There aren’t many times in the year when I don’t have some young plants about the place, just poking their noses above the soil. At the moment it’s mainly salads and a few annual herbs – I sowed some coriander last week and I’m gearing up for some more parsley soon to see me through [...]
Archive for the ‘Allotments’ Category
Late arrivals
Posted in Allotments, sowing, tagged sowing, beans on July 31, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Rogues’ gallery: Bindweed
Posted in Allotments, Rogues' Gallery, tagged weeds, bindweed on July 28, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Here it is: the mother, father, grandmother and great-aunt-twice-removed of all weeds. Bindweed has to be the absolutely most detested weed of them all. My own garden is riddled with it, and it seems the moment I turn my back (usually still aching from the last two-hour session of forking out bindweed roots) it’s slithering up from [...]
Veg plot flowers
Posted in Allotments, Greenhouse growing, Other stuff, tagged tomatoes, beans, onions, carrots, pests, companion planting, flowers, marigolds, sweetpeas, nasturtiums on July 24, 2010 | 1 Comment »
It’s not all veg round here, you know. Actually there are quite a lot of flowers in my patch. Of course there are all the flowers that come with veg: yellow tomato and cucumber blossoms, purple and white potato flowers, and the lovely red and white fountains of flowers climbing up my beanpoles. But I’ve [...]
Pick of the month: July
Posted in Allotments, Harvesting, Pick of the month, tagged peas on July 20, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Pea ‘Ambassador’ I’m a bit spoilt for choice this month. The allotment is absolutely bursting with produce: courgettes, carrots, beetroot, onions, spuds, some chard, loads of cucumbers, a smidgen of early kale and the beans just starting to get into their stride. And that doesn’t count the salads and the herbs, still going strong. But [...]
Rogues’ gallery: Blackfly
Posted in Allotments, Rogues' Gallery, tagged beans, blackfly, greenfly, pests on July 3, 2010 | 1 Comment »
I have a confession to make. I have been Less Than Vigilant. Actually, I’ve been downright lacksadaisical in my approach to veg gardening: a quick swish round with the watering can, dig up a few spuds for tonight’s tea, and then dash off to my desk to fit in the twenty thousand urgent tasks I [...]
Open season
Posted in Allotments, tagged brassicas, Open Day, peas, potatoes on June 21, 2010 | 1 Comment »
Yesterday was a real red-letter day in my allotmenting year: the annual Open Day, when our site opens to the public and we get to show off what we do. That also, of course, means there’s no excuse for my allotment to look anything but sparkly gorgeous: a bit of a steep hill to climb [...]
Bolts from the blue
Posted in Allotments, tagged baby leaf salads, bolting, onions, watering on June 13, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Bother. Every year it happens: you get one little spell of hot dry weather, which of course always coincides with a busy work spell so you can’t get to the watering can as often as you’d like, and everything bolts for the horizon. So it has been this year: three days over 25 degrees was [...]
Pick of the month: June
Posted in Allotments, Pick of the month, tagged onions on June 9, 2010 | 2 Comments »
Autumn onion ‘Electric’ Back from all the razzmatazz of Chelsea and the first thing I did (with a little sigh of relief, I’ll admit – it was a long and busy week) was to head up to the allotment and see how it was doing after being left to its own devices for so long. [...]
Friends’ Gallery: Toads
Posted in Allotments, Friends' Gallery, tagged pests, slugs, toads on May 26, 2010 | 3 Comments »
Awwww… isn’t he cute? Oh, all right, I realise I’m going to have to do a bit of a sales job here. Toads, after all, are not cute (well, not if you’re not a gardener, anyway): they’re warty, they crawl in a slightly creepy way and if you’re unwise enough to try to pick them up [...]
A frosty reception
Posted in Allotments, tagged frost, potatoes, strawberries, weather, winter on May 23, 2010 | Leave a Comment »
Summer may be beckoning seductively from just around the corner: we may even be daring to think that the worst is over. But up on the allotment, the damage is done. This year has seen one of the chilliest springs I can remember (I’m sure the Met Office will be coming out with some eyewatering statistics before too [...]
Crocus kitchen garden shop
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Harvesting Now
Blackcurrants, calabrese, cauliflower, courgettes, French beans, garlic, globe artichokes, gooseberries, kale, onions, peas, potatoes (new and second early), raspberries (summer), redcurrants, runner beans, salad leaves, shallots, strawberries, tomatoes, whitecurrantsSowing Now
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