Chilli Plants

Posted on November 24, 2015 by Lynn Davis in Musings...

Chilli plants are one of the great givers. A single plant can provide enough peppers for a year (unless you’re a real chilli head). As well as being productive they can be very attractive and although they are often grown as tender annuals in the UK they are in fact perennials and can be over-wintered in frost free conditions.

This one is now just over 2 years old and has been brought indoors for the winter and looks sufficiently splendid that it will be incorporated into this year’s Christmas decorations.

Chilli 24 Nov 2015

Generally seed packets suggest that germination of chilli seeds requires extra heat (we generally use a small propagator), but this year we also noticed that quite a few plants had emerged from fallen fruit in one of the raised beds in the allotment. We’ve potted up half a dozen of these and they are now being looked after on a windowsill to give us some specimen plants for next year.

A Really Mild Autumn

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Lynn Davis in Garden updates

We won’t be the only people commenting on how mild the autumn has been so far. It has been pretty grey and wet, but the temperatures have held up to a remarkable degree. This has meant that some plants have kept going for much longer than usual like this Dahlia in the back garden.

Dahlia 11 November

It might be nice to have autumn treats like this, but we’ve also got our fingers crossed for some properly cold winter weather to make sure that plants that should go dormant do and that there is some attrition amongst the various pests that take a fancy to our allotment crops.

Scarecrows

Posted on July 8, 2015 by Lynn Davis in In the allotment

Father Christmas (in the person of Mark’s sister Laura) gave us some scarecrows last December. They have stayed indoors during the worst of the weather, but have come out to play now that summer is here. They are guarding our sweetcorn.

Scarecrows 7 July

The sweetcorn got trashed last year, along with virtually everyone else’s at the allotments. Inititially we thought that it was deer that had done the damage, although the final consensus on the allotments was that it was badgers, as someone had tracked the trail of debris. The animals had in some cases dug under fences, but in our case actually clambered over the fence, pulling it over (along with a couple of fence posts) in the process.

Trashed sweetcorn

The scarecrows, won’t stop this sort of attack, so the fences have been repaired and strengthened and we are using “Grazers” spray http://www.grazers.co.uk to deter predators.

Cabbages and Kings (or Kingly Cabbage)

Posted on June 24, 2015 by Lynn Davis in In the allotment

We had some ‘Durham Early’ Cabbages growing over the winter and while a few got damaged to greater or lesser extents by slugs/snails, a couple got through unscathed including this one, which weighed in at about 4lb.

Kingly cabbage

Of course this is a long way from the world record of over 10 stone (see the link below) but we were pretty pleased with ours.

http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/heaviest-cabbage

New Plot Update

Posted on May 20, 2015 by Lynn Davis in In the allotment

We’ve been doing a bit of infrastructure work on the new allotment plot over the winter. You may remember that it was a bare canvas last summer.

Looking South 4 May 2014

There is now a sturdy fence to keep the rabbits out, a support frame for our autumn (primocane for the pursists) raspberries and we’ve constructed a new (and larger) greenhouse on this plot.

The new greenhouse 3 April

By mid-May the sweet pea cordons were up, the raspberries and potatoes were starting to show and the fruit trees were coming into leaf. Of course the weeds were also starting to make their presence felt.

New plot 17 May 2015

Spring Flowers

Posted on March 25, 2015 by Lynn Davis in Musings...

One of the great things about gardening is that it is by nature optimistic and forward looking. Almost every job that we do is an investment in the future. In a country like Britain where there is a distinct rhythm to the seasons, this optimism is especially rewarding in spring. Spring bulbs are the confirmation that earlier work is bearing fruit and that longer, warmer days are on their way.

The “galanthophiles” will claim that snowdrops are the harbingers of the new year, but for Mark the sheer joyous colours of crocuses is the thing that shows that spring is really on the way.