Summer has finally arrived :)

Wow, what a difference three consecutive days of sun make, especially when there is the prospect of more to come.  We were all beginning to wonder what the strange yellow ball was in the sky and then something from the depths of our memories began to come back to us.... Warmth, light, SUN!

We spent a good three hours today tending to Doug's needs (some of us more enthusiastically than the others!)  

Purple Haze Carrots

Supper!

I pulled up a few more carrots - strangely two more were displaying the split root feature of the first one we harvested. However, these were at least edible and one of them was definitely a Purple Haze.  The area is crawling with red and black ants (I disturbed at least four nests with plenty of eggs being hurriedly transported back underground by concerned adults.) I also thinned out the turnips, swede and beetroot so we had a good selection of root veg in general to add to our supper.

Pink Fir Apples & one Purple Majesty

Two meals of peas ready to go

Phil dug up the last two rows of potatoes and we came away with a rather nice haul of Pink Fir Apple and Maris Piper (the latter cropped very nicely considering the recent weather.)  Phil also gave several areas a good going over with the hoe.  Lyta concentrated on the peas and beans area, giving them a good weeding and collecting all the ripe pea pods.  I dug up as much as possible of the weed growth around the fruit bushes and then planted out a half dozen tomato plants we bought at the shop to replace the ones we lost during the recent deluges. 

I then picked a Lollo Rosso lettuce for our lunch and some of my sweet pea flowers.  We cannot believe how fragrant they are (not to mention purple and very pretty!)  Every time we now come into the lounge, we are greeted by a fantastic aroma.  Beats buying cut flowers any day!

These smell amazing!

Peas, sweet peas & lettuce

Finally, we had to water the plants!  No kidding, we actually had to use the watering can.  We took the opportunity to feed everything too, as we are reliably informed that the rain might have leeched the nutrients from the soil.  We were also given the "unofficial" confirmation of the next plot we would be getting.  We had requested a half plot upgrade and one of the committee members had mentioned his because he, in turn, is going up to a full plot.  Changeover is on 30th September.  Very exciting. 

Rain? What rain???

We popped down to see Doug very quickly this Sunday - I had to study so we couldn't stay long.  

There wasn't much we could do however.  The ground was sodden and digging it would have been pointless, even standing on it was ill-advised.

We are suffering the same problems as every other allotment-holder, gardener, arable farmer in the country - too much rain, vital nutrients being perpetually washed from the soil, not enough sun, not enough warmth.  We've had some amazing successes but we've also had some devastating failures.  Never, in the last four years of growing tomatoes in Nigel, have we ever failed to get good plants with a decent crop.  This year, we can't even get the plants to grow, let alone crop.


The turnips have grown really well, the swede have grown but not bulked out and were woody.  The beetroot has done as well, if not better than the turnips.  All in the same patch of ground and planted at the same time, so not sure why the difference in growth.  Behind them should be the tomatoes and aubergines.  Whilst the plants are mostly still there, they've not grown above 6".  Behind them are the parsnips, which are looking very healthy and further back is the area where we had to cut off the tops of all the potatoes to stop the spread of blight.  Such a mish-mash of success within a small area is baffling.

We also tried pulling one of the handful of carrots we managed to grow - literally no more than a dozen have survived from three packets sown.  It was a rather amusing shape but again was too woody to eat.

On the other side of Doug we had a good show from the brassicas.  The cabbages look like they're close to being ready to harvest.  But we had to pull up all the radishes because they bolted before bulking out.  Yet in the same patch, the peas are growing apace and seem to be thriving - along with the sweet peas which are truly resplendent.  

We have a single (possibly a second) sweetcorn plant coming through and the lettuce does look like it'll get bigger and better.  The Borlotti beans are finally showing signs of growth but we've lost almost all the dwarf french beans (again - third sowing lost) with only two plants surviving and even those are barely alive.  The herbs do appear to all be flourishing with one exception.  The local slugs and snails do appear to think we only grew the basil for their own delectation.... I was actually thinking more tomato, mozzarella and basil salad but since we don't have the tomatoes either, I guess it's not the end of the world!

In summary, it definitely hasn't been summery and some of the failures have been devastating but to have just some of our own grown crops in our kitchen, freshly picked when we want them is worth every ounce of disappointment.  Let's see what the rest of the "summer" has to offer :)

Purple Patch Pleasure!

I fear we're making all this sound too easy but it is so very much nicer to celebrate the harvests more than to moan about the failures.

It hasn't all been plain-sailing - we have yet to successfully produce a decent french or borlotti bean, tomato, or pumpkin plant and our carrots are sparse to say the least.  But the successes have been amazing.  So far, since the spring, we've harvested purple sprouting broccoli, cauliflowers (which were the envy of the whole allotment site,) broad beans, peas, garlic and potatoes, along with various fruits and herbs.  

Now we're turning our minds to how we store everything - the idea being that whilst eating our produce when it's in season is great, being able to enjoy it later on the year will be fantastic too.  We have a large seletion of books  (probably too many) but each has their singular attraction and we've gleaned assorted methods and recipes from them all.

Next on our picking list was the shallots, which have now been fully pickled, thanks to a great recipe from John Harrison's book (he of http://www.allotment.org.uk - a veritable fount of information) It'll be a while before we can taste how good they are but so far they look and smell much better than anything available in the shops.  

Today's foray was one of hard work.  We've not really been doing much proper work on Doug for a few weeks - a few other things seem to have cropped up (no pun intended!)  So off we went this morning, knowing that we would spend quite a few hours tending to Doug's every need - otherwise known as weeding, digging, weeding, cutting, weeding, thinning, weeding, edging, weeding and finally, more picking!  And we're still not done.  But Doug does look much better than he did last week.  

To be fair, we did pop by very quickly yesterday to pick all our ripe soft fruit.  We came home with a bowl of strawberries, red and black currants and purple raspberries.  We then used them to make our first Summer Pudding - not a perfect example but delicious nonetheless.  We know next time to have more fruit, to wait for it to be riper and then we will have the perfection we crave.  

Phil harvested all of our red onions (as close to purple as we could get) and we've brought them home to our coldframe to dry - there's more rain forecast apparently, which is odd because it hasn't rained for ages.... NOT!  He also thinned out some of our purple radishes and put in some netting for our peas to climb.  Meanwhile, I thinned out the turnips, swedes (not too confident about these growing well) and the beetroot.  There are signs of at least two (count them, TWO, not two rows, just two!) purple carrots growing but not many more!  

Phil also dug up two rows of potatoes, one of Pentland Javelin and one of our Purple Majesty.  We had a few of the Pentland Javelin for tea and the rest are now stored in potato sacks in the shed, along with the garlic which we hung up yesterday.  The bikes have never smelled so good!

And just to prove we're doing our bit for the bees, Doug also now boasts some really stunning purple sweet peas.  I never really managed to succeed with these in Nigel so am really thrilled that Doug has produced such a vibrant display.