Summer (sort of!) growth.

Before I begin, please note that I wrote this post after consuming the better part of a bottle of this years elderflower champagne, so any grammatical or spelling errors are probably down to to that!


We haven't really had much of a summer this year - rainy month has followed rainy month, and July (by and large) seems to be no exception.


Despite this, veg on the allotment and at home continues to flourish. 


I'll begin at home. 

Cucumber.

This really wet weather doesn't seem to suit cucumber plants, as the leaves don't look too healthy . That said, the one or two cucumbers (the actual vegetable) we have are growing well, and we've got some others are beginning to develop from flower. 

New cucumbers growing.

Strawberries.

We've had more success with the strawberries we're growing, but this is tempered by the fact that slugs seem to enjoy eating them just as they get ripe. Because of this, we've lost some of the strawberries that are growing in pots on the ground. 


On a brighter note, now that our strawberry plants are two years old, they're producing bigger and sweeter strawberries than last year. On top of that, they're producing in greater quantities, too!


I don't have a photo of our blackcurrants, as they're still green. 


The allotment:
Even though we've finished the initial work on the allotment, maintenance work needs to be kept on top of. 
With that in mind, myself and Peter (my brother in law) yesterday headed over and cut back all the grass on the perimeter of the allotment, which had grown over a foot high. Not only was it unsightly, it was blocking the sun from reaching some parts of the vegetable beds. 
It didn't take long for us to chop back the grass and rake it up, and I was really pleased with the results. The allotment now looks far more clean and presentable.
We then spent some time weeding the beds.

Our carrots have now grown to thick and high, almost jungle like in their appearance.


We uprooted one yesterday, and they seem to be growing well, as can be seen from the photo below. 


Obviously, we'll be leaving them for another while to grow even larger. 


But having seen the carrot we pulled, I'm happy the progress thus far.

Our first carrot!

Not much news with our parsnip bed, but they're certainly getting larger. The staggered parsnips at the front of the bed are doing well too.

Celery bed, with radishes.

We've harvested three of our large celery plants. They've grown to about a foot and a half now, and each plant has grown a decent amount of shoots. 

The staggered celery is now about the size the first lot was when we planted them out. 

The radishes that we planted on at the front of the bed are shooting up too. 

The onions are all now bulbing really well. They'll be left in the ground for a while yet, though. 

Apologies for the slightly lob-sided photo of our next bed. 

To the front, the radishes have grown fully, and the staggered ones have almost caught up with the ones planted initially.

I've harvested lots of them at this stage, and love eating them as a delicious snack.

Behind them, the cos, chard and butterhead lettuce are growing nicely. 

Our garlic hasn't really grown that much in the last couple of weeks, which doesn't bode well for them.

A closer look at (l-r) our butterhead, chard and cos lettuce (grown from seed).

Our small potato bed is now fully established, I can't earth the plants in any more, so we'll just have to wait and see how productive they are. 

Alongside our potato bed, our main lettuce bed has done very well. Most of them are ready to be eaten, and we've harvested a few of them for salads. 

Between them, the spring onions are growing apace. 

The beetroot has grown to the point where we'll most likely have to thin it out soon. 

To the right of it, you can see the couple of corn plants we planted. They're keeping up well with the beetroot. 

At the bottom of the beetroot bed, the swede that we've planted has established itself well.

Next up are our climbing frames. 

Firstly, our bean plants have proven to be a slight disappointment, growing very slowly thus far. 

To cut our losses, Clare's planted pea plants between the beans. They've already started to shoot.

Our pea plants are faring better than our beans. Not as well as I'd like, but they're still growing and yesterday I was able to harvest the first few pods from them. 

(The peas were gratefully devoured by Thomas!)

Nearly all the asparagus plants have now sent up shoots, and are growing well. Not that we can touch them for another year!

Our rhubarb plant has maintained it's own at the bottom of the allotment. Not sure what did such damage to one of the leaves, but the problem hasn't progressed. 

We've another one that a friend kindly gave us to plant out yet. 

Working our way down the other side of the allotment...

