With preparations for Christmas including family visits we haven’t spent too much time in the garden or on the allotment this month.  However, a lovely day today saw us down at the allotment so that we could build the next pair of raised beds, harvest the sprouts and do some general tidying up.  As we also harvested the parsnips from the garden yesterday, a photo opportunity of Christmas produce could not be avoided.  The parsnips this year are as good as any we’ve had.

Today was largely an allotment day.  We spent about four hours down there and got the next two raised beds built and planted these up with the garlic and onion seedlings that we had been bringing on at home.

I had slightly change the wood order using larger overlaps to hold the longer sides together and getting the corner posts cut into stakes, these two changes made construction and fixing much easier and in addition to getting used to the mechanics of getting things built, the process of putting the beds together is definitely become a smoother production. We are getting the wood from Chiltern re-cycling. http://chilternwoodrecycling.co.uk/default.aspx

I made a short trip to the allotment today to out the strawberries that we had cultivated from runners earlier this autumn, this means that the strawberry bed is now fully populated.  As the weather was good, I also took a couple of update snaps.

Autumn tidying looking south 19 Nov 2011

 I also harvested a few sprouts from the plants that are looking significantly better for last week’s bit of TLC.

There should be sprouts for Christmas

 The shot looking north shows the field beans that we have sown as green manure on what will be the potato beds next year.  This is the first time that we’ve tried a green manure, so it will be interesting to see how this works out.

Raised beds and green manure

We had a big day in the allotment today.  Lynn constructed and treated the first of our compost heap containers (made from old pallets in common with most compost heaps on allotments) and I built the first two of our new raised beds, one of which Lynn planted up with strawberries.

We also had a mini harvest with some beetroots large enough for making some last batches of pickle for this year and some sprouts ready.  The brassicas were heavily infested with whitefly and there are quite a lot of slugs and snails around, but we look like getting a decent crop of sprouts and the purple sprouting broccoli look strong so with a bit of luck there will be a decent harvest next spring.  We tidied up the beds to remove some of the shelter for the pests and tried to smoke out the whitefly with a smouldering bonfire as well as leaving the protective net open to get some airflow for a few days.

We were down at the allotment pretty much all day, but when we got home, Lynn managed to sneak in pickling the red cabbage that I’d harvested from the garden yesterday.

We had a trip to Wisley today, thus completing my first bit of half-term homework for my RHS course (to visit a garden and observe different sorts of plants in situ).  We timed the trip to coincide with the “Taste of Autumn” show.  It was a glorious day and a very enjoyable trip (completed with the purchase of cheese, sausages, nuts etc.).  We had a look at the allotment plot and once again, it was good to see that we are not really missing any tricks.

Inspecting the onions at Wisley

 Whilst looking round the plant shop we saw some Asparagus Crowns (Purple pacific) and bought six crowns.  This inspired a trip to the allotment where Lynn prepared and planted an asparagus trench, while I cleared the almost dead cucurbits and the tomatoes from the polytunnel and got a bonfire going.  Then, instead of coming home, we kept going and cleared the weed suppressant membrane and rough dug one of next year’s potato beds and planted it with green manure (field beans).

The photo below shows the sun setting on an autumnal plot.  There are large piles of things to be burned as I don’t want to compost things like the cucurbits which finished the year with mildew, the fungus would not be killed by a domestic compost heap.

Autumn tidying

I managed to spend a couple of hours in the allotment earlier this week, which was enough time to tidy up both of the cleared sweet corn beds, harvest the next batches of pumpkins and squashes and strim the pathways (until the battery ran out).  We now have a healthy crop of squashes and pumpkins curing that will give us fresh veg for a few months to come.

Squashes curing

I also harvested the yellow courgette that we have been growing on so that we can collect some mature seed from it.  As the photo shows there is not much that is “ette” about it now.  It was great being down there, partly because of the air of satisfaction there is in both harvesting and tidying, but also because the weather was glorious – the shirt even came off for a while, a distinct rarity for a pasty Englishman.

A courge

Then today we both spent a large chunk of the day down at the allotment and got a lot of weeding and tidying done, as well as harvesting more squashes.

Back at home we reviewed the plans for next year and started to work through the seed catalogues.  The constant looking forward of gardening really does make it a positive and optimistic hobby.

Lynn perusing next year's options

Whilst checking the seed stocks we noticed that the onion sets had started to sweat a little, so they were planted in a bit of a panic.  We’ve started them in cells so that we can then plant out established plants in the allotment.