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

Spuds are up

Main potato harvest has revealed a whole barrow full of potatoes. 'Cara' the most successful, 'Sarpo Axona' less so, tending to be knobbly with rougher skins.

Garlic Update

Most of the garlic is starting to turn brown now, and there's a lot of leek rust on the leaves, so Moog thinks we should pull it all up this week. I'm well pleased as they were the first thing I planted when I took over the plot. Most of it will be dried and stored for use in cooking, but we're going to try eating some of it as 'wet' garlic, using recipes from Hugh Hairy-Wittingstall's TV programme River Cottage Spring that was on last week. If they're nice I'll report back, and plant more next year!

This picture doesn't really give you an idea of the size of these plants, they're much bigger than the bulbs you can buy in the shops.

Harvest Time

Moog thought our first harvest would be a big event, but it's nearly slipped under the radar.

The other day we pulled up some garlic because there was quite a lot of rust on the leaves - but it was still too early, the bulb was only just formed and still growing, so we left the rest in the ground. We also pulled up some potatoes, but only got 4 (they were delicious) so the haulm was replanted quickly and it's still growing. But, without further ado, here's a picture of my first proper crop, some salad leaves and cylinder radishes. Ta-da!

Vampires Beware

Moog thought I should report, with great pride, that we have now planted our first actual allotment crop!

I like cooking things like Chinese food with lots of garlic, so I have finally managed to make room for the bulbs I ordered a couple of months ago from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight. I didn’t know where to start so I ordered a special set of everything; we’ll see what comes up. Thankfully the instructions say that it can be planted any time from autumn to spring, as it needs a period of cold weather to get it going. Moog thinks that’s why supermarket garlic sprouts when you keep it in the fridge too long… I’ve also dug in lots of manure as Moog thinks the garlic will like that.

Moog thought we should use the blog to record what we plant; otherwise we’ll forget what we put there by the time it (hopefully) grows. There’s a good chance we’ll also lose the instructions that came with the bulbs, and forget when to harvest the stuff too. So, this is what we planted at the beginning of December 2007:



Early Purple Wight. A purple hard-necked garlic from China. Ready to harvest around May/June. Harvest as soon as it’s ready, should keep for 2-3 months.
Chesnock Wight. Hard-necked garlic from around the Black Sea. A flowering head is supposed to appear in June, which should be cut off above leaf level to increase bulb size (seems a shame). Harvested in June after Early Wight, should keep until Christmas.
Iberian Wight. Soft-neck large white early garlic originating from the Mediterranean, grows nearly on the surface, ready in June.

Garlic likes it if you spread sulphate of potash around the plants in Feb/March; they need to be kept weed free and watered like anything else, but stop watering 3 weeks before harvesting. Assuming any of this grows at all, I may have to leave harvesting a week or two later than it says, as I’m later planting than I wanted, and, as Moog rightly points out, we don’t live on the Isle of Wight.