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.

Help has arrived

The Tiny Human is now just big enough to help out on the plot. She enjoys carrying the empty watering can down to the tap and watching it being filled up. She also wanted to carry the full can back to the plot, which was very sweet but it was too heavy for her to lift. I should add, I'm not enforcing child labour here, she volunteers by taking the watering can out of my hands, in fact it's hard to stop her!

My little helper

Her reward is a go on the new swing.

Reward after all that hard work