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.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch... (part 5)

It's been a while since I wrote about how our veg is growing at home. There's some new stuff growing, so I guess now is an appropriate time to write a blog about it. 

I'll start with the tomatoes. 
These have been planted outside for a week or two now, albeit underneath a sheet of transparent perspex (which has fulfilled the duel role of slightly warming the air underneath it and also protecting the tomato plants from overnight frost).


They're growing well, our next job is to put wire up in the troughs to allow the plants cling to when they send out creepers. 
All the troughs (or pots) that the tomatoes are growing in are filled with compost that's been rotting down in our compost bin for the last two years. 

Leeks

The leeks we planted are growing taller by the day. Clare rotates the box the leeks are planted in every day to ensure they all receive an equal amount of sunlight. They'll be left in the box for another month (till June) before we plant them out in the plot. 

Cucumbers (the pots to the left)

We're also growing cucumber - the seeds were quick to germinate, and the plants are even quicker to grow. In the above photo, the cucumber plants are the large plants in the pots to the extreme left (the next two rows to the right are peas, but more of that below). 
We had good success with the cucumber plants we grew the year before last - growing decent sized (and delicious) cucumbers. 
The cucumbers will be planted out in our back garden, as I think they'll require more care and attention than the other veg that we'll plant out in the plot.


The reason that we're growing additional peas is that by "staggering" the growth of the plants should give us a constant harvest of peas throughout the summer. 

Clare's also growing some veg we've never tried before - Cos Lettuce (pictured left) and "Purple Teepee", a type of bean that grows long, purple (surprise!) pods. I'm looking forward to see how these come along (pictured right). We're experimenting by germinating the seeds in "Jiffy 7's", which are basically recycled coconut fibres packed into a small disk. After watering them, they expand and you then sow your seeds into them. So far they seem to be working out pretty well. 

We split our chilli plants into two different good sized pots, suitable for sitting on the windowsill where they'll reside all summer. They're growing well, and already we're starting to see the first flowers coming out . These will of course eventually transform into hot chilies. 

 Now, time to go back outdoors. Last year we bought a shoot off a blackcurrant bush (pictured below). To be honest, as it looked like nothing more than a twig, I didn't really hold out any hope for anything growing from it. How wrong I was. Over the course of last summer, the twig grew into a bone fide blackcurrant bush. It eventually reached a height of about two and a half feet before the autumn kicked in and slowed its growth. 
A couple of weeks ago, buds started to appear on it, and at this point, it's continuing its skyscraper-like growth. We're collected a bucket of composted manure from the plot, and scattered it over the base of the bush. 

The blackcurrant is a really decent addition to the garden. It's a decent looking plant, and gives off a fantastic aroma. 


(Pictured right, you can see the original "graft" that the blackcurrant grew from - its the straight "twig" in the dead centre of the bush). 

The extent to which the blackcurrant has grown this year is obvious from the photo to the left - last years growth is the "woody" grey part of the stem towards the bottom. All the green stem is this years growth (so far!). It's about fifteen centimetres growth so far. 


I'm training some of the branches against the trellis to ensure they don't get crowded. Hopefully this will also make it easier to pick the fruit in years to come.
The leaves will come in useful to make a fruit tea. 

And, leaving the best news for last, our blackcurrant bush has started to produce fruit (pictured right). There are several bunches of these berries growing on the bush. I'm really excited about when I can finally harvest them, though I'm in several minds as to what to do with the berries - jam? - cordial? 
Any ideas greatly appreciated, please just leave a comment on the bottom of the blog.

There's also some good news on the gooseberry front. The gooseberry sapling I planted this year hadn't shown any signs of life, and after the frosts of early April, I had given it up for dead. 
However, after checking on it today, I discovered a few buds shooting up. 
It's not much, but the blackcurrant had small beginnings too, so I'll be patient. The idea of having both gooseberries and blackcurrants growing in our back garden next year is a very satisfying one!  

Strawberries

Last year we planted out a few strawberry plants, which grew some decent strawberries (every single one of which was enjoyed by Thomas!). In the autumn, these plants sent out "runners", which I replanted around the garden. These runners are now starting to blossom, as can be seen from the picture above. Not sure quite yet how many strawberry plants survived, but every one is a bonus. More details will follow on my blogs in the future.

On a final note - the forager in me wouldn't be happy unless I mentioned that some "hairy bittercress" (Cardamine hirsuta, pictured left) is growing fairly prolifically at the bottom of my garden. 

Most people would think of this as a weed - myself included. However I also know that this is a perfectly edible little gem of a weed - and it's not bitter at all.

As its name suggests, it tastes almost exactly like the "normal" cress most people will be used to - i.e nice and peppery, a lovely addition to a summer salad.