage whites had a field day as you can see. One failed to grow at all, two grew but the centres were eaten before forming, one I picked but froze and when it was taken out a week later it looked disgusting but the one here on the left was perfect in a cauliflower cheese on Monday night. I’m hoping we catch the other before it goes off.

red and white onion strings

Just to prove that the winning onions were not a fluke here are some of the Red Baron and New Fen Globe I strung up in the garage. About 5Kg each string and all the smaller ones are in hessian bags. As I wrote before, the White Prince were hopeless.

cucumbers

Last but not least, here are about a dozen of the cucumbers (Marketmore) that have such flavour and texture compared to the shop ones.

I’ll save the cornfield for later.

Let’s hear it for the propagator

I had to share these with the world. I sowed these on Monday evening and three days later you can see almost all of the sweetcorn has germinated. I have moved the propagator up to the windowsill as I suspect the garage is just a little too dark.

You can also see that some of the pumpkins and cucumbers have germinated. I managed to get two pumpkins last year with the bigger weighing in at one and a half pounds. It made an excellent pumpkin pie that we ate a few weeks ago.

I have also just sown another six pumpkins as “give-aways” and to prove to Shirley that you can grow them here.

The Season Begins (again)

Away at the weekend so not back on the allotment until 5:30 on Monday evening after two hours shredding the vines removed from the trellis. I did manage to get in two 3ft rows of beetroot. Last years worked so well I am trying them again – Detroit 6 Rubidus -  but I also spotted an RHS variety – Wodin – that looks interesting. The books suggest soaking the multigerm seeds before sowing but it became impossible to deal with them so I did it the old way. I did soak them well afterwards

I realised that without some seeds growing I would have nothing to plant later so got to work.

Allowing for slugs and other losses I put 40 sweetcorn – Honeydew, 4 pumpkin – Hundredweight and 10 cucumber – Marketmore – into the propagator.

I also sowed 17 (the whole packet) courgette – Gold Rush, 10 squash – Hunter, 8 runner bean – White Lady, half a tray of leeks – Prizetaker and half a tray of a second parsnip – Hollow Crown.

In the picture above, the Cromwell and Montgomery sprouts are coming along nicely even with the snail attacks and the Panache parsnips are nearly ready to move from their root-training pots into the nicely prepared bed.  (Thanks to Hugh for the mini rotovator that makes the final stages so much easier). The end two rows in the root trainers are the newly planted runner beans.