It's been a while...

Here's a photo to prove the plot still exists after the arrival of Tiny Human No. 2. Surviving on about an hour or two of gardening attention per week, I'm actually quite pleased with how neat things are.

In the foreground you can see the weed pile and wildflower bed followed by four beds recently planted with potatoes, Sarpo Mira and Picasso.

Autumn 2014: A Thankful Harvest

I realize I haven't updated the blog since June. How time flies. My mind has been on other things this year as we hurtled towards increasing the number of tiny humans in the household by 100% at the beginning of November. I am vaguely aware that the plot is still there and it was fairly tidy when I last saw it but it no doubt needs attention now.

I'm waiting on delivery of my overwintering onion sets and garlic bulbs. This year I have opted to buy some new garlic, the harvest of my own recycled bulbs was disappointing. Having spoken to a few others I don't think the cloves I planted were at fault, but I do think the weather of 2013/14 produced smaller garlic than in previous years. In any case I am starting afresh, when they arrive, with some 'Carcassonne Wight', to remind me of the lovely holiday we spent in the south of France last year. It is a purple hardneck variety which are my favourite sort.

Squash 'Festival' and a courgette, I forget which variety but they were organic seeds and grew like mad once they got going

The harvest this year was excellent despite my half-arsed attempts at gardening, and I mainly have friends, family and colleagues to thank for that. Cucumbers, provided by my Dad (Wise Mike) were prolific again this year and Tiny Human #1 is addicted to them. I also benefited from several gifts from fellow allotmenteer Derek, namely squashes, sweetcorn and chilli plants which all did quite well. Finally I grew courgettes and spinach from seeds gifted by another colleague, Roberta, so without the generosity of all three I might have had a more barren year on the plot. Dwarf French beans did very well and onions produced a very good harvest, but the King Edward potatoes died off fairly early in August and failed to achieve anywhere near the sort of size tubers that I would have hoped.  My poor raspberry canes are still producing fruit but I decided to brutally ignore them this year, as my free time becomes more and more limited I am looking at lower-maintenance crops for the future.

I didn't grow pumpkins this year so this is a supermarket job but Tiny Human drew the face this year for me to carve.

Little helper on the plot

The conversation went something like this:

ME: 'Look, I am putting up this string and hanging some shiny CDs on it to scare the birds away.'

TINY HUMAN: 'Ooh, can I help?'

ME: 'Yes of course.'

[Tiny Human then potters off and spends quite a while digging a hole to put a piece of bamboo cane in. She then soaks the ground with several watering cans of water, and smooths it with a broom.]

TINY HUMAN: "Look Dad, the bird will see that shiny disc, and go "arrgh" and fly off, but he'll fly into this stick, and fall into the mud and get stuck. It's bird-mud."

ME: 'Oh. Well done, I would never have thought of that.'

After that, we picked strawberries.

Root Trainers

After receiving some sweetcorn plants from Derek I was impressed with the root trainer pots ("Rootrainers") that he had used so I went and got myself a set straight away. They consist of a set of black plastic sleeves that fold together into long square pots suitable for sowing seeds of plants that need a good root run - I've used them in the picture below for my replacement sowing of dwarf French beans. They come with a plastic propagator cover. 

Rootrainer pot with healthy French bean seedlings; strong roots go all the way to the bottom

I'm usually wary of this sort of thing as they seem a bit faddy but I have to say I'm impressed. They are easy to handle, and the shape of the pot encourages the roots to grow really healthily and straight down rather than spiralling round. They can be opened up, as in the picture, when ready for planting, and it is much easier than normal pots to avoid disturbing the roots. Recommended.