Our chives are still alive, which is something, I guess! 

Not really much happening with them yet...

For the last week or two, we've had or courgettes under a cloche to protect them from the heavy rains. They're getting a bit bigger now, and hopefully will start producing fruit soon.

Past the courgettes, we've an empty bed. 

In the next bed past this one, Clare planted a variety of hardy winter carrot, which have already started to send up shoots.

These are obviously intended to keep us with a supply of carrots when our first lot are finished. 

Next up is our white sprouting broccoli. 

This takes up about half the bed, the other half we've left fallow until we can plant some purple sprouting broccoli into it. 

We transplanted our leeks out a week or two ago, and while we've had one or two that haven't survived, I'm genuinely delighted with the progress of the rest of them.

They seem to be thickening up well, so hopefully we'll end up with a good supply of them.

In the penultimate bed on our little tour, our brassicas grow. We've got the likes of brussel sprouts and kale in here. 

As with the rest of the beds, these continue to come along well. 

Fingers crossed that I get enough brussel sprouts to sate my appetite come Christmas!

Finally, our potato frame is now full of earth. My intention was to build this up, but I may be too late to do this. 

There's been a blight warning issued in the past month or so (the wet, humid weather is ideal for it to thrive), I can only hope that our potatoes haven't succumbed to it. 

Finally, the post wouldn't feel complete without a recent photo of the allotment, so here it is.

Thanks to you if you've taken the time to read this post, I hope it was interesting in it's way. As always, please feel free to comment or ask any questions you may have. 

The allotment as it looked yesterday evening.

Growth update.

I've been working nights for a week - and combined with the fact that the week just past has been exceptionally rainy, has meant that I haven't been up to the allotment (again!). 


Clare went up to weed the beds yesterday, and came home delighted at how things are getting along. After getting up this morning, I went over to see this for myself.

The carrot bed.

I'll begin with the carrot bed, which is the first bed to the left of the gate when entering the allotment. Most of the shoots are now at least 10 centimetres high. While the carrot bed looks quite cluttered, this is as it should be, as thinning them out can attract carrot fly. 

The parsnip bed.

Next to the carrot bed is our parsnip bed. Much like the carrots, these are coming along well. 


The front of the bed had be left empty as we had initially run out of parsnip seeds to plant. We've since sown more seeds in that spot.

As we move past the parsnips, we come to the celery. As mentioned in previous blogs, there's two stages of this - at the back, the first lot (looking beautiful and healthy), and towards the front, the younger lot, which are coming along quickly.

Moving right along, our onion bed is one of the highlights of our unfinished allotment, as it is one of the beds where the growth of the veg is at its most visible. 

In the next bed, we've planted garlic (at the back), and "butterhead" lettuce beside it. The garlic is, at present, practically indistinguishable from the onion plants. Despite being planted out late, it's growing well.  
I didn't hold too much hope for the lettuce, but they seem to have taken to the soil well. 

After the butterhead lettuce, we've chard growing - but I don't have a photo of this taken  (my bad...) 
Beside the chard, we're growing some "cos" lettuce (pictured, left). While small yet, these are growing well. 

At the very front of this bed, we've a couple of rows of radishes growing - staggered so that we'll get two crops of them. I love the speed at which radishes grow (we harvested one yesterday, which I ate raw - delicious and peppery!).

After this bed, we've two separate square beds. In the back one we've a couple of rows of potatoes growing. While they're growing, again I haven't a photo taken. Beside that we've a bed of lettuce growing. 

Following this are three parallel beds where we've sown beans and peas. One of these was pictured in the last blog, so I didn't rehash it here. 
More interesting, I think, is that the beans and peas that we sowed out have sprouted (as per picture on the left). We'll have to train these up the frames built for them.


After the pea and bean beds, we've planted fifteen asparagus plants in one bed, and finally , at the very top of the allotment, we've one last bed where we're going to plant out two year old rhubarb plants that a friend donated to us. No photos of these yet, but will hopefully update this in the next post.


Back at home:


Things are growing well back at home. 


