A bit of a cog in the works...

We learnt something important today: you can indeed use too much slug repellent.  For once, more is not better [sigh.]

We got to Doug today to find that we had lost our entire selection of tomato and french bean plants as well as our second attempt at growing a pumpkin and another complete row of marigolds! The two rows of carrots have just never materialised and the beetroot is looking suspiciously sparse...

We are, however, undeterred.  More of the potatoes are beginning to peek out above the soil and manure, the purple sprouting broccoli gave us another fine harvest and the broad beans are already showing signs of producing some good pods.

We took the time to give the areas of failed planting a good dig-over and most of the rest of the plot a thorough weeding.  The grass edges of the path have been neatened and the peas propped up again.  
We've planted a third batch of marigolds, a few of the ecinacea plugs and a patch of wildflowers to help encourage the vital insect life.  

The herb patch is continuing to thrive - we just need some recipes for lemon balm as this is clearly growing much more quickly than we expected.  The garlic and onions are all still looking excellent.  The fruit bushes appear to be flourishing and we had a new fruit - a jostaberry - recommended to us (another purple/black fruit so bound to be a winner!)

Once we got home, I planted another batch of both types of tomato and will do the same with the french beans.  All is not lost, we'll just be a couple of weeks behind but that's not such a big deal since the weather has been so cold recently there wouldn't have been as much growth as there was earlier in the year.  I'm sure our next post will be even more positive :)

Doug the Allotment: It's all kicking off!

Doug the Allotment: It's all kicking off!: Well we're back from holiday and back on the allotment, and everything is sprouting up all over the place! And for those of you who think we...

It's all kicking off!

Well we're back from holiday and back on the allotment, and everything is sprouting up all over the place! And for those of you who think we're neglecting Nigel he's doing fine. In fact the potato sacks and pots are going great guns. Hopefully in a month or so from now we will be eating our first purple potatoes! I'm very excited!! As for Seedney the window sill he's doing very well growing my babies of hotness!

We harvested another basket of purple sprouting broccoli yesterday and turned it into psb and stilton soup - and bloody lovely it was as well. We also used mint from Nigel and rosemary from Doug to cook some new potatoes and roast lamb yesterday. It all just tastes that little bit better when you know where (some of) your food has come from.

Most of our time yesterday was spent planting new crops. We have extra French beans and a Borlotti bean, that Lyta planted at River Cottage, growing now as well as three types of tomatoes. I'm just hoping they survive the late frosts we're getting. Mary also planted some marigolds as apparently they help combat white fly. Anything that gets rid of parasites is good with me!

We picked up a horseradish plant as well the other day and I planted that out as well. I love horseradish sauce (there's a shocker) so I'm looking forward to that growing and then making a sauce to see if I can blow the top of my head off!

You may notice in some of the photos that we I have become rather obsessed with slug pellets. It's just that I'm paranoid that after all of our hard work we will start to loose stuff to the damned slugs and snails. We've just planted out another pumpkin plant as the three we had planted out previously were eaten down to the ground. You could barely tell that anything had even been there!

Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for reading and hopefully more to follow next week.

Today was a momentous day, and in honour of that I'm writing in purple, we harvested our very first crop from our very own allotment. Yes, we picked purple sprouting broccoli from Doug today. And bloody Delicious it was as well, especially when served with a blue cheese sauce.

We spent most of the morning watering our crops, due to the incredibly warm weather we've been experiencing recently. We also covered over the brasiccas, beans and alliums to hopefully prevent the butterflies and pigeons devastating all of our hard work.

I was looking back over some old photographs earlier today and it was amazing to see the tiny plug plants we had put in five and half months ago now either ready for harvesting as in the case of the broccoli or coming along really well like the cauliflowers and savoy cabbages.

One of the most amazing things we noticed this week was that the peas we were growing in the greenhouse had already started to set pods. We were advised to nip these out so as to encourage further growth on the plant.

It really is a fruitful time just now with the soft fruit bushes coming along very nicely and potatoes starting to shoot and showing signs of doing very well indeed. We've also got five chilli plants on Seedney the windowsill now from Seaspring seeds that were bought at River Cottage last weekend; they are two jalapenos, two habaneros and a Dorset naga. The naga tops the scales at a million scoville heat units and I'm not really sure what I'm going to do with it!

Anyway we will be back on Doug on Good Friday to do what we can before we head off on a well earned break down to West Bay.