Lots of strawberries straight off the plant.

An early morning trip on a frosty Sunday morning to start thinking about planting. Two bargain blackcurrant bushes planted- if they’re not successful then the £4 they cost isn’t too much of a risk. Also sowed some broad beans, the autumn ones never survived. And finally, because the ground for the peas was too frozen. I experimented by sowing some in a piece of guttering, left by the windown in the shed.

A busy weekend at the allotment. After two weeks away the weeds have grown wild and autumn is making itself felt. Next door-who took on their allotment at the same time as us-have quit so we helped ourselves (with the secretary’s permission) to some of their onions and squash. Yesterday we harvested the end of our potatoes-more than we expected, certainly enough to get us through the next couple of months.

Some more carrots and the first leeks also helped the produce pile this morning.

We also got hold of some horse maniure, so (with a two week check to check it’s not got herbicide likely to kill my plants) we’llbe spreading that soon.

Made some more progress with the end wilderness section-cleared much of the dead grass and cut two of the four plum trees which were two close together to provide anything. The two left are still two foot away from each other, but I will give them a year’s grace and tlc before completely condemning them.

So: jobs for the next month.
-clear weeds, dig in manure, cover most beds in preparation for spring
-make path to shed ( now with guttering) and plant daffs up them
- make strawberry bed, transplanting strawberries from back garden ahead of conservatory work

That’s the biggies, of course there will be much more to do, all as the evenings are almost unusable, the weekends are full. But as these photos show, at least we’re getting something for our hard work!

It’s been a while since going to the allotment and the pumpkins have grown loads. Fingers crossed it wont rain too much and they will rippen. The wintertime potatoes are looking really good and fingers crossed they will give us loads foe Christmas. Last but no means least the parsnips are looking really bushy. Here’s the pictures from today.

So finally some regular harvest. Tonight we’re eating our own cabbage and potatoes, last night we had sour own onions garlic and green beans, and I’ve found a willing victim to relieve us of morebeetroot.

I’ve also planted some delayed seed potatoes in the hope of a winter feast, and some carrots that Dobies tell me are hardy. Over wintered onions and garlic are on order (our summer ones have been disappointing, even given the rather grim summer). Now just could do with getting some sprouting broc as my plants didn’t survive some rather erratic watering on my part. Ops. There’s always next year.

So what with one thing and another, we’ve not spent much time on the allotment this past fortnight. However, we’ve had a very productive evening tonight. First of all, Adam painted the shed with it’s second coat of green. Looking good!

Jen has done a bit of harvesting with mega beetroot, carrots, beans and tatties all coming home with us. The potatoes were more productive than they’ve been, suggesting that our first harvests were probably premature. The bed has been prepared for the next crop. Not sure what to risk doing- brassicas need a firmer ground than freshly dug potatoes leave so I may transplant more leeks into there.

Our cucurbits (oo posh word) are doing well. The butternut squash is doing it’s thang, it must have grown 50cm since Saturday and there are lots of fruit- I just hope that at least one ripens. Meanwhile the pumpkins have massive leaves and lots of flower buds so hopfully we’ll get something for Halloween. And the courgettes show real signs of being the prolific cropper everyone else goes on about but I have yet to witness.

So all in all the past soggy week has been good fir the plot. I’m still very nervous about tomato blight though… I notice that the guardian allotment blog was also on this theme today. Keeping things crossse

The first butternut squash

Adam’s pumpkins

The view this evening

A green shed

The top of a carrot

Tonight’s harvest

Well surprise surpise the weather men did get it wrong after all! So much for the heavy rain that was forecast. I spent a good 4 hours at the allotment sorting out the door of the shed, that unfortunately did not fix the problem. So it will be back to the drawing board. I did manage to sort some bits inside the shed as well.

Since the weather was so bad lastnight I had to wait most of the day before the shed was dry enough to paint. After 2 hours and 30 minutes the shed was looking good painted in forest green. It looks like the martians have landed at the allotment!

Sadly I had no time to tend to the weeds that have sprung up over the last week. Maybe Tuesday…..

Finally here is a picture of the shed.

Below are the stages of the shed being built, from the first 9 slabs to the almost final product (just needs paint and gutters now). It took about 3 hours the get the base level because the ground was so uneven.
Enjoy the pictures

The first carrot has been pulled up out of the back garden and was lovely on a salad tonight.