Photo update

 I have now managed to get back on top of the weeds after my holiday, and here is a photo to prove it:

Front to back: Onions, cucumbers, onions, garlic

 And here is a photo of what is rapidly becoming 'gift corner' - sweetcorn, squash and broad beans in the picture below all gifted by Derek, and a row of spinach and courgettes, seeds for which were given to me by my colleague Roberta as part of her retirement celebrations:

Sweetcorn, courgettes, squash, spinach and broad beans

This is one area I haven't got on top of, but a beautiful crop of wild flowers has sprung up on a neglected bed so I've left them, seeing as they are a much better display than  my planned wildflower bed, which has one flower in it:

Wild flowers

 And finally, the strawberries are ready in time for Wimbledon:

Strawberries

Scum

The allotments have had some unwelcome visitors lately in the form of thieves and burglars. Both times were in the school holidays, which I think gives a clue as to who is to blame. They have a habit of taking things from people's sheds, and then for whatever reason (whether they get bored or are disturbed I don't know) leaving their loot around the place to be discovered later. They are more of an annoyance than anything else, as each time we have to tidy up after them. To reduce damage I no longer bother locking my shed, as they either break off padlocks or unscrew the hinges, and they have never taken anything of mine until now. This time they took both my plastic trugs and my wheelbarrow to help carry their spoils. All of these items I got back, but it was time I could have been gardening. One of my neighbours was not so lucky and lost a few items, including a complete greenhouse. Thankfully so far they have left my  tools alone and have not damaged any of my crops, that would really make me cross.

Quite what these petty minded idiots get out of spoiling other people's hobby I do not know. Of course the little rats are always long gone at the time I visit the plot, even though I am often there until sunset, so they must come round under cover of darkness. I'd love to leave some booby traps for them but of course I never will; that's the problem with being one of the law-abiding good guys, we make easy targets. Hopefully they'll get what's coming to them in other ways.

Just live.

You live and learn, so goes the old saying; that is oft appended in our house with "but in my case, you just live." Went to the plot in shorts recently because it was a lovely day, and got bitten twice by whatever bug it is that I have an allergic reaction to (I think it's ants). Now every warm day I have to change back into long trousers to visit the plot. One day I will learn my lesson.

We've had a mild winter and I was able to keep up well with the plot until we went on holiday in May. The warm weather and rain made the weeds grow like mad and I had a real job on my hands when I got back, things only now getting back under control. 

Over-run with weeds in late May. Note bike trailer in background

I planted some French beans direct in the soil in mid-May, judging it to be warm enough, but I didn't bank on the solid week of cold rain that followed, it was more like March than late May. As a result all my beans rotted in the soil. 

I was wondering how to get my compost bin and some plants down to the plot when I didn't have use of the car, and hit upon the brain wave of using the Tiny Human's bike trailer. This worked well for the compost bin but when I went to check the four courgette plants, I found they had tipped upside down in the trailer and scattered the contents. I couldn't have destroyed the seedlings more effectively if I had taken them out and stamped on them. Luckily I left a couple of spare plants at home that wouldn't fit in the trailer.

My disasters have been made up for by generosity on the part of my gardening friends, family and colleagues. I received three home grown cucumber plants from Wise Mike, which are now doing well under a plastic tunnel. I also received 14 sweetcorn plants from Derek, which came in 'Rootrainer' pots which I was very impressed with. I planted up the sweetcorn the same day and bought my own rootrainer pots to start off some replacement French beans at home, which are also coming along nicely. Derek also donated some lovely chilli plants, which have been planted at home in the garden where I can keep a closer eye on them.

Treasure

In the past couple of weeks I have found two interesting pieces of buried treasure on the plot. First was an old penny, heavily worn but still clearly marked 1908 on one side. It could have been in circulation for many years after 1908 of course, and judging by its condition it has had a hard life, but I wonder who dropped it and what they were doing there. I would like to think it was dropped by a soldier during the big military exercise that was held on Stacey Hill farmland before the outbreak of WWI, but it could just as easily have had a more mundane life and been dropped at any time in the last 100 years. At least it makes a change from bits of broken glass and plastic.

My second find was a bit more modern, an aluminium petrol token dating probably from the mid 1970s with a picture of a car on it. This has also seen better days but it's just possible to make out that it was issued by Shell and features a 1950s Mercedes Benz 300SL. I wonder if someone was disappointed to lose it from their collection.

It's taken me a few years of repeatedly digging the same soil to unearth this stuff, so I wonder what else lies beneath the surface. Actually, I don't need to wonder that hard. I'm always unearthing things, since these finds I also dug out three whole house bricks and a couple of broken concrete roof tiles. So although it is is theoretically possible someone buried a whole house, the real answer is probably 'a load more old rubbish'...

