Nom nom :)

So, bad Steph (again!), not been down the allotment for a while. I am sure everything is still growing away but I expect it is looking a little jungle-esque! I am planning on a salvage mission this w/e to put things back to rights and harvest what's ready. As usual, I've been busy with other things. I'm currently putting together a catalogue of my glassy goodies & working on commissions.

Last night I cooked up some of the veggies hanging around my kitchen, as it looks like a harvest festival! The pic above shows some roasted 'Hooligan' pumpkin seeds. I didn't really know what I was doing but they turned out reet grand. I added a little olive oil, salt and pepper and roasted at Gas5 for about 10-15 mins. The ones I didn't munch last night will make a tasty snack at work today. Waste not, want not :)

With the fine-looking 'Hooligan' pumpkin itself, peeling was a no-go so I sliced the little devil into two, added a touch of olive oil and roasted it too. Looking forward to scooping out the innards for dinner tonight :) Muhahaha! Ahem.

Don't suppose you remember the 'bell boy' pepper I got from Sainsbury's a while ago? Well, this is he. Look, FINALLY, the little peppers turned red. In a way it will be a shame to eat them. The plant looks great in my lounge in this red pot.

Another 'FINALLY' - the tonnes of tomatoes I've got from the 2 plants at lottie are turning. These ones are ripening on the windowsill. I am probably going to harvest all the remainder at the weekend & windowsill-ripen them too. Batches of tommie sauce ahoy methinks. The green ones I picked a while back are still lanquishing in the fridge. Also on my to-do list but they seem ok.

Hopefully next post will be photo-filled & actually down the allotment! I am also hoping to pick some blackberries this weekend. All this is weather-dependant of course. Fingers crossed for at least no rain!

MAHOOSIVE marrow and other miscellaneous veg

Well, up to the allotment I went last night. I've not had much time for it lately. I was gadding about on Saturday at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire at the Battle Proms. Very nice it was too. An excellent way to spend a Saturday night. The spitfire fly-by put a tear or two in my eye. I'm a plane fan and everyone cheering and being uber patriotic tugged at the heart strings ;) What a sap!

Sunday I was working on glassy goodies - listing things for sale in my folksy shop, as well as putting together some commissions.

So, last night I had a poke about, seeing what was new. Did a bit of weeding/hoeing/dead heading and all that jazz. I found my first hooligan pumpkin hiding under a leaf. Looking forward to these. They're pretty cool smallish striped numbers - well, they looked it on the packet! I await the stripes...

The two tomato plants my aunt gave me back in spring are doing so well! Last year the tomatoes in the ground died off. I am guessing from all the rain we had. This year it has been much drier and the tomatoes should be ripening any time soon. They are so laden and heavy with fruit I have had to support them with some cane hoops. Hopefully this will give a bit of support in the wind, keep the fruit off the ground and make watering a little easier to do. I may put down some straw mulch to hopefully stop the low tommies sitting directly on the soil.

I planted a whole bunch of stuff too (I was the last up there in the dark with a torch by the end!): hollyhocks, 2 rows of sweet williams, red cos lettuce, dwarf beans - 'purple queen' and 'stanley', as well as some 'the sutton' broad beans, again. I did most of the sowing post-digging up the last of the charlotte spuds in the big 'road end' bed. Potatoes are great for soil being easy to turn!

It was a bit of a bumper harvest. Loads of the charlotte spuds, some beetroot, courgettes, a couple of yellow courgettes and a MAHOOSIVE marrow :) My first ever marrow. I am like a proud parent!

Check it out! Pretty big. I thought it best to harvest it at this size, rather than leave it too long and lose it. My mum has a great marrow recipe so I'll be using that for this bad boy :)

This batch of spuds were a pretty impressive harvest, especially as I didn't plant any of this variety this year! These are leftovers from last year's laziness ;) Five and a half pounds of tastiness. I have saved some to chit for next year.

I grabbed a few beetroot too. These will be peeled then I'm not entirely sure what I'll do with them. I don't want to pickle them in vinegar, so maybe I'll find a recipe where you can appreciate their fab taste and great colour :)

And the courgettes just keep coming! I only have 4 plants and they are keeping me well in stock. I spoke to my friend at work and she has FIFTEEN plants at her allotment! Blimey!! She says her veggie friends are loving her though :) I really like this photo of them in the sink being washed, with the sink edges forming a frame. Maybe it is just me...!

And this arty arrangement is me drying them off before they go into the fridge. I am definitely going to make chutney, but I don't want it to be dominated by tomatoes or apples as a lot of the recipes are. I also will be making some into a chocolate cake! Watch this space :)

Oh, and what do you think of the new blog template? I kinda like it. Seems fresher to me and gives me more space on the page. Need to re-size my header but can't for the life of me find the file to do so! Ho hum.

