Thursday 7 August 2008

Staving off the blog-guilt

I know, I know - it's been ages, I'm sorry.
The plot overwhelms me in the summer, and life's so busy even without it. And just as the blog and the allotment are supposed to motivate each other, so allotment-guilt perpetuates blog-guilt, and vice versa, in a paralysing vicious circle.

But two things have happened so exciting I had to write at least a quick post to tell you.

I harvested my shallots!

18 planted, 64 harvested. Doesn't seem like a bad turnover. Now I'm going to have to find somewhere to store them. The house is too warm, my onions told me last year, but if I put them in the shed I'm worried the rodents will get them. We have a pretty bad rodent problem.

Do rodents even eat onions?

And look at THIS!

Ok, so the plants don't look too healthy. Not sure why - it's not nearly destructive enough to be blight and I'm pretty sure they're getting enough food and water. But anyway I've eaten a good handful of the very first Nomegrown tomatoes now and they're delicious. A little thick-skinned (is that just down to variety?) but delicious!

The toms on the allotment are doing pretty well too, and despite my complete inability to prune them they're carrying a pretty decent amount of fruit.

The beans are doing incredibly well, and so is the sweetcorn and most of the squashy things. Two of my obelisks are covered in spaghetti squashes, the pumpkins had made a break for plot-domination and started over the top of the cabbage-patch netting when we returned from another holiday recently, and I swear we carried home nearly my body-weight in courgettes the other day. The cucumbers aren't doing so well, unfortunately, though this small-but-perfectly-formed specimen was delicious (the difference between shop-bought cucumbers and homegrown ones is astounding).

First year I grew them it was in grow bags, and I've just never had such good results since. I think next year I will have to try growbags again!
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