We've four chilli plants that reside in the kitchen window. These have grown substantially taller than last years variety, and have started producing chilli' already. One chilli was so large that we cut it off after a while for fear that the plant was putting all its energies into that one fruit. 

Outside, our two cucumber plants continue to grow, but alas, there's no sign of flowers on either yet! ;o(


They've got so big at this stage, I've had to build climbing frames for them. Fingers crossed that it won't be too much longer before they start to flower and produce cucumbers.

At polar opposite to the lack of progress with the cucumbers is our blackcurrant bush. 


This has grown about two foot so far this summer, and produced so many new branches that I think I'm going to have to prune some of them back before the summer is over.
The year old branches have produced large amounts of currants. While still hard and green, there's definite progress in how big they've gotten.  

The couple of strawberry plants that are growing randomly about the garden are all fruiting too. It looks like this year we'll produce at least twice as many strawberries as we did last year - not that I'll be eating any, as the kids always have first "dibs" on them!

Several of our tomato plants didn't survive the frosts of April - and a few more just died. I'm not sure why this was, but I suspect the PH of the compost I used may not have been ideal for growing them. 
On the other hand, enough of them are growing well, and my next task is to re-pot them so that the surviving ones are grouped together. 

All from nothing... (Part 14)

Our efforts to transform an unused piece of land into a productive vegetable garden.


It appears that we've finally been blessed with some seasonal weather, and knowing Irish weather can turn rainy at the drop of a hat, we've done our best to get out to the allotment on the afternoons and get as much work completed as possible. 


The allotment is changing with the summer, and the beech hedge that runs along one side of it is now a riot of beautiful wine and ruby leaves.


To begin, we built a frame (using the decking wood I mentioned in my last post) for the potatoes to sit in. We had chosen to place the frame parallel with the fence of the allotment, just to the right of the gate. I dug the earth underneath the frame thoroughly - this was a job I had been dreading as it's right beside a huge shrub (that I blogged about some time ago, when I cut it back) and I was concerned that the ground might be full of roots. 

The dreaded roots...

Turns out I was right! As luck would have it, there was only one large one from the shrub, which I had to saw through. The rest of them - and there were many - were mostly nettle roots. 
After I had finished, Clare sowed the potatoes out.
(Left, our makeshift frame)


The next job on the list to get my teeth into was finally completing the forking of the soil on the left of the allotment. This took a couple of hours to do properly, as I was removing the three "R's" (roots, rocks and rubble) while also mixing compost through the soil. After finishing this, Clare layed out some new beds, and picked out whatever stones and roots I had missed. 


The utterly incredible weather continued today, so we packed up lunch for the kids and all headed down to the allotment. I finished up laying out the new beds, and Clare sowed beans (dwarf yellow and purple tepee) and peas into them (the peas were planted out). I then hammered hazel staves into each end of the beds, and ran garden twine between them. To avoid confusion, this gave us three separate structures that the peas and beans will climb up. 

 Our climbing frames.

To make sure growing conditions are are optimum, Clare tested the PH of the soil, and it appears to be PH neutral, which hopefully will be to our benefit.






This evening, I sowed out the asparagus, all of which thankfully are still alive! Fifteen plants in all, that will hopefully keep producing for the next twenty years. 

The veg in the allotment seem to be making the most of the clement weather we're currently enjoying. The radishes are flying up - I appreciate they're a quick growing plant, but this growth is great to see - visibly getting larger by the day! 


On a more serious note, when watering the vegetables this evening, I noticed one of the enemies of the allotment gardener on our celery plants - slugs! I was quite affronted by the sight of them, as I hadn't expected to see them until the allotment was more fully established. In any case, I examined each celery plant and got rid of all of them before going home. 

Our celery - which the slugs want to feast on. Constant vigilance needed!

So that's where we're at. Next week is all about forking (as usual). But this time, I'll be working the right side of the central path. Getting so close to being finished I can almost smell it. So much more vegetables to be grown, eaten and hopefully enjoyed!

The allotment as it looked this afternoon.