Went down to the allotment with the plan to dig in the mustard green manure and plant the japanese onions.  Guess what?  I did exactly what I had planned.  However, I cannot upload the photographs for some reason so I can’t show what I have done.  Not to worry I will keep trying.  I didn’t plant the onions because I ran out of time.  It was 6pm before I had finished so I thought that I would call it a day.   I took all the aubergines  and peppers out of the greenhouse and buried them on this plot as well.  They did not produce anything this year.  Too cold and wet for them I think. 

http://www.flickr.com/photos/12568197@N02/sets/72157602215781489/

I could push the spade in without putting my foot on it.   The mustard chopped up very easily too.  I want to chop it up because from some research there is an indication that mustard deters  eelworm but only if it is chopped up to release the chemicals inside it. 

I don’t think that I have grown onions in this area for at least 6 years and it might be even longer.  I might be lucky and not get much onion eelworm next year. 

Brought home some lettuce, rocket, beans and beetroot. 

I think that I will go over to the garden centre this afternoon and get some sweet pea seeds.  I will plant them in October.  �

I don’t know about mists and mellow fruitfullness but the allotment is still producing a noticeable amount of vegetables.  Went down today after work and picked carrot, beetroot, pumpkin, courgette, beans, lettuce, rocket, radish and purple sprouting broccolli. 

I am having quite a bit off the broccolli and it is from plants I planted this year in April.  They should not be flowering until next year.  Why should I worry; they are lovely to eat so I will continue to crop them.  I expect that they will continue to flower until next year - great!

I will have to dig the mustard in next weekend.  It has not gone woody like I expected but it is all flopping about and it is trying hard to shade  a row of peas out.  If I do dig it in I will wang the japanese onions in as well.

The comfrey has grown up again, believe it or not.  I will take another crop off and see if it will fit into butt with the tap.  If I cant put it all in here I will put some in the blue butt. 

Remember to take some photograps as well Tone because this is getting boring without photographs.  �

As Eric has already taken down his beans, I think that I had better think about doing the same.  I did notice several bunches of flowers still at the top though.  But I don’t really need any more runner beans. 

I will take them down in two weeks time.  The plants will be stripped off the canes and the canes put into one bundle and tied together with garden wire. (The green stuff)  I will store them away in the store room behind the shop.  I really wish the committee  would clear out the store.  I am sure there is stuff in there that has been there for 25 years. 

I will go along the blackcurrents taking out the old wood ,encouraging the new wood from the soil to grow.   I don’t seem to get any big bud any more.  Touch wood.  I will look out for it over the winter though. 

I am going to take a picture of the mustard green manure before I dig it in, while I dig it in and then the ground when it is dug in.  I am not the neatest of diggers but it will be interesting to look back on this next year. 

I will take a picture of the allotment when the japanese onions are planted as well.  I am not going to plant the garlic until much later.  I would like to plant on Boxing Day but this means that it is maturing when the eel worm (nematodes) are active.  Remember I have onion eelworm on my allotment.

Now the most useful tool for the allotment is … a tub with a handle.  Always have one next to you when you are on the allotment.  Put weeds, stones, glass, slugs and snails, and  creepy crawlies in and remove them from the allotment safely. 

I’ve got to think what to do with the the ground that the pumpkin is on.  It will die off in the winter.  It might be a little late to sow any green manure.  The brassicas will be planted in that patch next year so I don’t really want to use mustard because it is a brassica.  Maybe just put some grass seed down.  Possibly Italian Rye? �

Not much to do down the allotment.  Just watered a bit. I didn’t have time to replace the broken tap.  Harvested lettuce, rocket, rubarb chard, pumpkin, beetroot, carrot and beans.  Peas coming along well.  There was a little damage to the allotment by the badger but it had not got to my leeks.  It knocked down some of the sweet corn plants but as I have harvested all of them.  (Oh yesterday took the last of the sweet corn off.  They were not really ready but I cannot see them being pollinated now. ) 

I have decided not to take out the sweet corn plants until they die from the frost.  It will keep the ground covered and I will dig them in as a green manure. 

Last years regenerated runner beans have produced several pounds of beans.  I have too many now.  I think that they are regrowing because of global warming.  

I cannot dig in the mustard green manure this weekend because I am going to see my sister in Wales. It is growing rather large now (the mustard not my sister) so it will have to be done soon.�

Infamy, infamy, maybe I am paranoid but I have the distinct feeling that this badger has got it in for me.  It likes to sit under the current bushes on the straw cheeky beggar. It has really annoyed me this time totally destroying at least 5 leeks.  Look at the picture Tone.   You will have forgotten this by next year. 