...and it started on the first pull

...and it started on the first pull.

Sounds so much like a joke punchline, doesn't it, but I am referring to my trusty allotment lawnmower, which burst into spluttering life the first time I pulled the cord this weekend.

I actually made three visits to the plot in as many days, some accompanied by sunshine, and some by hail showers. Buoyed by a couple of weeks of settled and warm spring weather I had intended to get my main onion sets in the ground, but as the weather has now turned cold again I settled for a mixture of jobs. This is the first real activity on the plot since last year when I actually had time to dig over about half the plot in time for winter. The winter rains have done their bit and the soil is quite workable now.

This spring has been much warmer than last year, so one of the first jobs had to be to get the mower out and tame the grass.Getting rid of some of the paths and raised bed borders has done wonders for my time-efficiency and it is much easier to keep on top of what needs doing when you don't have to spend ages on silly unproductive jobs like mowing. I suppose there is a small benefit to mowing, apart from keeping the place neat and accessible, it means my compost heap gets a nice big nitrogen fix.

After the grass, I also weeded my overwintering onions which were being slowly mugged by weeds, mostly grass and speedwell at this time of year, although dandelions have made remarkable progress on some other parts of the plot. I will need to weed the garlic soon as well, which has put on some fairly good growth with all the bulbs I planted coming up well. The onions are looking a little weedy in comparison, they could both do with a high potash feed to give them a boost. This phrase sounds like I know what I am talking about after all these years, doesn't it, but I don't  know really what makes a high-potash feed; I will have to go to the garden centre and look at the labels.

I did start to prepare some ground for the onions, this was hard work and has made the plot start to look loved again, at least in one corner. I didn't rush to get them in the ground, as I said above I'm fairly relaxed about the timing when the weather is not reliably warm. Dismantling my bed system has also made me dither a bit more about where to put things so I may need to draw up another plan soon. Otherwise I will start at one corner and put things in as they become ready - a strategy which seems to work. All I do is try to avoid putting the same crop in the same bed two years running.

Main crop potatoes have been selected, King Edward this year to make a change. An easily available variety but they must be popular for a reason, methinks. They are chitting at home in the spare room and will not be put in the ground too early either. Easter is late this year so I may not wait that long, but I won't hurry them. They will have all year to catch up. Besides, it will take me a while to prepare all the ground; I still don't know where I'm going to put them.

New Year Rituals

Seed catalogues arrived on my doormat on New Year's Eve 2013, just in time to re-ignite my interest in allotmenteering for the year ahead. A few things that I'd like to try have been noted.

I also received a nice Christmas present of a few unusual seed varieties in a 'Funky Veg Kit' mostly unusually-coloured vegetables, which has inspired me to give them a go. Some I've tried before, like Swiss Chard Bright Lights, and some I haven't, like purple carrots.

I have drifted away from trying new things recently as they are rarely successful, preferring instead to stick to things I know will be reliable and that we will use in the kitchen, but I feel a change coming on for this year. After all, even courgettes were poor for me in 2013 so we didn't get much variety from the plot. Also the pest and disease-resistant varieties I have been favouring tend to be the least interesting in terms of flavour. The decent summer of 2013 has given me a bit of hope that things don't always have to be like that, so I am hoping to nurture a bit more diversity on the plot in 2014. Salads and some different potato varieties will be high up on the list. I will probably keep some tough varieties in for insurance purposes.

Autumn thoughts

The dark evenings seem to arrive so quickly it's scary. Gone are my twice-weekly visits to the plot as it slides into semi-dormant state again until March next year. But there's still plenty to be done; not quite sure when I'm going to find the time to do it all.

Visited the plot at the weekend and retrieved all my maincrop potatoes and some nice carrots, before they got washed away or destroyed by slugs. Quantity not that great but did get some absolutely huge spuds, variety Sarpo Mira, unaffected by blight and some single potatoes at least twice as big as your fist. They will make good bakers, although one potato could feed three or four people! Very hard as usual to dig them without spearing them with the fork. Had just enough time to transfer them to the shed, but will need to check through them properly and sort out the non-damaged ones for storage.

