We grow to eat.  We’ve never shown vegetables, in part this is because we’ve never got organised, but another factor is that we grow relatively small amounts of individual crops, to make sure that we’ve always got a variety of culinary options and not too much in the way of gluts.  The small quantities mean that we wouldn’t have many individual fruits or vegetables from which to select show specimens.  However, the competitive juices do start to flow a bit around this time of year as there is a best kept allotment award.

The set up of our plot would probably not please the purist as our open centre could be seen as wasted growing space, but we wanted to develop a plot that not simply productive, but relatively easy to maintain – hence the bed structure and also a nice place to simply be an enjoy – hence the bench.  We’re not going to make structural changes to please a potential judge, but the local competition does provide an incentive to do some thorough weeding and tidying, both of which will help to maximise the crops, so it is not simply a cosmetic exercise.

Anyway, after our recent efforts, it doesn’t matter what the judges think, we like what we’ve achieved.

15 July

16 July

For the past couple of years we have been experimenting with trying to produce a slightly earlier crop of new potatoes, using sacks as a growing container.  This year we planted up a couple of sacks in the unheated greenhouse in early March (about 3 weeks before our outdoor sowing) and started harvesting at the end of May.

New Potatoes 9 June

One advantage of growing in sacks is that it is quite easy to keep the growing medium slightly acidic to help prevent scab, however the major problem is that the sacks can dry out very quickly, so this is not a method to try unless you are going to be able to make sure that you can maintain regular feeding and watering.  We wouldn’t recommend this sort of approach for main crop potatoes, which really do need the space of open ground, not to mention the resilience to a couple of warm days provided by ground water.

For her birthday, Lynn asked for a couple of pear trees (avoiding the pair of pears pun) and Mark’s sister Laura, kindly obliged.  Here is the birthday girl standing proudly between her new wards.

Birthday Pears

A marker in the allotment year is the day that we get the greenhouse planted up.  As it is unheated, we always need to be careful to make sure that any risk of a late frost has passed.  This waiting is balanced against the fact that the plants are starting to outgrow the hardening off and window space at home.  Mind you they look a lot smaller once they are planted out.

Greenhouse 19 May 2014

Elsewhere on the plot, the peas and beans also went out today and the early spuds are developing nicely.

Legumes May 2014

Early Potatoes

For a couple of years we have been walking past a weed-infested derelict plot on the way to our allotment.  It was worked (fairly briefly) in 2011/2 and there are a couple of rather forlorn apple trees that have just about survived from then.  We have been thinking about taking this plot on.  Like ours it is half a standard plot, but would still represent a considerable extra commitment.  Much of the ground work on the first plot was put in before the gardening business took off; starting a new plot from scratch would be a tougher proposition.  Nevertheless, after some cogitation we decided to see whether this plot was available.  It was and we’ve started the process of bringing it under control.

A Wild New Plot

Clearing a Tree Ring