I Can Grow Carrots!

And they're SO delicious!

As you can see by the variety of sizes, I can't thin carrots, but one step at a time eh?

I was disappointed to find a couple had carrot-fly holes in them, and several more had little white eggs round the tops. This is from a row planted amongst nine rows of onions, leeks and shallots! This companion-planting lark seems a bit hit and miss to me. Ah well. Won't stop me trying...

Thank you for all your kind words, encouragement and advice after the last post - I knew I could count on you guys : )


You'll be pleased to know we did get the sweetcorn, pumpkins (above) and summer brassicas (below) planted out before Glastonbury (and we had a great time too!), and the brassicas have all been safely netted (although it was a bit of a rush job - don't laugh!).


This is our lettuce patch.

Oops. If I had time, I'd pull it all up and start again, but I just don't. I wonder if I can save seed from all the mustard, mizuna and cress which has bolted... In fact a lot of what you see here is bolted crops, presumably from the stress of weed-crowding (and lack of thinning, of course).

But who wants to talk about weeds? What's important is that the eating part of this whole enterprise has really got going now.

Tonight I cooked this amazing summer chicken stew, from a recipe I saw on Market Kitchen yesterday (which you can find here, if you like, and I highly recommend it) with Nome-grown potatoes, carrots, broad beans, onion, peas (the mangetout and sugar snaps have been getting huge under all those weeds) and lovage and mint! I have yet to master the art of food photography - the picture below looks rather anaemic - but WOW, it was well worth trudging to the plot in the rain after work for!

'The Wall'

I think I've hit 'the wall'. Just like last June too. It's weeks since I've done any decent amount of work at the plot, weeds are swamping everything, there are still two beds to dig over before I can plant out my summer cabbages, pumpkins and corn, and I just can't face it.

But this blog and the allotment have always motivated each other - that's why I started it in the first place - so here's a quick update on not very much to try to get me going again.

GOOD NEWS: The strawberries are fruiting away; no great amount but a decent handful every few days.
BAD NEWS: Actually considering they're mostly under two feet of grass they're doing pretty well, but the slugs and millipedes are eating quite a lot too.
GOOD NEWS: The asparagus is looking SO healthy compared to last year, with no beetle trouble at all, and my pride-and-joy seed-grown red petunias are flowering beautifully underneath it.
BAD NEWS: Still haven't planted out the replacement pea plants I started at home, and they're getting all tangled up.
GOOD NEWS: The beans are doing really well, with hardly any slug trouble. I've started a tubful at home too, and they're great.
BAD NEWS: The lettuce patch is so completely overgrown I don't think I'll get anything else out of it this year, unless maybe the beetroots are still ok under all that grass, or unless I clear it and start new sowings.
GOOD NEWS: My water lily is spreading its leaves on the surface at last and the pond and herb patch are looking lovely.
BAD NEWS: I've been persuaded that a lot of the slug-damage on my brassicas is actually pigeon damage. I thought pigeons only went for the flowering parts, but apparently I'm wrong and they need netting from the outset, so I'm kicking myself for leaving them unprotected.
GOOD NEWS: The broad beans are looking good. I don't really know when I'm supposed to pick them, but I think they're about ready...
BAD NEWS: Loads of the red onions are flowering already. Does that mean I won't be able to eat them? How can I stop them flowering??
GOOD NEWS: Some of the white onions are ready to eat already, so we've started harvesting them as needed, just as last year's supply ran out. This means we haven't bought onions in a year!
And REALLY GOOD NEWS: The tomatoes I thought were disease-stricken are all growing away healthily and happily now! Woo!

There.

Now I've got Thursday, Saturday and Sunday off and maybe some free time tomorrow afternoon, and the weather's looking pretty good, so there's really no excuse for not going down there and kicking some serious couchgrass butt before next week. Those pumpkins and sweetcorn WILL be planted before I go to Glastonbury...
Right, Eddie?

Planting out

What a lot of rain we had last weekend! I know bank holidays have a bit of a reputation, but that was just silly!

I was really worried for my newly-planted tomatoes, but on returning to the plot mid-week it looked like they enjoyed all the rain - they're looking much healthier already.

The rain did a nice job of settling in the petunias round the asparagus bed too. I planted them out a week ago but they didn't like the experience much - when I left them they were all limp and flopped over, and I thought they'd all die. They're growing strong now, apart from a little slug damage.
They're there essentially because I read somewhere that they repel asparagus beetles. I planted some there mid-season last year and saw a small decrease in my terrible infestation. This year I haven't seen a single beetle yet, so I'm wondering if just having had them in the soil previously has made a difference. The only other thing I did that could possibly have helped was to thoroughly weed and till the ground midwinter, to wake up any overwintering bugs early, but that wouldn't have stopped new ones arriving.
These petunias are a bright red variety (I hate those mixed-colour trays you get full of pinks and purples!) and grown from seed. Twenty four plants! I'm very proud of myself because my attempts last year failed completely!
I planted a row of parsley between the asparagus rows too, for the same reason. It'll all look rather pretty I think, when everything gets going!


The pond really enjoyed its rainwater top-up too. The level was getting worryingly low - I was starting to wonder how I could top it up myself without upsetting the balance of things, but there's no need now - it was actually overflowing after the rain!

Sadly the rain wasn't all good - it brought the slugs out in their droves and it has become painfully clear the tinfoil brassica collars make no difference to them whatsoever. Another bad year ahead for brassicas, I suspect...