Next I need to prune the raspberry canes, finish tidying up the strawberry patch and prepare the ground for onions and garlic to go in for next year, I had forgotten that autumn can be as busy as spring down on the allotment. Wise Mike's Autospade should come in very handy for winter digging. 

Each year I think about giving up but I would miss it now, maybe one day we'll move somewhere with a bigger garden, but not yet. What I really need more of is not space, but time!

Hello my name is Moog and I have too many cucumbers (now with pictures)

You may consider my recent lack of blog posts as a stunned silence. The reason, for the first time ever since taking on my plot, we have been basking in what can only be described as a 'summer.' Yes, you read that right. Think for a minute. When was the last time a British summer wasn't declared a washout by the tabloid press (and by me)? I'll tell you, it was 2006. Just before I started allotment gardening.

This has led to a period of new discoveries for me. of course no allotment year is ever exactly the same, but a certain depressing regularity has formed, mainly involving failures caused by too much rain and cloud. This year, after a ridiculously cold spring, we've been treated to nearly a month of wall-to-wall sunshine. It rather caught me out as I've never actually experienced a year like it on the plot. Suddenly, things they say in gardening books started to make sense. Like, "you can hoe on a dry day" and "don't forget to water stuff." Suddenly, crops (and weeds) have started behaving like they're supposed to.

Since my last post, harvesting has begun and taken up large amounts of my time, along with watering in all the hot weather. First I started harvesting my over-wintered onions, some of which grew so large that there was no space between them - from sets planted a hand-span apart to begin with.

Then came the strawberries. I have never seen so many. They started ripening mid-way through Wimbledon fortnight and didn't stop until the end of the Tour de France (I find sporting events a good way to plan the year). Our freezer is full to bursting waiting for jam-making to commence, and so, for a while, were our bellies. Raspberries followed somewhat later with a decent crop but have not been so prolific as the strawberries. This is a nice payback for the grim moments I remember from last year, trying to harvest strawberries in the rain. This year it was done with the sun on my back and the Iseley Brothers' Summer Breeze playing through my headphones. The strawberries, warmed by the sun, were sweet and delicious.

Strawberries

Toward the end of July as rain began to threaten, I harvested my garlic, which had done all the growing it was going to do, and my maincrop onions which were threatening to get too large. I also wanted to take them out of the ground before they could be re-energised into growth by the rains. Salad onions have also just got big enough to eat, and I have a very large row of salad bowl lettuce. I am surprised the lettuce hasn't bolted yet. It goes limp if you try to harvest leaves at the plot, so I have taken to potting up plants and taking them home that way. With a plastic bag over the bottom of the pot to retain moisture they have kept re-growing at home.

Main onion crop drying in the shed

And now, I have too many cucumbers. Both plants (variety "Ridge Burples") survived this year and broke out of their plastic tunnel. At first they were only ripening slowly and I got one or two in mid-July, but a visit to the plot yesterday in the first week of August produced no less than 9 large cucumbers. They are delicious, but we have too many. The plants have taken over an entire 4x9ft bed and are now exploring outside it too.

Butternut squash coming on at last

Other crops have been slow to catch up. pumpkins and squashes are only now getting going and we have only had two courgettes from the single plant I purchased. If there were more plants, you could guarantee each one would be heavy with fruit, I suppose. But at least this way I don't have a glut, as I do with cucumbers. Parsnips have failed to germinate this year, I have just a few very young specimens that won't be big enough to produce good roots this year. Potato plants are doing well, but have a few gaps in the rows, one of which has been filled by a rather spectacular volunteer tomato plant.

Volunteer tomato plant, variety unknown

Thankfully I have been able to keep up with watering and harvesting due to the lack of growth in both weeds and grass - meaning less mowing and weeding. I have, however, let a rather large infestation of bindweed creep up on me, and the potatoes in particular are badly choked by it. My wildflowers didn't germinate very well either, but every now and again a new flower pops up and the seeds will probably keep doing that over the years to come.

