Hot town summer in the city

Well it was a long hot morning but my goodness, it was worth it today. The morning started with us being over at Kings Park at 0900hrs to get some free compost from the council - thank you very much!

We then headed down to the allotment with the mindset of getting some serious weeding carried out. We took down with us six litres of water just to make sure we didn't get dehydrated.

Once there I set to work clearing out the purple sprouting broccoli plants as they had gone over; but I have to say we got our monies worth out of them. I then dug the bed over and then dug in one of the bags of compost we had collected that morning.

Whilst I was clearing and digging Mary and Lyta were having a good bash at the weeding; a thankless and back breaking job at the best of times. Why the weeds grow faster than the veg is any ones guess. After a couple of hours of this we took a water break and and then did some harvesting.

There were a couple of cauliflower to pick, bigger than Lyta's head, some broad beans that were so sweet and we also picked a "wet" garlic and some herbs. There were also a few rogue potatoes that had come up as well. For dinner this evening we will know the exact provenance of everything we eat. There were several gallons of water ferried back and forth in watering cans to thirsty plants today as well.
 
Our final act was to plant some rocket and mustard in the freshly vacated bed and some more parsnip to go with our surviving ones planted earlier in the year. Next Saturday we are going to be planting some corn (maize), just half a dozen or so to occupy the rest of the empty bed over the summer. Barbecued corn-on-the-cob anyone?

A quick visit..

Lyta and I cycled down to see Doug today whilst Phil was away.  There wasn't too much to do.  

Lyta managed to dig up a large amount of horsetail (yes, more of it) and helped to trim the grass at the front of the plot without decapitating the marigolds!

 

The beans we planted last week were dead (cause unknown) so Lyta used the poles to plant her Borlotti Beans.  We'll try with the french beans again next week.  At least the marigolds appear now to be taking and growing.  And the beetroot, turnip and swede plants do look to be going from strength to strength and will need to be thinned out soon.  The potatoes are all looking good and growing so they should produce a reasonable harvest.

I dug in the two new herbs from Otter Farm - the Hot & Spicy Oregano and the French Sorrel. These are both very exciting, the sorrel tastes almost as good as the wild wood variety and the oregano has an amazing aroma to it.  We just need to get chives and basil to grow and we should have a very comprehensive selection.

There's no sign of last week's carrot and cut-and-come-again plantings so we'll see if anything has come up next week.  I did lay a small sprinkling of slug pellets down in the hope that we weren't too late!!!  

Our pride and joy continues to be our brassicas.  We picked our second cauliflower today, along with more purple sprouting broccoli.  At least four older/more experienced plot holders said they couldn't get cauliflowers to grow so ours are quite a talking point amongst them *proud face*

We are still eagerly awaiting the end of June when we can start to harvest the garlic and onions.  They are all looking so very healthy and we can't wait to get our first taste of them all.

Next week, we'll be back with Phil and without the sulky teen, so there will be more work done (allegedly!)

Long Hot Summer

For those of you worried about Seedney the Window Sill, be not afraid Seedney is well and thriving with my Babies of Hotness.

At the moment we have two Early Jalapenos, two Orange Habaneros and a Dorset Naga. The heat of chillies is measured on the Scoville scale. Jalapenos generally rank between 3,500 and 5,000 scoville units. Habaneros come in at approximately 350,000 scoville units, as you can see things are heating up. The Dorset Naga is special, once ranked as the hottest chilli in the world, it comes in at a whopping 1,000,000 scoville units (yes 1 million).

Now I eat jalapenos on a regular basis with no problem. I've tried habaneros and have to admit that they are pretty hot. The question is "what am I going to do with the chillies from the Dorset Naga?", and the answer is I'm going to try at least one of them just so that I can say I have.

If anyone would like some chillies to try please let me know. I'm hoping the jalapenos will be along soon, both plants are already in flower so it shouldn't be too long.

A great surprise puts us back on track..

On Sunday last week it was raining...pouring...deluging... it was a tad wet!  We didn't go to see Doug, seemed a little pointless.  We did a brief visit on Tuesday after work (thank goodness for the lighter evenings now) and were relieved to find no lasting damage from the recent wind/rain/hail/frost etc.

 Today was a very different matter.  We had more marigolds and a replacement batch of purple french beans to plant out, along with some replacement carrot seeds and other seeds for our "cut-and-come-again" section.  We also needed to do a considerable amount of weeding.  Our plot appears to be teeming with horsetail - one of those delightful weeds which is almost impossible to eradicate.  Phil and I between us spent nearly two hours hoeing and on our hands & knees pulling up a variety of weeds.  The upside was that during my weeding, I discovered some parsnip plants which had survived and a considerably larger number of beetroot plants than I had expected to see, I even found a solitary leek!  Almost all of the potato plants appear to have now sprouted above ground. It could prove to be quite a harvest!  Some of the fruit bushes are beginning to show signs of fuiting too, the rhubarb is going from strength to strength and the strawberries are definitely in full bloom.

Phil sowed a row of purple carrots and a row of orange ones (the last two rows simply never even materialised!)  He also planted the marigolds, while I put in a row of lollo rosso lettuce, a row of radishes and inserted the beans next to the wigwam which Phil had erected.  I also topped up the beetroot row with some extra seeds in the gaps.

Phil's final task was to harvest some more of our delicious purple sprouting broccoli.  While he was doing this, a few bees arrived to take advantage of the yellow flowers so we decided to keep it outside the netting.  While he was putting the netting back over the cauliflowers however, we had our biggest surprise.  Three, count them, THREE cauliflowers ready to harvest.  We had no idea they were even close to being ready but there they were, large as life.  Absolutely amazing!

  We're really loving this growing lark :)