Year 3 Begins

It's now nearly 2 years since I took possession of plot 24b. Nice to have completed clearance of the turf and weeds at the end of last season, so not so much work to get things ready this year.

Managed a good couple of days work, in sunny spring weather, this weekend. Fruit is pruned, top dressed with bone meal and chicken pellets, and mulched with a generous layer of wood chippings. The old compost heap has been spread over what will be this season's brassica patch, and sowings of shallots and broad beans made.

Frosty Morning

Very cold, frosty, morning. Visited the allotment to check on things before going to work. Picked a savoy cabbage and some rainbow chard for the week ahead.

Autumn Fruit

Autumn Bliss raspberries just keep on going. Not a huge crop, but half of the canes are only just getting established. Even so, 1-2 dessert bowlfuls a week since the beginning of August is not bad.



Runner beans "Scarlet Emperor" are just about finished now. Very successful crop, was forced to take the surplus into work, and have loads in the freezer.

Sweetcorn "Swift" produced mixed results: Out of 18 plants that survived to maturity, only about 10 good cobs - but they were exceedingly good! The rest seemed to give up when the cobs were still small and partially formed. We found a good use for them!



More to follow, but my camera phone is broken so you have to wait until the films are scanned and uploaded!

Harvesting

I lifted all the remaining potatoes last Sunday. Disappointingly, the printed labels that came on each pack were not weather-proof, so the experiment to find out which varieties worked best was slightly hampered. Best guesses though:

Colleen
Matured earliest, first row lifted in early July, but a noticeably larger potatoes a month later. Good number, and even but not excessively size. Virtually no pest damage.

Orla
Very low yield in number, only 2-3 per plant, but very good size. Bigger than any of the other varieties by a big margin, would make good baking potatoes despite being an early variety. Very little pest damage.

Milva and Valor
These are the two I'm not sure about, which is a shame because of the difference in results. Both yielded about the same, reasonable numbers of potatoes but a bit on the small size - not unreasonable as they are main crop varieties and shouldn't be lifted for another month but the foliage had died down so they weren't going to grow any bigger. One of the varieties showed virtually no pest damage, on the other about 50% of the potatoes had holes, presumably from slugs as there were still a few in residence.

Robinta
Best yield of all, although none were very big. Again, this is a main crop variety and should have continued growing for another month or so. In general very little pest damage, but a few that ended up in the middle of an ants nest had some surface damage - hardly surprising!



In conclusion, fairly pleased. Including the row I lifted in July, probably about a sack in total. This was on unmanured ground, big sticky lumps of waterlogged clay when planted, which had just been cleared of weeds for the first time in years. Another plus point is no problems with blight or other diseases, despite other plot-holders being affected this year. A bit of a puzzle why the main crop foliage died down so early, they were kept watered during the dry spell.

Next year, I think I will buy larger packs of Colleen and Robinta.

A mixed bag

Tidied up the roots bed. A few rainbow chard and salsify, plus some tiny leeks, but no signs of anything else.


The brassicas are doing well. Marner Fruhrot summer cabbage in the foreground, kale, sprouting broccoli, brussels sprouts behind, then some plants bought in to replace what the pigeons ate: White sprouting broccoli, savoy cabbage, and red cabbage for the winter.

Alliumtastic!

Lifted shallots and onions in the last week. A few were starting to flower, and the space is needed for other crops.



A good harvest from both. The shallots are smaller than last year, but more of them. No complaints about the size or quantity of onions!

Strawberries!

First ripe strawberry picked 2nd June.
Enough to fill a dessert bowl on 8th June.
Last night, this:


And still plenty more unripe ones to come!