Did it rain while I was away?
Back from 10 days away to find the plot not starved of water and wilting, as I’d feared, but flourishing and bountiful and generally gone kinda crazy. I guess it rained in Birmingham while we were away.
The courgettes were half-way to marrows and there were 4 cauliflowers ready to pull. Before we left they had tiny heads on them but now had almost gone too far. Already had one in a potato and cauliflower curry. A couple of the lettuces were close to going to seed so we pulled them and are working our way through lettuce based sandwiches and salad in order to get through it. Runner beans aplenty of course but also some lovely succulent peas - mmmm.
I pulled a few main crop potatoes just to see how they were doing. Quite well as it happens. I need to learn how to store them properly when I pull the lot as we’ve about 4 rows of them (that equals a lot of spuds)
At the back of the plot the blackberries are coming in - again, lots of. I might try to learn to make jam.
Plot update - May 2008
Thought I’d do an update of how we’re getting with our allotment patch.
We’ve now had our patch since January and so far kinda so good. I wish I had some before pics but generally the front half of it wasn’t in too bad a condition so the comparison wouldn’t be that stark. The compost area was very overgrown and we’ve now tackled one half of that area and in doing so have created a nice, rich mound for what we hope will be a pumpkin patch (currently propagating a few indoors). We’ve had to dig out a ton of evil bindweed though:
We’ve got two and a half rows of early potatoes (about which I fret constantly) that can’t be far off digging up. Once they do a significant amount of flowering I’ll dig a few up and report back. There’s certainly plenty of plant to them:
The slugs are a constant battle with anything tender and our cauliflower have really suffered. We went out today to find every one of them chomped to bits. A few might survive but although the slugs have won this round, we’ll fight back with a multi-trap approach (more to come on this).
Other stuff on the plot includes garlic (dead on its feet - planted too late), rhubarb (tons of it, despite extensive digging out), peas (doing well), runner beans (most doing fine), onions (growing nicely), carrots (we’re expected some stunted funny shaped ones to emerge), parsnips (still not emerged), lettuce (not emerged but might divert the slugs from the cauliflowers).
The back of the plot is covered in fruit bushes but is incredibly overgrown. I’ll report separately on this as we begin it tackle it. Without any intervention from us though it should produce all sorts of goodies. Actually fighting our way though to the goodies will be the issue. In the meantime we’re focusing in the slug-ridden front part.