My first attempt at a wild flower display

New fruit cage and latest photos

Time for a post with some photos. Here is my new raspberry cage which is made from two tripods to resist falling over. I am quite pleased to have come up with this much better-engineered solution than my original method of whacking single poles straight into the hard ground, only for them to inevitably fall over. It has so far resisted unseasonable gale force winds so should do the trick. The netting is from Harrod Horticultural and whilst expensive has withstood the test of time. Excellent stuff. In the foreground, maincrop potatoes.

Raspberry protection

Next up, strawberries are doing well and are now under netting. They are planted a bit too close together really, I will plant my next lot much further apart. They need fresh air and get mouldy and rotten if we have wet conditions, such as last year's wet summer.

Strawberry patch

 In the distance behind the strawberries you can see onions and a small row of Salad Bowl lettuce. Here is a better picture of my nice neat overwintered onion rows. They are nearly ready, they look so good it will almost be a shame to harvest them. I think I will put some speedy salad veg in their place when they come up.

Neat onion rows

 Here is a closer view of the companion planted area at the front of the plot. Allotments are a haven for all sorts of pests so the carrots are planted in between two rows of garlic to guard against carrot fly. The garlic will come out before the carrots but the chives and onions will hopefully put the flies off the scent too. I'm also using resistant variety 'Flyaway' for maximum protection.

Carrots, companion planted with garlic chives and onions

 Finally here's a long shot of the plot. Cucumbers are under the plastic tunnel to the right. The long grass on the far right is my neighbour's fruit bushes, he is, by his own admission, slowing down, and can't keep up with this bit of his plot at the moment, although the rest of it is still in perfect condition.

The plot, June 2013. Note huge young dog in background by the shed.

Time for an update

One of the strange things about 2013 so far is that the weather has been very poor, but I have actually been able to keep up with jobs better than I usually do. I think it is partly because the very cold weather has stopped weeds taking over, as well as delaying planting times for my own crops. Added to this, I made a concerted effort to reduce the amount of infrastructure - paths, raised borders etc. and the lack of maintenance has left me time to carry on with more important jobs. I'm also getting much better at focusing my time on being productive; every time I visit the plot I set myself some goals and usually achieve them.

Things are progressing so well I've found I needed to scribble a plan for the first time in a few years. I usually carry it all in my head but I felt a plan was in order this week as I began to run out of space. Regular visitors to this blog will note the technicolour computer drawings of 2007-08 are long gone! We're now in back-of-an-envelope territory and I think I feel better for it.

Allotment plan, 2013

The plan shows where I've started to remove the smaller beds for the potatoes, onions etc and move to an open-plan, more traditional dug-ground system. This means less work maintaining paths and more growing space. I use scaffold planks to walk on the soil between the rows instead. The beds shown with a slightly heavier border are the ones that are not planted yet. The top of the plot is quite shady, so vegetable growing is concentrated on the lower side and the less productive areas are used for things that are less dependent on conditions. I plan to get rid of the two lower strawberry beds and move younger plants further up the plot after they finish fruiting.

May

My maincrop potatoes went in during the early May bank holiday at the beginning of the month, and by the time of the next bank holiday near the end of the month I've just spotted them breaking the surface, so they've put on some good growth from chitted tubers in about 3 weeks. This adds weight to my theory that most things will catch up if planted a bit later and there is no point in putting plants into wet cold soil. They will just sulk until it warms up anyway.

That said the year seems to be flying by at an alarming rate. I have some salad seeds but it's looking like I'll need to buy some plants as well as I haven't got the seeds in the ground yet. I've already bought some squash and cucumber plants and one courgette (bit of a gamble there; don't want too many plants but if this one doesn't survive, I'll have none). They are currently residing in my old cold frame, having not built the new one yet. However, there has been a giant leap forward in cold frame technology and I have used my glass shower screen as a lid. It works really well because you can slide it open and closed, so I will consider that a success for now.

My wife and the tiny human spent quite a bit of time at the plot last weekend, and the place is now bedecked with wind chimes, streamers, garden gnomes and little fences, along with a freshly tidied-up patio area outside the shed. I always wanted part of the plot to be an ornamental garden so it's fine by me. It also means all the twee garden ornaments chosen by the tiny human can grace the plot instead of the garden at home.

