Tuesday 24 August 2010

Photo's are from about 10 days ago, the pumpkins are doing well, about 6 fruits in total with the largest being huge!! the circumference about the size of a space hopper!

Elsewhere in the plot the runner beans are over, struggled on through the masses of blackfly, whereas the Isobel climbing french beans are brilliant, very heavy cropping and good straight flavored beans. The dwarf french where a little tough very quickly and i dont think i'll do them again. The sweet corn has benefited from being started early and done well, some good size cobs there, beetroot and swiss chard also doing well. The strawberries were great this year with lots for the kids to enjoy, i should get some later season variety though as they all came in together.
The onions were pretty rubbish, the red ones terrible, they hardly grew any larger than the sets i put in originally. The others were generally small, and my garlic which i started off on pots and then transplanted all grew but are very small, i think i'll go back to autumn planting next year (this year!). Swede and broccoli grew very well although the broccoli flowered very quickly and we only had a few heads off them. I put in a few weeks ago some purple sprouting for next spring. Below on the left you can also see the rhubarb i split and replanted which has taken well, i have not taken anything from it this year, just let it establish itself. Back left by the blue box is the comfy which has just been severely cropped and the leaves are in the box with water to make a liquid feed. Already when i went to the plot today the comfy has sprung back into life with huge growth. I need to look into how i can split or transplant the comfy to create more plants.
What else? well the potatoes have been hit and miss, the first two rows i put in, i forget now what types, where very poor, not worth the effort of planting, the last row has been very good. The butternuts grew poorly but i have one, yes one fruit on them! Carrots have been okay, i still have a row of the rainbow coloured ones insitu. The lettuce has been good, although all at once, i still have some coming on now, the oriental varieties did go to seed quickly though. I need this autumn to properly tie in the raspberries which are falling all over the place but still cropping.
The peas were also sporadic this year, and the mange tout were not great, i think i'll stick to heavily sowing peas next year as i had better result last year with that. The parsnips are looking okay, as do the small square of leeks i put in.

2 comments:

Arno from down south said...

Nice clear layout now, allotment looks good as well!

arn said...

thanks