This afternoon I cracked on with tidying the lawns, more raking and mowing and a bit of re-seeding and also gave all the pots a morning water, just a couple of days with no rain and a bit of warmth has led to some quite drastic drying out even in the big vegetable box.
Author Archives: Lynn Davis
Sweet Corn
This afternoon I headed down to the allotment to finish off the grand weeding that I’d started and the plot is looking really good at the moment. I had a swift batch of harvesting courgettes and sweet corn (both sorts). With the weather drying up, the green courgettes seem to have slowed down a bit, which is good news; a steady long season would be great.
We had the first two large sweet corn cobs as a starter tonight and they were great, well worth the space investment and a crop for the future without doubt. I’m less convinced about the mini sweet corn, although they do add a different texture and flavour to salads, it will be worth trying some in a stir fry to explore flexibility.
Buried treasure
Today, I dropped Lynn off at work and headed straight down to the allotment to get the Rudolphs harvested. Mid-way through, I realised that there was a great photo opportunity to capture the feeling of “treasure” that root crops give, so nipped home for a camera and also picked up other tools and a some drinks to allow a longer session.
While there is something magical about the first signs of sprouting, the first bud, flower or setting fruit, I don’t think that there is much in the gardening world to beat the excitement of a successful harvest of roots, carrots and parsnips are great, but you know that it is one root per plant, but with potatoes it really is searching for buried treasure.
Buried treasure
Inevitably I managed to spear a few of the spuds and after cleaning them all up for storage there were still a few pounds worth that will require fairly swift usage. This evening’s portion was turned into a large potato rosti to accompany pork steaks and ratatouille (yes a few more courgettes used up).
After the harvest I got cracking on a major weeding session and cleared about half the plot and plan to get the rest finished on Thursday. Whilst there I also took some photos to allow comparisons with earlier snaps to show how growth has developed. This is particularly noticeable in the cucurbit bed and with the sweet corns. The large sweet corn (while on much smaller plants than the mini ones) appear to be getting very close to ripe and I think that it will be worth harvesting a couple later this week.
The cucurbit bed
Sweet corn and beetroot
Everything is Growing
On Thursday Lynn was working from home, so I started the day with a swift bike ride. Then I headed off to the allotment, with the main aim of building the gate, which I succeeded in doing. The weather remains fairly damp, although not too cold, so things are still growing quickly – especially the cucurbits and another batch of courgettes and gherkins made their way home.
At last the sun has returned and first thing we set off for the allotment. Lynn treated the newly built gate, and as I remembered to take a camera, we recorded it for prosperity as well as gathering documentary evidence of the way that the mini sweet corn have grown and the enormous productivity of the yellow courgette plant.
We harvested the first plant’s worth of “Rudolph” potatoes, which look great. This plant produced 6lbs worth of potatoes and if they taste as good as they look, this level of productivity should make them a variety worth sticking with.
The gate
The yellow courgette plant
Harvesting the mini sweet corn
Lyn and her sweet peas
Inside the cloche
Weeding and tidying
Over the last few days I have been putting in a renewed amount of effort in the garden.
I finished planting out the front beds with home grown dahlias and bought cosmos plants and have got the hedge trimmer on to the rosemary hedge and the white rose bush in the front garden. Both will need further, and more severe, tidying up later in the year, but for now they look presentable. I used some of the rosemary clippings as cuttings with the view that it might be best to replace the whole hedge. I also got some box cuttings going to give us the option of using low hedging to divide up beds on the allotment.
I managed to get both of the lawns raked and mown despite the threat of showers. I have also started the next phase of propagating. I have started to split the blue primulas that we have in readiness for using these to plant up the front border to its new blue/white and yellow palette.
Pickles and Chutneys
After an early morning start, we headed down to the allotment for a burst of harvesting, weeding and watering. This done, Lynn set off to the golf course and I cleaned the various vegetables that we had harvested, and salvaged what I could from the onions that had suffered “white rot”. In fact although they will be no good for keeping, we have plenty of onion to use over the next few days, so I cracked on with roasting some vegetables for salads and pizza – this included the first carrots of the season from the garden.
I prepared gherkins for pickling and am trying two different approaches – one with whole vegetables and one with sliced. I think that we have discovered that pickled gherkins for Boxing day is not a very challenging target. A more serious challenge is what do you do with all the Gherkins that three plants produce?