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.

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.

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

Mini harvest time

It's the end of October so time to harvest anything tender that's not already been eaten - such as squashes and pumpkins, ready for Halloween. Here's my mighty squash harvest. Not bad for a year's work, eh?



Mini squash.



Hmm, well maybe not. OK so what else? I also brought in the fast-growing French beans I planted in August (total six beans) and the last of my cucumbers, of which there were three, so a bit better there.  The baby carrots I planted in August all have very promising top growth so I am hoping for great things from them, after my maincrop is finished. Speaking of which, I unearthed a handful of maincrop carrots and also a huge block of concrete weighing about 10 kilos. That might explain why so many of my carrots are forked and stunted (careful how you say that). Bear in mind also, this is not the first crop in this bed or the first massive lump of concrete I've extracted. Oh well. Life is full of surprises, as they say.

On the positive side things are still fairly neat and I have managed to get both over-wintering onions and garlic in the ground nice and early. It's been cold, but not quite cold enough for parsnips - I'm waiting for a good couple of hard frosts to sweeten them up. The tops look good, let's hope there's something underneath, not just concrete.

Only one real job for the winter, build the cold frames I didn't build earlier this year, that might have saved my squash plants. Watch this space.

The allotment year begins again

I have decided that October 1st is the beginning of the gardening year. This is because harvesting is pretty much over for the season and it is now time to start planting and preparing for next year. I think I've mentioned on here before, how viewing the autumn as a time for new beginnings turns the seasons around a bit in my head and makes the winter that little bit easier to deal with. Rent was also paid on time this year after last year's fun and games with the local council. Their date for rental payments is something that new plot owners could take heed of. Most people who take on a new plot in the autumn seem to do a little bit of clearing then disappear until the first warm day of May, when they will realise they are already behind and give up.

Having said harvesting is over, I still have carrots in the ground and cucumbers keep on coming (see picture). I've been very pleased with my cucumber harvest, after a bit of a false start the one remaining plant has provided me with a steady supply of tasty fruits that store well once picked. To someone with a busy life who might not get down to the plot as often as they would like, they also have the desirable characteristic that they don't become monsters overnight like courgettes.

Spiny cucumber, plus weeds.

This weekend we had some clear weather and I unexpectedly found myself with a couple of hours to get to grips with the plot. I haven't done anything useful down there for a couple of weeks so was pleased to clear a large section at the front of the plot which had become overgrown, dug it all over, added a bit of compost from the heap and planted 50 onion sets (variety 'radar'). This year I used a nice big spool of sturdy orange string to help make neat rows, although if the birds pull up any of the sprouting sets it's never quite clear where to put them back in.

Next job is to plant some garlic in time for halloween to keep the vampires away. I wanted to get a good French hardneck variety but can't find any in the local garden centres, so I may have to order online or just replant some of my bulbs from storage.

Harvesting (and funny carrot picture)

There's nothing quite like bringing home a basket of fruit and veg at this time of year. I popped to the plot on my runabout bike which is an elderly Raleigh Estelle with a basket on the front. I may have picked rather too much as the ride home was a little tricky. You don't see Bradley Wiggins trying to stop potatoes flying onto the road as he goes along.

Basket of delights. Slightly too heavy for an elderly bicycle

Included in the basket are new potatoes, carrots, peas, French beans, onion, garlic and a rather nice cucumber. This is my second ever cucumber, which I hope is as nice as my first ever cucumber, which I picked a few days ago. That is another satisfying allotment feeling, trying something for the first time and finding out it's really rather good.

My first ever cucumber

Finally, as promised, the obligatory funny-looking carrot shot:

Funny looking carrots: The allotment staple.