Full Metal Wheelbarrow

PIe made from the apples in yesterday's picture. It has been sampled and pronounced good :)

Apples picked from the Charles Ross tree on the allotment today. The jam jar is to show how ginormous they are. I feel an apple pie coming on….

More pictures :)

( Fruit, flowers and a Tiny )

Considering that I started this journal thing to chronicle my allotment doings, I haven't been posting about it much lately.

So, for your delight and edification, I shall regale you with a load of blather about what's growing or, in many cases, isn't.

As my UK friends know, the weather has been pretty poo this year - spring was very late, we had snow in March and everything is delayed.

Stuff hasn't been germinating very well this year, especially the sweetcorn - the first batch produced one miserable seedling, which, as my fellow gardeners know is as bad as none at all - sweetcorn needs to be planted in squares so it can cross-pollinate, so one plant isn't going to produce any corn.

The runner beans, usually a stalwart crop, have been similarly recalcitrant - I currently have four plants poking out of the ground and have sown a load more beans this week.

Tomatoes were sown in January and have just begun to grow a bit - I had five or six small seedlings which have begun to get serious about gaining size in the past week and about the same number which have germinated this week (yes, after six months in the trays. Don't rush into it, guys.) These are all of the variety "Outdoor Girl", so if I have more plants than will fit in the greenhouse, they should be able to play in the great outdoors, if the weather isn't too appalling. One of my fellow allotmenteers kindly gave me a couple of cherry tomato plants yesterday, which was jolly kind of him.

The first artichokes are beginning to form now - the plants are looking smaller than in previous years, presumably because of the late start, but seem healthy enough.

The strawberries have flowered and seem to have plenty of fruit forming - all we need now is enough sun to ripen it.

Perversely, the thing that's doing really well this year is something I've previously had no success with to speak of - cauliflowers. I've never had cauli plants that look so strong and healthy as the ones this year (touch wood). The cauliflowers are beginning to form and I'm really hoping for a good crop this year. I'm ridiculously excited about them , considering that I don't even like cauliflower that much :)

The broad beans seem to be doing OK, one batch sown last autumn is flowering and the second spring-sown batch is gaining height and should produce a second crop after the first lot have finished.

The apple trees had some good blossom on them, so I'm hoping for some nice apples later in the year.

I have a few red lettuces growing well and have sown carrots, peas and mooli radish in the last week.

I potted on some sprout seedlings yesterday and the broccoli is beginning to germinate.

Last years leeks are going to seed and need digging up and salvaging soon. I've planted only a few potatoes this year, variety "Kestrel". They're already poking their heads up and need earthing up soon.

Meanwhile, I'm digging out as much of the couch grass (known locally as "twitch") from the shed end of the plot. Last year the wretched stuff grew through my potatoes. By which I don't just mean that it grew between the plants - I mean it grew through the actual tubers - wicked sharp roots, it's got. Evil stuff. I'm making a separate pile of the roots and when I've got lots of it I plan to burn it, Don't want that in my compost heap :(

On a more positive note, some manure was delivered to the site yesterday and we were invited to help ourselves for 50p a barrowload, which is pretty reasonable, I reckon. I managed three barrowloads, two yesterday and one today. Unfortunately, yesterday I forgot what a bad idea it is to wear Crocs in the rain and fell over multiple times in the mud on the way home, resulting in much muddiness and a sore bum.

I was rather disappointed that so few apples had set on our trees this year, but the nice chap on the plot next-door-but-one to mine says he's had none at all and no pears either, so perhaps we've done better than I thought.

Anyway, we had our first apple of the year yesterday a Devonshire Quarrenden.

It had fallen from the tree when I found it, so it can be excused for being a little mushy, but the flavour was good - sharp but not overly so, and a touch perfumy. There are two more still on the tree, so hopefully those will be even better.

Tonight's dinner contained leeks from last year's crop which I froze a while back, broad beans and the first few strawberries of the season.

I seem to have done reasonably well with the broad beans this year. The ones I overwintered under a cloche are beaning now and the spring-sown ones are coming on nicely for a later crop. so I shall definitely repeat the same pattern next time. The bean to pod ratio of the beans could be better, so I;m wondering if I should have removed the cloche earlier, but that's so weather-dependent I don't know if it would have helped.

I managed to get some more weeding done this morning, before it started raining yet again….At least, if it rains again tomorrow, I have at least one allotment job I can do that won't get me muddy if I attempt it in the rain - one of the comfrey plants has been smooshed down by the weather, so I need to cut it for making comfrey juice.

( The birds and the bees… )

 Meanwhile, back on the allotment, the weeds have been growing apace, so it was time to break out the strimmer today. I didn't get all of it done - by the time I'd done the other jobs I had to get done today and bought petrol for the strimmer and got the wretched string untangled  from itself, I was a bit short of time.

Yesterday I got my potato trench finished and planted some onion sets. I was hoping to get the potatoes down to the plot and planted today, but the weather's gone all splooshy again, so that hasn't happened.

The first batch of sweetcorn has started germinating - ten seedlings showing at present. Probably time to plant a second tray then :)

I have nice little rows of carrot, brussel sprout and borecole seedlings in the seed beds, which I'm pleased, but mildly surprised about - stuff sown directly into the ground has historically not done well for me. But then the weather's been as mad as a box of frogs this year, so who the heck knows?

The strawberry plants have started to flower, and the apple trees are blossoming - but now the weather people are predicting frosts, which can't be good.

Yesterday I waited in all day for a courier to come and collect a parcel and they didn't turn up. I rebooked the collection for Wednesday because my customer wanted delivery on Friday rather than Thursday, so today I was able to spend some time on the allotment.

I've started digging the potato trench, weeded some more of the second strawberry bed, sown the first tray of sweetcorn "Sugar Bun" (and brought it home to germinate in case of meeces), potted on my brussel sprout seedlings and dug an area over and planted out sixteen sweet pea plants.

I also saw a couple of folk up near the blackberries and went to enquire whether they knew aught of the Great Devastation that was wrought there on Sunday. The gent of the pair informed me that the committee had ordered the brambles cleared, and that they weren't on my plot anyway. I replied that a member of the committee had told me they were only a few weeks previously, and in any case that was no reason to trample my rhubarb (two plants completely flattened) and to leave nasty sharp bramble branches all over an area that definitely is part of my plot.

I don't much mind where the boundary of my plot is, as regards whether it encompasses the brambles or not, but I do wish they'd make their flippin' minds up about it. And even if the things aren't on my plot, I think it would have been courteous to let me know what they were doing if they needed to traverse my plot to get it done. At least then I could have asked them to be careful of the rhubarb.

I'd already dropped a letter to the committee through the treasurer's letterbox before meeting this chap, so we'll see what the official response is, if any...