I shall have to try nematodes again. I had a go last year but found the stuff really difficult to use and didn't notice much effect, but my Mum swears by them so perhaps I'll give them another go.

The wind snapped the stem of one of my courgette plants too. I heaped some earth up round the damage to give it a chance to put some more roots out and it seems to be doing all right so far. Time will tell...
And the wind and rain made a right mess of the broad beans - they'd flopped over all over the place. So I ran a couple of strings round them to hold the plants up together in a bunch. They're starting to grow little beanlets now - better late than never. Blackfly are making a meal of the tips, and dozens of ladybirds are making a meal of the blackfly!


I've been quite surprised at the beauty of the broad bean flowers, and the curious way the beans grow upright out of them! I don't think I've seen a broad bean plant before - I don't know what I was expecting.


I've been busy planting some other things out too; first the leeks in two rows alongside the parsnips, carrots and onions. I had trouble raising the seedlings last year (damn cats) so this year I bought a pack of 60 plants from Mr Fothergills; 20 'Lancia', for eating young in summer and autumn, 20 'Pandora' which mature in late summer and autumn, and 20 'Bandit' which should stand through winter and well into spring. I didn't have room for all of them (and I really don't think Eddie and I eat 60 leeks in a year!) so I just squished in as many as I could, alternating the 'Lancia' with the 'Pandora' in one row and with the 'Bandit' in the other. When I've pulled all the early 'Lancia', the later varieties will have more space to mature. Magic!


Next the cucumbers and butternut squash, which are to be trained up obelisks (fingers crossed). I've lost a couple of cucumber seedlings lately to damping-off and started some more which I'll plant out as soon as they're big enough. Looking on the bright side I guess it will spread my harvest a bit later. There are some spaghetti squash to go in the empty part of this bed too as soon as I have time to build the last two obelisks!

And finally, at long last, the beans. I started these at home ages ago and they've been getting so big they were trying to climb each other! Now all I have to do is pray the slugs don't kill them all off...

There are at least six plants each of six varieties. Not enough in my opinion; I LOVE french beans. I might start some in a pot at home too I think, since it doesn't look like I'll get round to doing everything I want to do on the plot this year, again. I'm starting to fear the 'spare' bed, which I was going to use for some extra squashes and beans, won't even get dug. And it's getting rather late in the season for my flower and herb borders.
It'll be different next year...

I wonder if I'll say that every year...

Tomatoes

Thanks for all your comments about the tomatoes! They were sown mid-March in brand new shop-bought multi-purpose compost, kept indoors on a sunny windowsill until daytime temperatures were decent, then put in the plastic greenhouse (open during the day) and brought in at night for a while, and then kept in the greenhouse permanently for the last month or so.
I have discarded the worst of the plants (I started far too many anyway!), pinched the spotted leaves off the rest, and planted them out (gulp). Some of them look perfectly healthy still, the others just had one or two spots. Hopefully the improved growing conditions wil sort them out. I'm going to try a homemade bicarbonate-of-soda-fungicide when I have time, too, and keep a close eye on them. And I've started a few more seeds in the garden, just in case!

I've planted them in three rows of six, with a row of garlic and a row of basil and parsley each side. And I've sunk a plastic bottle into the soil between each pair of plants for deep watering when they get bigger. I wasn't really sure what to do about support, but the 'Florida Weave' method sounds sensible so I've put up a cane either side of each pair to facilitate this. I put some canes at the top to stabilise things, both along and across the rows, and now the whole thing feels like a big cage! I realise I should probably be using something a bit sturdier than canes but for now it's all I've got, so I'll have to keep an eye on things and maybe bring some guy-ropes into play at a later stage...

Assuming the plants actually grow that is!


Yesterday I made a start on some 'comfrey tea' as well, which will be great for feeding the tomatoes in a few weeks. The comfrey plants are next to our bench, and so big right now they were starting to encroach on our sitting-space, so after cutting the plants down (not completely - the flowers are so pretty!) I had a big pile for the compost heap too!

For those that don't know, comfrey leaves are incredibly rich in nutrients because the roots go so deep and draw up nutrients deep in the soil that few other plants can reach (nettles are similar in this way, and make great fertiliser too). They're great for the compost heap, or can be made into a high-potash liquid feed, or 'comfrey tea', by soaking the leaves in a bucket of water for a few weeks. (Beware though; I'm told it stinks to high heaven...) I actually bought my plants for this purpose a year ago when I first got my plot, only to find out later there's a whole plot at the far end of my allotment site given over to the stuff !

Tomato Trouble

I've been further assessing the health of the tomatoes this morning and it doesn't look good.

Early blight? Septoria leaf spot? I've looked at pictures and descriptions of both and it doesn't quite fit the bill for either, plus they usually strike when the plant is setting fruit, and these are way off! You can't really see it in the picture, but some of the leaf tips are tinged very blue as well. If I'm lucky it's just a deficiency of some kind and they'll recover when I plant them out in the big wide soil, but I won't get my hopes up. Around half the plants are affected, with a few not-sures, so I've separated them out so that it doesn't spread any further.

So now I'm wondering if I should make a late sowing to replace these plants if they don't make it. By my calculations we've got 131 days until the end of September, so I reckon there's time. And if I've infected the soil by then I could plant them in growbags instead.

I've got another gripe with my tomato seedlings too; they're still tiny! I suspected it was because I hadn't potted them up to bigger containers and they needed more rootspace, but when I received my tumbling tomato plants in the post from Suttons they were big healthy plants but with rootballs a fraction of the size of mine!


So where did I go wrong?!