Taking Orders

The weather the past few weeks here has been cold, wet, snowy, dark - you name it, we've had it - and I have not fancied going to the allotment. There is nothing to harvest at the moment except the leeks and sprouts and they don't mind being in the ground in this weather and can be picked up until April.

I have taken the opportunity of doing my ordering of seeds and sets. I have decided this year to grow potatoes "Swift" - a very early variety (because I can't wait to stop buying potatoes), "Charlotte" - a lovely popular salad variety, and "Desiree" -a popular maincrop which is fairly blight resistant. I have decided to grow white onion "Sturon" again as it has been very successful for the past 2 years and red onion "Hyred" which is a new one.

I also have ordered courgettes, cucumber, sweetcorn, beetroot and peas, and together with the beans, leeks, sprouts, parsnips and swede that I have left over from last year, I think that is enough to be going on with.

Now I have to wait for the slightly warmer weather to actually start planting the seeds, but in the meantime there is the small matter of some digging to be done!

A Fresh Leek

An ambition fulfilled. The children and I went to the allotment on Christmas Eve and we dug up six lovely leeks which I made into a mushroom, stilton and leek vegetable plait for the vegetarian alternative to turkey for Christmas dinner. We chose the fattest six and carefully dug them up. They smelt gorgeous, so oniony and earthy.

They only took a few minutes to saute in the frying pan and were beautifully tender - not like your shop-bought ones which are a bit tough and take much longer to cook.

Slightly on the downside - when digging for potatoes there were none! I think they must have disintegrated or been eaten by slugs.

The sprouts are still a bit small to pick yet, so there was no point in picking them for Christmas dinner, but we have them to look forward to next year.

However, eating the leeks far outweighed the fact that the potatoes are no more and the sprouts are yet to come.

Current Trend

While passing through Lidl the other day I spied some redcurrant bushes that seemed to be a good bargain. We already have a blackcurrant bush and I want to add some more fruit to the ever filling up plot, and redcurrants would be very useful.

I bought 3 bushes which looked very healthy and because I didn't have time to plant them on the plot straightaway because I haven't dug where I want them to go yet, I have planted them in quite big pots for the time being. When the space has been thoroughly dug over I shall put them in their permenant home and they will be a nice compliment to the blackcurrant, loganberry, strawberry, blackberry and raspberry bushes that are there, and not forgetting of course the newly planted Bramley apple tree.

An apple a day

Now that the produce has been harvested (except for the leeks, sprouts and late maincrop potatoes) it's time to think about adding more structure to the allotment.

I have always wanted to grow a Bramley apple tree so as to have a continuous supply of apples to use in cooking and baking. Now that we have the extra plot there is plenty of room to realise that dream. In October I saw an advert in the "Daily Telegraph" for a Bramley apple tree and 2 blackberry bushes all for £19.99. Always one for a good bargain I decided to order the fruit straightaway.

When it all arrived, I was very excited. The tree is a mature 2 year old 5 ft tall specimen and the blackberry bushes were also over a year old. They all looked very healthy and I knew that the months of October and November were good for planting fruit as the ground is still relatively warm.

So in the October half term the children and I spent a few hours digging a rather large hole of about 3 ft in diameter and about 18" deep. We marked out the size with handfalls of sand and started digging. After we had dug down about 6" we hit pure clay so digging was a bit hard-going after that. When the hole was big enough we put 4 sacks of local Council manure at the bottom and plenty of blood, fish & bone fertiliser so as to give the tree a good start. The tree was duly planted with great ceremony and all the earth put back with more compost on the surface for good measure. We also placed an old piece of guttering down into the earth so that we can pour water down it so it reaches the roots easily.

The tree was then staked (temporarily) as the stake will not arrive until February next year and then given a thorough watering.

All in all a very satisfactory day's work. Let's hope that in a few years time we shall be reaping the harvest of all that hard work.

Sprouting a Leek

The leeks are growing steadily and are thickening up nicely. The sprouts are also growing up and filling out nicely, and I am hopeful that by Christmas time they will be ready to harvest and we can have them for Christmas dinner - that's the plan anyway.

The vegetables on the additional plot that we gained in April this year have been harvested (except the potatoes which should be ready at the beginning of December), and I am now methodically digging it over. Towards the bottom of the plot just before you get to the newly dug potato bed, mentioned above, the earth strongly resembles a field. The earth is very hard and is covered by very thick couch grass. The only thing to do is to dig up each clod and put them into the recycling. The digging has been relatively easy as the earth is quite moist, the difficult thing is wheeling the wheelbarrow with a whole bag full of the heavy clods, however, it is a good exercise for the arm muscles.

No need to go to the gym this week!

Walk on By

It's great when going to the supermarket at the moment because I can bypass most of the vegetables, because I don't need what they're selling - I've got my own supply.

Walking down the aisle with my trolley I went past onions (don't need them as I've got about 250 of my own), courgettes (still have two in the greenhouse waiting to be eaten and two on the plant waiting to get a little bigger), runner beans (gave up weighing them after reaching 20lb), red onions (OK they haven't been greatly successful, but we still have about a dozen left), cucumbers (still picking them), tomatoes (have eaten all the ones that we saved from the allotment, but still have at least 20 at home that are ready to eat), and potatoes (still eating the Charlotte variety that were dug up last week). Not bad eh?

This afternoon I picked the first green pepper that I have ever grown (there is another on the plant that needs to get a bit bigger), and I shall take great pleasure tomorrow in making a salad from pepper, tomato and cucumber that is completely "home grown".

Eat your heart out Tesco.

Gathering In

Good news and bad news! Good news first. The white onions have been superb this year. I am still harvesting and drying large amounts of onions. Some I have placed into net bags and some I have plaited French-style and hung in bunches from the greenhouse roof.

The runner beans have also been very successful and ideally need to be picked every other day as they are so prolific. I counted at least 20 beans hanging from one stem, and their weight was so heavy that the bean stem they were hanging from was bent right over. I am told that if I keep picking them on a regular basis they will be cropping into November. Will have to wait and see.

I think we have come to the end of the courgettes. They have been very successful and I still have some in the greenhouse that I have managed to successfully store for a few weeks, but probably will not store for much longer.

I am still harvesting potatoes, but this year they have been a bit disappointing in size and number compared to last year, but nevertheless are very tasty and as one allotmenteer said to me "you've harvested more than you put in", so that is a comforting thought.

Now for the bad news. The cauliflower and broccoli - they were doing so well up until about 2 weeks ago, and then with the space of a few days have been eaten - probably by slugs - and I think they will have to be consigned to the compost heap.

There has been a similar case with the sweetcorn, except this time I suspect it's squirrels. 2 sweetcorn cobs have been stripped and eaten, but as they weren't ripe maybe the squirrels got tummyache and won't come back for the rest!

The tomatoes all but succumbed to blight which has ravaged most people's plots this year due to such a wet summer. The ones that I grew at home (same variety) have been delicious, so next year will probably grow most of the tomato plants at home and not at the allotment.

The cucumbers although small in number are there, so hopefully will be ready to harvest next week.

The other thing that is growing really well are the weeds, but as the earth has been so wet recently it's fairly easy to pull them out.