What do you do when you have a leek serial murderer on your hands?  Well the blooming thing will not have any more of my leeks.  I have put a serious amount of netting over them.  Ok animal do your worst now!!!  Chew the bones out of this animal if you can. Ha haa……  Will I have the last laugh?

I ate all the autumn raspberries again today.  It did make me happier.  Everyone should have the opportunity of eating fresh raspberries straight from the bush.  

You know I cannot really understand this five portions a day lark.  I don’t usually eat five portions - I tend to eat about 10 to 12 portions.  PS I haven’t a clue what a portion is so I am talking through my hat.   What I want to know is  the ‘portion’ a new internationally recognised standard measurement?  Who was it that decided that 5 of these undefined portions was the right amount of fruit and vegetable to have during the day?  Are 5 portions a day applicable for adults and children, women and men?  Are 5 portions of grapefruit the same as 5 portions of pineapple?  Is fruit salad worth more because it is a mixture of fruit?  Is there a gold standard in fruit - is the pomegranate much more valuable than a strawberry?  The government will not tell me.http://www.dh.gov.uk/en/Policyandguidance/Healthandsocialcaretopics/FiveADay/index.htm

Now we come to the important question.  How many portions of raspberries did I eat today when I cleared all the red ones off the bushes?  And is this cancelled out by the three donuts I ate for my tea?  �

Harvested quite a bit of veg of the allotment.  Took 19 maize cobs off and there are still some more on the plants. 

I picked the first of the pumpkins. 

It doesn’t look much like a harvest from an English garden.  Thirty years ago it would have been marrow and beetroot rather than maize and pumpkin.  I could never have grown pumpkin and maize this well outside when I first started gardening. 

There were more runner beans and I will be slicing them up in a moment.  Lettuce and rocket - I had these for my tea together with a tomato and carrot.  All of which had been growing about an hour before.  How fresh is that?

There are some seriously big runner beans on the plants that came up last year.  I will harvest them tomorrow. 

The peas are growing very quickly.  Most of them are about 30 cm tall now.  Will I get any peas off them though Tone.  It’s a very good experiment though and I might just have peas if global warming continues at this rate.  We might be heading for total global disaster due to climate change but the consolation is that my second sowing of peas will crop.  �

I went up to the allotment today to water the peas.  There has not been any rain now for about two weeks.  I watered the peas, lettuce and leeks.  I compared the photograph of the leeks in August with the photograph I took this week and they have grown even in this short time and with the badger chewing them as well.  If I don’t get some good leeks this year I will be very disappointed. 

      

         Middle of August                                     End of August                                                 Beginning of September 

The peas have also grown really well. 

  

The mustard is growing very big.  It is about 30cm tall now.  I don’t know how long I will be able to leave it until I dig it in.  Not this weekend though.  There are more beans, chard, maize cobs, pumpkin, courgette, carrot, beetroot, lettuce and rocket to pick tomorrow.  Gave the pumpkin a good dose of comfrey today.  The pumpkins are getting a little bigger but not nearly big enough.  I am going to dig away some of the soil around the parsnips to see if they are getting big yet.  I am only curious.  I will not dig these out until they have been frosted.  Bill has already taken some of his out and made parsnip soup with them. I think that they taste much better when they have had frost on them.  The brussel sprouts are the same.  They taste much better when they have had some frost on them.  Never, never, never freeze brussel sprouts.  They taste seriously bad if you do.  A bit of a paradox but true nevertheless. 

I would rather have frosted fresh brussels at Christmas than frozen ones from the freezer.  Christmas dinner will have parsnips, brussels, peas, beans, maize, potatoes, carrots and leeks from the allotment.  (The peas, maize and beans are frozen ones and the potatoes are stored in paper sacks but all the rest will be fresh from the allotment.)  Being a vegetarian I usually have a nut cutlet with vegetarian gravy to go with it.   

I haven’t grown any cabbage or kale this year unfortunately.  The kale started to get white fly in it and I was throwing away more than I took home.  It is a shame because I love kale especially with a spicy vegetarian gravy.   The cabbage we were eating raw all the time.  I just felt it was worth giving cabbage a rest this year.  I haven’t grown kohl rabi, turnip, celeriac or swede for a long time either.  The allotment is a little small to have all this growing every year.  The amount of these that we would eat is fairly small so I would rather plant what we would eat than a lot of exotics that we would not eat. 

I often experiment with new types of vegetable.  I grew salsify, the so called vegetable oyster, one year.  I have not grown it since because I did not like the taste.  Little thin spindly roots as well that take an age to prepare.  Scorzonera is just the same - a spindly black root.  However if I had the room I would give them a go again.  Maybe it was just me and I did not grow them well enough.  �

I took these photographs on Tuesday. I cropped the comfrey off the allotment on Sunday and put it into the butt. 

