Sun, in flower form

Not seeing so much of the real thing at the moment, but Tash's sunflowers are blooming this week.


The variety is called "Earth Walker". They are smaller than the normal yellow flowers, but much more interesting!

Lots of Shallots

Cleared up the weeds along the onion and shallot rows yesterday, harvesting the remaining shallots along the way. A better harvest than the potatoes:


Cleared the pea plants, which have stopped growing peas, and sowed some new carrot, fennel, and french beans in their place. In the background my new path, built from Dez's left over patio slabs, can be seen.

Blighted!

The entire site has been hit by potato blight. Lost about 1/3 of the Desiree crop, cut off the exposed foliage last weekend, then unearthed the potatoes last night. A lot of them had been infected, including this monster:


Still, managed to fill a large bucket of good potatoes so could have been worse.

The tomatoes, on the other hand, have been a total loss. Another week and I might have been able to pick the first ones, but the blight got there first and the whole lot had to go on the bonfire.

Peas and Beans

A good crop of peas this evening, and the first few broad beans.


Fairly sure that the Catriona potatoes have blight so have removed all foliage. Will leave it a week for the blight spores to die then dig the half-row which is still in the ground. Fortunately the Desiree plants don't seem so badly affected so I am leaving them alone for the moment.

The Weeds Strike Back!

Feels like I have spent hours clearing up weeds over the last week, but they are growing faster than I can remove them. At least the compost heap is growing!



'Feltham First' peas are really getting into their stride. I picked half a carrier bag of fat pods this afternoon to add to more potatoes, courgettes, and shallots. The broad beans have plenty of pods now, some of them are getting quite fat, but not quite ready to eat today.

Making a meal of it

Dinner last night was lamb chops, new potatoes, peas, sauted courgette and shallots.

Unfortunately the allotment isn't big enough to keep livestock so the lamb came from New Zealand, but everything else was grown on the allotment and dug or picked less than 30 minutes before being eaten.

Very nice it was too!

The harvest begins

The strawberry plants were the first - several handfuls of berries, which is more than I expected from new plants.

Dug up the first two Catriona potato plants at the weekend, yielding 20 or so decent sized spuds and a few tiny pea-sized ones!

First early peas eaten as Mangetout, first two baby courgettes, and four big shallots. Tried unearthing two carrots but they were disappointingly small and forked. The others need time to grow.

Not a brilliant germination rate, but there are seven sweetcorn plants growing strongly. Planted more seeds in the positions of the 4x4 grid where nothing had appeared.


The weeds were starting to take over so have spent a lot of time clearing them up over the last week. Beetroot, Swede, Turnip, Rainbow Chard, Pea, and French Bean seedlings now have some space to grow.


Feltham First peas, and Broad Beans are now getting very large.