Freebies?

Just spotted this when searching for some sweet william seeds:

http://www.gardenfreebies.co.uk/

Not browsed it properly yet but thought I'd bookmark it here.

Does anyone know of a good place to get sweet william seeds? I'd like to grow lots next year and also get some for my sister-in-law. Ideally the mixed variety.

A quick 20 minutes... PAH!

I should have sorted this post out mid-week but I just didn't get round to it. I went to lottie for a quick raspberry pick. Ya know, a short 20 mins to harvest the first of the fruit ready for picking, then back home to do other things. Well, as usual, that 'quick 20 minutes' turned into a full-blown 3 hours! To be honest though, I was really pleased to actually spend a good chunk of time really working the plot. I got the hoe out and did lots of weeding. The generous watering the plants are getting is, of course, benefiting the weeds too. Once the hoe gets pushed around the plot is transformed and looks nice and tidy. I have very tidy plot neighbours so I usually get guilty if mine looks messy. Silly really!

I also re-jigged bits of the plot I'd planted out. Some plants were being overshadowed by others so they needed to be moved to get more light etc. The peppers in the med bed were being dwarfed by the tomatoes so they got re-homed. Also the charlotte potatoes from last year have popped up again (great, as they were SUPER delicious) and were encroaching on my aubergines. Aubergines, why do I bother? Last year they didn't do all that great and this year they don't look all that great either! Maybe next year I will learn not to bother....!

FINALLY, I have success with sunflowers. This is the 3rd or 4th lot of seed I've tried to get going and by a miracle I've got 4 plants looking pretty good. The rest of the seed were a no-show and the earlier seedlings I tried just got munched. I am amazed at how hard I have found it to get sunflowers growing happily. Aren't they meant to be a doddle, something a child could grow?! Anyhoo, I've moved these into final growing positions and put in some support canes. The way I got them to grow eventually was like with the peas - in plastic bottle tubes in an attempt to keep the slugs away.

I mentioned the rogue charlotte potatoes just now. Well, I had to dig up some of the plants that were growing through the path and over the aubergines - they had to go. Even harvesting a little early I got a good crop from the few plants I culled. There are still lots left. I am sure I will have charlotte pots popping up in the 'road end' big bed for lots of seasons to come, which to be honest, is no bad thing :)

I also spotted this red lettuce (variety unknown - any ideas?), growing under the patio apple, seemed to be nibble-free. Odd, I thought, as I've avoided planting lettuces due to the expected battle with the slugs. I can just about handle the holes in spinach as I love spinach so much. Well, reading blogs and lottie sites, as I do, I learned something I didn't know. Red lettuces don't appeal to slugs. Well I never, why didn't anyone tell me this before?! That's it, I am definitely stocking up on red lettuce seed to grow my own. I actually prefer the red varieties of lettuce anyway - it appeals to my artistic eyes more than the green. These are a few leaves I grabbed to munch on. Tasty :)

I also finally planted out the last lot of sweetcorn that was struggling along in the containers I'd planted the seed into. Poor things needed space to grow. I planted out 24 seedlings so if their older brothers are anything to go by they should do well. Fingers crossed.

Oh, and I did pick some raspberries and it did take a 'quick 20 minutes'! I just got the ripe ones from outside the netting and it was enough for a bowl of rasps for pud. However mostly they need a little more time before the main harvest. I also brought home some of the cornflowers which are making a great sugarsnap support, as well as looking fabulous.

The weekend is ear-marked for catching up on my glassy goodies business but I am getting a 'go down the allotment' urge already! I also need to do something with all those blackcurrants I picked the other day.

Thinning out, planting & harvesting

Last night I popped to the allotment. Just for a little while after work... but then stayed 'til it was dark! That's a habit I am getting into. Too many jobs, not enough time.

My seedlings did pretty well sown directly into the soil in rows, under the cling film cold frame. I took the frame itself off a while back when the frost had gone and almost everything I planted has gone great guns. So much so, I think I have too much! The kohl rabi was my task last night. I thinned out all the seedlings and planted them in-front of the sugar snaps/cornflowers. There was a reasonable amount of weeding to do but the soil is lovely up this (shed) end of the plot and the weeds came out easily. I am very pleased with the kohl rabi seedlings and I am hoping they will now start to swell. I had some seedlings left over so I gave some to a plot neighbour and some to a friend at work. She also got a chinese lantern - seedlings are popping up from one I bought last year which I thought had died a death, and some cosmos - also self-sown from last year's plant.

I also harvested some radishes which look mighty fine :) I thinned the seedlings a couple of weeks ago to give them room to swell. I like this photo :) Anyone know any good radish recipes?

These are leeks I grew from seed. I am going to thin these out too and sow them in place. I ran out of time last night.