You can see the horse radish in the background.  I don’t think that I will ever get rid of the horse radish because the roots go way down. 

 I filled the butt with comfrey but it soon rots down. This is just after two days. 

I have apple mint under the butt and it is routinely dosed with neat comfrey.  It does not seem to be doing it any harm.  I should either cut this raspberry out or tie it back. It keeps on grabbing me as I go past. 

The pumpkins are beginning to get a little bigger now. 

 I summer pruned the apple tree when I had taken off all the apples.  The pumpkin is covering all the ground underneath the tree. 

I think that the climbing french beans have come to the end now. 

The brassicas continue to grow big but remember Tone big plants don’t always mean big crops.  These are the winter cauliflowers.

We have had a lovely crop of carrots this year.  I am still thinning them out and using the thinnings but have a look at the size of them.  They are a bit moth eaten but they are fine for cooking. 

The badger is finally leaving my leeks alone - I hope.  Maybe the smell of the comfrey became too much for it.   I am hoeing them up every time I go down to the allotmet so the stalks do not look very big. 

The mustard green manure has grown quite a bit since I sowed it.  It is about 10cm tall now.  I don’t really want it to go woody so I am going to watch it quite closely and if there are any signs of woodiness, I will dig it in.  I was hoping that it would last until October without going woody.  We shall see. 

The peas are growing well.   I have put some comfrey on them to see if I can speed up their growth but I cannot realistically expect to get anything off them before winter.  

Still got some lettuce coming.  They will be ready towards the end of September I expect.  I haven’t planted any winter lettuce yet but I might next weekend.   There are one or two chick weed seedlings in the picture but most of the ‘weeds’ are radish seeds that I dropped and as you can see are all growing now. 

The maize continues to produce some really good cobs but they have got black fly on them.  I noticed ants crawling up the stems and followed them to the cobs.  It was only when I cropped the cobs and started peeling back the leaves that I reallised what the ants were doing.  They were farming the black flies. 

These are the cobs that I brought home this week. 

As you can see I have eaten all the autumn raspberries but there are still lots to come. 

There are still some runner beans on the plants but they have stopped flowering now.   I took a crate full of beans home and sliced them with the old fashioned bean slicer.  These will be frozen. 

Eric has already taken his runner beans out.  I think that I will keep them in until the frost takes them back.  I will bury the tops because they are healthy.  I will  just dig a big hole 3- 4 ft deep and put them all in there.  I have nothing to put in their place if I do take them out so the ground will be bare and I do not like to leave bare ground for very long.  I could put some more green manure in - maybe tares would be a good green manure to use.�

3rd September 2007

 I was going to scan the 1982 pictures of the allotment but the server was down so I didn’t.  Went to the allotment after school.  They still haven’t resurfaced the carpark.  I hope that they use non toxic material this time.  Checked the leeks first.  Badger is still having a go at them.  Hoed them up again!!  I will win.  I am watering with comfrey mixture between the rows mainly because it smells horrible and may deter the badger. 

I decided not to water the peas because they still looked very damp from the watering yesterday.  I may not have rained very much on Sunday but it was quite chilly so the water has not evaporated very much.  I really don’t think that I will get anything off them but gardeners are always optimistic. 

Watered the pumpkin.  I might take some photographs of the pumpkins and put them in the blog.  They are about football size. 

I brought some beans home for slicing.  These are the beans that have grown back from last year.  I leave the runner bean roots in the soil because the nodule bacteria add nitrogen to the soil.  In normal British weather the roots rot off.  This year they have grown back.  Runner bean is a perenial but not usually in this country.  This is the first time it has happened on my allotment.  We are quite high on the West Midland Plateaux on a north facing slope that gets waterlogged during the winter.  To get runner beans to last over the winter signifies to me that there is something very strange going on with the climate.  Things must be getting warmer.  If you have been gardening for over 40 years like I have you must know that something is seriously peculiar about the weather.  When I first started this allotment in 1982, I could never have planted tomatoes, cucumber, courgette, maize and pumpkin outside and expected a crop.  I remember planting a crop of early potatoes in March and loosing the lot of them through cold wet waterlogged soil.  Tell an old gardener like me that global warming is not real!  Still that is only anecdotal and I do not have any solid evidence from temperatures on the allotment.  I was more interested in growing carrots than taking temperatures.  Still I am amazed to say that I have taken 2lbs of runner beans off last years plants.  This years brocolli is flowering too. I think it is because I have fed it too much.  I made another brocolli omlette and it was beautiful.  I used the brocolli not 2 hours after I had cropped it and you would not believe how it tasted.

Will the cherry tomatoes go red before the frosts come or not?  If they do we will have hundreds of them.