Vole / Ravenous Beast

I turned my compost heap and found a vole in residence. The little creature obviously mistook me for the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal* and attempted to escape by turning its back on me and sitting still with its eyes closed, but I eventually coaxed it out of the back of the heap.
*(a ferocious but stupid creature, who assumes that if you can't see it, then it can't see you)

More warmth, more work...

A spell of decent weather and lighter evenings have meant a few extra trips to the plot of late. I have now started digging and preparing for the potatoes to go in, as well adding some manure to other areas where I think I will either grow salads or squashes. I'm deliberately limiting what I grow to things that store well or that I know will be used at home. To accommodate about 40 potato plants this year, I've started to ditch my bed system, that has been in place since I started in 2007. The aim is to reduce the amount of time I spend on maintaining infrastructure and increase the time on the plants. I've also tried to continue with my new found technique of actually doing something when I go to the plot rather than just standing around looking at it. I think I usually get more done when I'm on a short time limit, than when I have all day.

I've now finished pruning the raspberries but the supports for the netting have fallen down so that's another job for the future. I've also had to re-plant some of the onions I put in which have been strewn about by birds, spoiling my neat rows.

I'm fairly relaxed about when my crops will be planted this year. Most stuff can't go out until after the last frosts anyway, and in this part of the world that means the end of May. It's difficult to find the space and time to get seeds going at home so I may well cheat and buy some small plants at the garden centre when they become available. They can then go straight into my new cold frame, which, um, I still haven't begun constructing. But Rome wasn't built in a day, was it?

Soil (no pictures)

It's mid-April and it looks like it's time to start catching up with all the jobs I should have been doing in February and March. The cold has kept me indoors and nature has taken a break too, with most plants only now springing into life. I have noticed they wake up with amazing speed when the time is right. Last week I (finally) started pruning my raspberry canes, a job usually done sometime just after Christmas. The longer you leave it, the harder it is to tell which canes to prune. Well, last week they were just canes. This week, most of them have buds or small leaves on.

Last year's onion sets were planted in February and were well-established by April. This year with two weeks of April gone they're not even in the ground yet. I don't mind because I have some over-wintering onions which all seem to be doing OK - therefore it won't matter if my main crop is a bit late, I'll have some to fill the gap. 

So one of my first jobs of spring has been to prepare ground for the onions. I decided I ought to add more pictures of this sort of thing but being quite a fussy photographer I find it hard to capture images I'm happy with. Also, being easily distracted, I rarely remember to stop what I'm doing and take a picture when I'm working on the plot. I'm sure some of the mundane things I do would be best described by a picture. But I seem to have developed a strong urge to post pictures of bare patches of soil. I've taken some pictures and then realised when I got home that it's just an empty bit of brown earth. It's like getting home from a walk in the countryside and finding the picture you took of that brilliant view doesn't really do it justice. Perhaps another allotment gardener reading this blog might understand the feeling of having created something that goes with gardening. When I've prepared a bed I keep going back and looking at it. It feels good. Unfortunately, to the casual observer, it probably doesn't look like much.

There's a huge amount of satisfaction involved in preparing a vegetable patch. I start with a weedy square of vacant ground then remove as many weeds as I can by hand or by digging them up with a spade. I try to get as much root as possible. Then I begin turning the soil over, digging out big stones and other rubbish, and roughly chopping the big clods of soil, trying to avoid murdering worms in the process. Then I go to my compost heap and sift a wheelbarrow full of compost and return to spread it over the surface. Then I mix the compost into the top layer of soil (the worms can do the rest). I find the rake is my favoured tool for this stage, it is also used to bash big lumps of soil into smaller ones until the whole thing turns into a fine tilth ready for planting. 

Oh no it's not

A new series of gardener's world and a slight warming of the air last week, shades of spring? No, hope was swiftly crushed again by the weekend as temperatures plummeted back down to zero, minus seven with wind-chill. Strictly not gardening weather!