I read somewhere you can germinate shop-bought seeds. This is my 'bean experiment' so I will see if anything grows. Just a bit of fun really. Not the end of the world if it doesn't work!

I picked my first ranunculus too. It is a bright poppy-red but looks orange on this pic. Pesky camera!

I also planted out the aubergines, patty pans, butternut squash and marrow plants I bought from Potten Farm in Kent. I did this is the dark though so no photos yet!

I've just been to the nursery near work to get a few more things. As the seeds I planted did nothing and I want to grow them, I bought a tray of self-blanching celery and two trays of celariac. I also got more seeds and some flowers. Photos to follow :)

After saying I wouldn't grow them again, like I did with the tomatoes, I bought a pot of runner beans! Aww, but... there were 8 healthy plants in one pot... it wasn't much money... last year's were super-tasty (but SO prolific!)... ah, I am sure I will enjoy them this year. Note to self - create a STURDY frame this time! No idea what sort they are. It just said 'runner bean'. Hmm!

Planting out 'the survivors'

The survivors from my grown-from-seed selection got planted out last week. Disappointingly there weren't as many as I'd like, but then that's the way it goes. I guess it is all part of learning. Most things got planted in the big bed at the 'road end', the one I'd divided into 9 sections. I put the squashes/courgettes etc here as it is closest to the water source. Should be easier on my poor back!

This is how it looked post-planting. Flowers nearest to us: nicotiana, cosmos, dwarf rudbeckia; above them to the left of the photo is the 'med bed': aubergine, tomatoes, yellow pepper (more to add here). The rest of the squares contain various courgettes and squashes. Some squares are still empty but they'll soon fill up :) As you can see, the squashes etc are pretty weeny. Hopefully they'll sort themselves out asap.

If you're wondering what those are by each plant, they're cut-off bottles, to focus the watering. Last year I didn't do this and I expect water was wasted. I know some of the leaves got scorched, so hopefully this way will be better. While the roots get established I am watering normally, then I'll move onto just watering in the bottles.

I also planted out into the mini-beds. My chitted rooster spuds went in one, and the surviving early extra sweetcorns went next to them.

The flowers planted a while back in the first row of mini-beds are taking their time. The only one looking promising is this bed of gladiolus, poppies and mixed annuals, even if it does look messy. I am sure half are weeds!

I also netted the blueberry with the clothes-peg & cane system.

Sunday: Sowing seed, propagator protection & netting

Well, I am a bit disappointed with my seedlings to date so I decided to re-pot things & plant seeds on Sunday. I wont do these as individual pics as I planted A LOT of new seeds! (The hollyhock was a little plant). Here they are:

L-R: chilli - habanero chocolate (a christmas gift from my big bro),
dwarf beans - purple queen & stanley, hollyhock - salmon pink,
auberine - early long purple 2, alium (unknown variety from my mum),
forget-me-not - royal blue, patisson - sunburst
& sweetcorn - early extra sweet, mixed annuals,
pak choi - choko, red basil - dark opal, chilli - cayenne

Looking forward to all these coming up.
(click the photo to see them bigger)

These are some other seeds I planted - more of what I tried before, along with some new seeds.

Closest to us: peas - kelvedon wonder, sunflower - black magic.
The rest I've already mentioned in the seed list.

The plants in the photo are from my aunt. She's good to me :)

I also potted on some sweetcorn (early extra sweet) as they were doing ok. 6 survivors though - pathetic!

So much has been nibbled / not come up / perished in the mini-greenhouse that I decided to try the survivors in some propagators. I knew those leftover bits of palette would come in useful! Fingers crossed this plan works! Oh for a REAL greenhouse...

The purple podded peas (such a great name - I love saying it!) Nick's mum gave me grew so fast I've already put them into the soil. I have tried to protect them with some plastic bottles to keep them warm and, using some netting and clothes pegs, I made this protection from pecking pigeons :) I did the same netting around the mangetout but didn't take a snap. Looks the same anyway! Around the PPpeas, I planted the mixed annuals and around the mangetout, the forget-me-nots.

On Monday I picked up the new mower & spent a while trying to make it. Useless instructions & not enough hands hindering me! I tried it out last night and it works a treat. Huzzah

Now we are all up-to-date on the allotment antics & I am off to watch Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen... :)

Saturday: My box is full of tits!

Ok, before I get going, really I should explain the post title! Yes, that's right kids, there is a family of Great tits nesting in one of the boxes fixed to my shed. How exciting! I was getting some water into a can from the waterbutts and I heard some tweeting above my head. Giddy, I decided to sit a little way off and wait to see which flavour parent bird would come to the box. Turns out Great tits are in residence. Lovely little birds. I'm made up to have a fledgling family living on my plot. I took this picture of the adult feeding the squeaking babies, but only had my snappy camera so the zoom's not great.

