We got a good batch of tidying up in the back garden done today and planted out the Pak Choi and Little Gem plants that Lynn had got going a couple of weeks ago. These were planted in the spaces left by the sugar snaps and onions that we have already harvested. This is the first time that we have made a serious attempt at getting follow-on crops going in the garden.
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First major harvest
When the sun broke through in mid-afternoon, I got down to the allotment. I harvested the full row of Lady Christl’s and a few more courgettes and beetroot. I weeded the sweet corn beds, which are coming on very well and then planted out the purple sprouting broccoli and after a couple of false starts got a netting framework over the plants.
The harvest led to the strange sight of a man on his front lawn, washing potatoes and drying them out on sheets of newspaper. We had about 25lbs from the 16 plants that I harvested – not a bad haul given that the plants looked a bit sickly.
Real progress
We have been away for the last few days, first at my Nan’s funeral and then on a golfing trip with Laura (my sister) and Neil (where we also worked on their vegetable patches). We travelled home this morning and as the weather cleared up in the afternoon, I trundled down to the allotment for a bit of harvesting and checking.
Things are now growing really well as the photo below shows.
Growth following the rain
Its Always Worth Getting Advice
Yesterday I had a half day course on allotment maintenance at Burchett’s Green (http://www.bca.ac.uk/). It was inspiring and informative and well worth £27. I am now planning to get some late peas in for autumn harvest and bought some Brussels sprouts from the course leader to see if we can get some for Christmas dinner.
One of the encouraging things is that with our accumulated experience thus far, we are generally doing the right things, so the course was more about additional ideas than learning from scratch.
We got up fairly early today and headed off to the allotment (with a planned set of tasks – as advised at yesterday’s course. We prepared an area for the autumn peas, planted out the marigolds for the flower gateway and weeded the sweet corn beds. We also harvested some of the Lady Christl potatoes to make a potato salad this evening along with some beetroot leaves for a green salad.
Once back at home I planted a batch of pea seeds in root training pots to allow easy transfer into the new bed in a few weeks.
The salad box
The black bucket that I planted up on Saturday is already showing good progress. The sunshine and showers have no doubt helped. The mooli and rainbow radishes were the first to sprout, followed swiftly by the turnip and radiccio. There are only the carrots left to come. The plan is to use the first thinnings as micro salad, then the later thinning as baby veg, leaving the last plants to mature out properly, alongside the tomato and pepper.
Salad Box 10 June.
Starting to Harvest
Other work, including a fair bit of travelling for Lynn has curtailed our efforts recently. However, the return of rain over the past few weeks (it must be the cricket season) has helped everything to keep growing.
Having finished in the office just before 6pm, there was time to go down to the allotment to check whether we have spuds for harvesting, and lo we do. The first Charlotte plant yielded 2.25 pounds of creamy white new potatoes.
First potato harvest