I visited the plot to drop off a caddy full of kitchen compost and noticed that the garlic and over-wintering onions are all doing well. The daffodils are just about to start flowering as well, although not quite. The raspberry canes still desperately need cutting back and the beds I dug over in autumn need digging again. The ever-elusive cold frame has still not been built. Still, if a job's worth doing, better not rush it, I say.

I ordered my seed potatoes last week. I have gone for Sarpo Mira (late maincrop), which I have grown before. They stored well last time. I hold out no hope for a dry summer this year so it is no coincidence that they are best known as the most blight-resistant variety available. I've also chosen Mayan Gold, an early maincrop which I heard someone enthusing about on Gardener's Question Time, so thought I would give them a go. The potatoes are supposed to make fantastic chips.

At the same time, I ordered my parsnip seeds, and along with them got the usual envelope full of catalogues, adverts etc. - including a leaflet for converting my bath into an easy-access walk-in number. Thanks, Thompson and Morgan, what are you trying to say?! Then again my back does get sore after digging, and I do have a milestone birthday on the horizon this year, maybe I'll send away for the full brochure... Argghh!

In other news, Wise Mike has procured an Autospade, and offered to lend it to me for digging the plot, so watch this space for a full report, just as soon as the spuds arrive and the temperature gets above freezing for once.

Christmas

 I ventured to the plot just before Christmas to collect my veggies for the dinner table. It had been raining solidly for a couple of days and it wasn't the sort of weather I would normally expect to be digging in! See pictures below. The parsnips were hard to get out of the ground and needed a lot of mud washing off but they are in pretty good shape, tasty roots with only a small amount of canker affecting them. I would have expected more damage considering how wet it has been.

I also unearthed the baby carrots I planted in August (at Monty Don's suggestion on Gardener's World). These were not so successful, and had succumbed to quite a lot of wireworm (?) or maybe slug damage on the outer skins. There were enough carrots for a large meal, and a few did make it onto the dinner table, but the sheer amount of work involved in peeling and removing all the damaged flesh of such small carrots was so great I gave up in the end and used shop-bought veg for the sake of my sanity. My overall verdict on this late planting method is that the crop grew quite nicely, no doubt helped by the very warm weather in September, but the germination was very erratic and the crop quite small. Leaving the roots in the ground in such a wet year left them open to attack as I had feared, and I think they would need lifting a lot sooner in future to protect from damage. I think the latest planting time would be mid-July in future, with the aim of lifting in November instead of leaving them to their own devices.

Waterlogging on the plot. Brave daffodils shoots can just be seen in the water.

parsnips, and mud. lots of mud.

Water cascading past the plot on the access road

Overwintering onions seem to be doing well

Some heartening evidence of garlic starting to sprout, but this was the only visible shoot.

It was so wet, my footprints filled up with water after digging up the parsnips.

Sleeping, not dead

Awful weather in November has made it really hard to get to the plot. Any dry days have been taken up with other things so I'm grateful that the plot is in semi-hibernation at the moment.

I was able to pop in and collect the last of my maincrop carrots and the first of my parsnips last week, but that is about it. No more progress on the tidying up and winter digging I wanted to do. My cold frame project is two years overdue and I had grand plans to move the raspberries but that will probably never happen. I am pleased to report that the overwintering onion sets have started to sprout, as has quite a lot of couch grass, despite my best efforts to weed out the roots. We ran out of stored onions a couple of weeks ago, although they fared remarkably well in storage given the miserably damp conditions in which I harvested them.  Only one or two were  unusable due to neck rot where they didn't dry out properly.

It was very satisfying to have no less than four allotment products on the table with a late November roast dinner. They were garlic, potatoes, carrots and parsnips. The parsnips were tasty but I have high hopes that they will now just keep tasting better as we have had a few days of really cold and frosty conditions. I'm also hoping the cold will have kick-started the garlic into life, as there was no sign of it last week. I have some baby carrots still in the ground, I'm hoping nothing has attacked them under the surface as I want to have them at Christmas. The spuds usually last us until then too, but it was a poor year and we've almost run out. I have heard that there may be a shortage, or at least increase in price of seed potatoes next year because of the weather.