Back in the autumn we wrote a short eulogy on quinces and we now have two trees (one per allotment plot thanks to the kindness of Father Christmas (with the help of Lynn’s sister Wendy). Here is one of them. It will be a little while before it is sturdy enough to bear fruit, but then growing your own is always an investment in the future.
New Quince Tree
Over the Christmas holidays we started to get to grips with the new allotment plot and having got the fencing up and the support built for the raspberry canes it is starting to come together. Fruit trees (2 apples, 2 pears and a quince) along with the raspberries provide the long-term backbone and once we’ve got a greenhouse up, it should be dry enough to start working on new beds for flowers and vegetables.
Looking South East
Looking North
Welcome to the new plot
As the prima donnas of summer start to give up the ghost it is time for the sturdy citizens of autumn to come to the fore and prime amongst these are the carrots and parsnips. Tender little summer carrots are all very well, but at this time of year nice chunky ones evoke thoughts of casseroles and soups to warm the soul as the nights draw in.
Roots 12 Oct 2014
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.
