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

Murder in a green and pleasant land

Ah, England, that land which is kept forever green by a never-ending supply of rain. The green, when you look closely, consists mainly of weeds.  

Turns out I was right to scoff at the experts when they forecast a year-long drought; I mean, have the people who say this sort of thing ever been to the UK? If there’s one thing you can rely on, it’s that whatever the weather, it won’t be what you want.

The lack of sunshine has stalled my climbing beans, whilst the squashes (courgette, pumpkin and butternut squash) are all just sitting sulking instead of romping away like usual. One cucumber has managed to survive but again isn't doing much. My tomato house is up, assisted with four stakes, some bamboo canes, zip-ties, string and several bricks to stop it flying away in the constant, unseasonal gale-force winds.

Meanwhile, the damp conditions have brought my strawberries, raspberries and onions on well, but very slowly, so they are under constant attack from snails and slugs. Snails are more evident and I have caught a number of them committing suicide by crawling over the top of my strawberry netting and getting stuck. Unfortunately the weed-control fabric that keeps the plants from being over-run is also the ideal hidey-hole for invertebrates.  

Last week, my gardening friend and colleague Derek recounted how he had visited his plot on a damp evening and been greeted by a huge army of marauding slugs. He bravely slaughtered as many of them as possible until he found himself, like the soldiers in the movie Aliens, out of ammo and still surrounded by a rising tide of slime. I can empathise with the sinking sensation of doom, having fought similar battles with other pests but I was feeling quite pleased that I haven’t seen that many slugs this year. Unfortunately, I must have thought that a bit too loudly because karma overheard and my last trip to the plot was accompanied by a light rain shower and a gastropod plague of biblical proportions. I thought the strawberries were bad, with both slugs and snails queuing up to munch the ripest fruit, until I saw the onions and garlic, each plant wilting under the weight of three or four slugs each. Some just a few millimetres in size, some huge.

So, with the same feeling of being surrounded by an enemy horde, I was forced to make a stand and despatch as many of the offending creatures as I could get hold of. I would like to say to any Buddhists reading that it’s not something I greatly enjoyed doing and I feel sure that if I’m ever brought to account by a higher power for the number of living things I have destroyed, the foreman of the jury is very likely to be a slug or snail.

Unfortunately despite my attempt at slug genocide I fear I have only stemmed the first wave, and I felt the sensation of doom rise up in me too.  

On the plot, no-one can hear you scream.

Distractions

I have been trying to be more disciplined. It's not working all that well. There are just too many interesting things to do once the weather warms up. It took me about three weeks to get two short rows of peas in the ground, amongst all the other things that were calling for my attention. On one memorable evening, I spent an hour sitting in the shed because the rain was hammering down so hard, complete with thunder and lightning, that I couldn't even make it home never mind do anything. Luckily one of the distractions was coaxing my lawnmower back into life, otherwise I wouldn't be able to find the plot by now.

As for progress, I can report the potatoes have survived the frost and are growing on well. Carrots and parsnip seeds are sown, finally. Garlic and onions are doing OK, despite the weeds. Both raspberries and strawberries are flowering away, promising another good fruit crop.  Sadly most seedlings that I was growing at home have been a complete disaster, meaning about half the plot is still empty, so I'm going to look out for some young plants in the next week or so. Hopefully garden centres will be stocked up ready for the jubilee weekend.

New compost bins

Rain again this morning, but by the afternoon the sky changed from its usual grey to a funny blue colour and a strange, bright yellow light appeared in the sky, so I took a chance and disappeared off to the plot for a couple of hours until the light disappeared again.

 I cleared out my 'rubbish corner' and used a combination of new and old pallets to make two new compost bins. It's been nearly a year since I dismantled my previous heap, and I've missed it.

Now harvesting: leeks, parsnips.

The new compost heap

Precautions pay off

When Moog thinks we should do something on the allotment, I'm often left unsure whether it's worth it, or whether my effort would have been better spent elsewhere.

After the wet summer of 2007 I've always been mindful of the disaster of getting crops washed away or drowned - probably harder to deal with than drought because I can water when it's sunny, but I can't stop the rain!

Moog thought we should dig drainage channels down the edge of each bed, and I'm glad we did, as this picture shows, after a few hours of relatively light rain:



Not pictured are some of Moog's own holes, also filled with water!

The Moog's very blustery day

Storage Saga No.2

After a little plot maintenance, I had just put my tools away when I decided to go back to the storage box for one last item. I crouched down, the wind blew, and there I was, crouched in front of nothing but a pile of tools! The box, obviously tired of life on Plot 29 had bidden the cruel world goodbye and made a leap for it across the next allotment!

At that moment, the heavens opened, and the luckless Moog Keeper spent the next 20 minutes getting soaked in a howling gale, trying to manhandle sheets of plastic back into their rightful places as box walls and lid. Thankfully, power tools and big screws were close at hand to effect the necessary repairs.

Next project: A shed big enough to go inside when monsoon weather threatens. Hopefully strong enough not to blow away, Wizard of Oz style, with Moog as the bewildered Toto and the Moog Keeper inside!

Moog thinks, If you want to wear a blue gingham dress and red ruby slippers on the allotment, that's your lookout, just don't expect me to follow you around!

Erm, thanks Moog, that's not quite what I meant.

Pot of Gold?

Shortly after taking this photo, at the beginning of December, I found out what is actually at the end of the rainbow:

Rain.