The wonder of peas

My pea harvest is now over. I have been growing a variety called 'Kelvedon Wonder' for three seasons now, and I have realised where they get their name, it is because I am always left thinking 'I wonder what's happened to all my peas.' Time for a change next season I think.

A ridiculously small harvest again this year, I suspect mainly due to drought. No pea moth attacks this year though, due to my ingenious mesh cage, created from bamboo canes, held together with old drinks bottles to stop the canes poking through the net. Excellent fine grade insect mesh purchased online from Harrod Horticultural. Best not to think about how much time, effort and money went into growing about 5 grams of peas.

This is an ex-worm. Thhhhhpppp!

Well I found out why my supply of worm fertiliser has dried up, as my worms have shuffled off this mortal coil, are pushing up the daisies, have f**king snuffed it. So off to the worm farm for more worms. Meanwhile my nettle tea seems to be doing the trick.

Also today I just thought I'd write that I'm sick of raspberry picking, every time I go to the plot to do something there are hundreds more ripe raspberries to pick before they go over-ripe. I shouldn't moan, really, should I, but I've only got a small freezer. Just wizzed a load of them up with some ice cream to make fresh raspberry ice cream. Yum.

Garlic Harvest

July is the time to harvest garlic, as the foliage turns yellow.  Here is one of my first, a variety called Iberian Wight, next to a golf ball to show how big it has grown. Pete, who has the plot opposite mine, said it was the best he'd ever seen (I promptly gave him a bulb to take home for that). That was very nice of him but to be honest, I can't remember seeing anyone else growing garlic anywhere near by, so not sure what he based that on... it is pretty good though.

June update: Underground biscuits and the beans have gone nuts

I earthed-up my potatoes recently, to ensure a greater depth of soil directly over the plants. I used my azada to draw soil from the edge of the beds to the middle. After the first couple of scrapes I found a bit of plastic in the soil - no great surprise there, I often find buried rubbish - so, assuming it was an old compost bag I gave it a tug. Up came half a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits. I'm not sure if I can adequately describe my shock at that moment, since they were actually quite fresh, a good 4 months off their sell-by date. I went and showed them to my neighbour, who was equally bemused. I can only assume some animal (squirrel? fox? the beast of Wolverton? The Moog?) has buried them there for safe keeping and will be disappointed to come back and find my potatoes instead.

Overall the plot is looking very healthy at the moment. The broad beans, in the ground since last autumn, have been threatening to produce useable pods for some time now. I kept checking but they were always too small, until about the second week of June when they finally reached maturity - all at once. So I have a bit of a broad bean glut on my hands. Luckily they freeze well whilst I find things to do with them! You can see clearly in the picture below the notches on the edge of the leaves, this means the plants have suffered the attention of 'Pea and Bean Weevil' again. These little beetles' sole purpose in life is to eat peas and beans. I wonder what they ate before I started planting peas and beans on this plot?

I have been quite careful to defend my crops from attack this year, but have still made some mistakes. My kohl rabi has been decimated by something, all leaves stripped to stalks. I assumed slugs, and liberally applied pellets until the same thing happened (quite literally, overnight) to my nice row of radish seedlings. they were coming up well, after I companion-planted them inside a ring of garlic. I called in my neighbour John for his opinion, and  he suggested birds are to blame, probably pigeons. This makes sense, and on checking my reference books I drew the same conclusion. So, more netting and wire have been employed, plus my rather jolly scarecrow has been brought out of his winter hiding place to look after everything when I'm not there.

Worms and horse manure soup

The worms have gone a bit quiet in my wormery, producing less liquid feed than I am used to. Really I need to face up to the job of emptying the whole stinking, festering mess out and returning the worms minus the compost they've made, but for fairly obvious reasons I've been putting that job off. Therefore I have been trying other ways of generating my own fertiliser. The first is to collect some of my comfrey and stinging nettles and submerge them in a bucket of water. I am led to believe the resulting 'tea' is a good tonic for plants. Second, I have put some horse manure in a trug and covered that with water too. Drawing off the resulting brown ooze is not for the faint hearted, and only marginally beter than tipping out the wormery, but I've started mixing that in to my watering can at a rate of about 1/4 brown ooze, 3/4 water. I got the idea from Terry Walton's book 'My Life on a Hillside Allotment', although the technique is not described in detail he does mention making fertiliser from bracken and sheep manure. Hopefully my version will do some good and not totally burn my plants, time will tell.

No more bare knees

I learned not to wear sandals to the allotment last year when I got bitten by ants, this year I have also learned not to wear shorts.  I was bitten by a solitary (and now very dead) ant on Saturday morning that crawled up onto my kneeling pad, and my knee has subsequently swelled up quite dramatically in reaction. Ants are now top of my hit list. Hopefully, many of them will be taken care of by application of the new Grow Your Own nematodes, which apparently contain a microscopic worm that ants cannot stand. Whilst it doesn't actually kill them, it makes them move out!  It also covers a host of other pests, so I'm going to give it a go.  Another weapon in the armoury against little beasties that want to eat my crops before me.

Distinct absence of April showers

It's been a very dry April, the soil is now rock solid and splitting in big cracks that I would only expect to see at the height of summer. Hopefully adding all the compost will help with that - I've stopped sifting it through the bread crate and just started chucking it by the wheelbarrow-full onto the beds that need it. Sifting would be great in a perfect world but I'll just rake out the big bits instead.

First signs of carrot seedlings this week, they've actually come up faster than my radishes which is a surprise, but it's been too dry for small seeds to germinate properly. Also this month I've been using my liquid worm compost to fertilise my garlic and flowering broad beans. I've also had a big bonfire of old weeds and branches thanks to the dry spell, and collected a bucket full of wood ash which has been spread on my plot. Hopefully all these measures will lead to better crops this year.

Purple sprouting broccoli has now gone purple and started sprouting in abundance, except that half of it has been stripped off by birds. So I've had to construct a big netting pyramid to try and keep them off. I shant bother growing much in the way of brassicas in the future, there are just too many pests out to get them. I am already plotting what to grow next year, and intend to ditch a few of the boring potatoes and onions for something a bit more unusual, now I'm getting the hang of growing stuff.