I've been a bit quiet the last couple of weeks as I've had visitors, so not a lot of lottie time had. The bank holiday weekend my parents and older brother came to visit. We had a lovely time exploring locally - walking from my flat around the local countryside, as well as driving out and about visiting places. We even had a bluebell walk. The weekend after that my aunt & uncle came to visit. On the very wet & bitterly windy Saturday we went to the Malvern Spring Show. I got carried away and bought some plants and took oodles of photos of things that caught my eye :)

So, anyway, back to this weekend just gone. Saturday, as this is what this post is about. I went to buy some compost to pot more seeds & strained my back restraining a runaway trolley full of growbags. Not good! The seeds I've already sown are looking a bit sorry for themselves in the main. I think alot of it is due to Mr Slug & Mrs Snail, but probably the cold too. This is sum total of my propagation so far - pathetic really!

Anyway, I got lured to Homebase's 15% off day and bought a few bits. Um, and kinda bought a lawnmower! It is the same model as I've used before but now I have my own and don't have to struggle to get it in the car boot and lug it across 2 counties each time I want to use it! Alas, it is currently still on a palette somewhere in the warehouse, but I got it on the 15% discount. I am sure it will earn its keep :) I also bought a little patio appletree. It only grows 2m x 2m so will be tidy on't lottie. I've put it in the centre of my new mini-beds, road end. I like the name too - 'Patio Sophia'.

My aunt had brought me lots of seedlings she'd progagated, much more successfully than me so far! I planted out the cosmos at the road end, as they were about right to go in the ground. They should look pretty as I pull up when they're in flower. They will easily fill the space I popped them into. I also divided up the big road end bed, with string, into 9 sections, to make things less daunting.

Finally I tackled the nightmare that is my strawberry bed. Weeding. A lot of weeding! Here's the before...

...and after. I have only done 1/3 so far :(

All the photos are a bit orange, probably as it was quite late in the day when I took them.

I will post about Sunday's antics asap :)

Tuesday evening lottie time - planting some climbers & some balcony seeds

Amongst my many tasks once I get home from work this week is going to lottie and watering. Of course, it is never just the one task I do when I go there! I also did some weeding in the seed cling-film nursery and am pleased to see everything has come through. Even the celeriac did, which is teeny tiny currently, but I'm glad it germinated. It is the green specs to the far right. The radish is getting huge and I think I will need to thin these soon.

I also planted the 2 climbers I bought to grow next to my bench, under the blackthorn tree. The blossom is devine while it lasts, but it is a bit dull as a tree most of the year. The sloes are a no-go too. All wrinkly and inedible. There are so many locally it doesn't really matter. Anyway, I planted a clematis and a pink jasmine. The jasmine will smell lovely and I picked it for the name - stephanense. How could I not buy it! I even lined the little area with wood edges. Aren't I good?! Ha!

Above & below: the seedlings in the mini-greenhouse are coming on in leaps and bounds. Some of the squash varieties, the sweetcorn and the courgettes doing best. In the big tray, the marigolds are starting to show. In the little tray are some earlier-planted courgettes which need re-potting soon. I also planted some more seeds - asparagus peas (a new one on me!), purple podded peas and red flowered broad beans. The PPpeas and the RFbroad beans are gifts from Nick's mum. Bless her cottons. She has an allotment and I think they're her own seeds, as it were :)

Above & below: I have finally got round to planting some seeds in the troughs on my balcony. I accidentally dug out a bit of mint so that found a new home here, as well as planting a few mint seeds and borage in that trough. In the 2nd one is rocket and coriander; all herbs I like to have on hand at home. In the kitchen I always have a pot of basil, supermaket-bought as growing from seed last year took forever! I do pretty well at keeping basil alive and happy, so much so some of the plants I've had have even had woody stems I've had them so long :) Look at my amazing use of clingfilm again!

Saturday rush-job

It was a bit of a rush job on Saturday @ the allotment. Half ten til one, so no digging for me. However, I did do lots of weeding and watering, as well as getting on with more sowing.

This time it was some mangetout, 3 sets of 3 seeds next to a bamboo tripod. I covered the seeds with plastic bottle sections to protect the shoots from birds and to focus my watering. 

I also planted some sugar snaps next to the pea trellis. I made a second trellis frame and sowed the sugar snaps. I thought some cornflowers scattered amongst them would look nice, so they went in too.

This is how that bed now looks. Sugar snaps & cornflowers under the two polytunnels on the left, the mangetout tripod in the centre with protective plastic bottles and the far right, 2 polytunnels of peas.

I also planted out some sunflowers into pots as I am worried about the direct-sown sunflowers still not making an appearence. Perhaps I planted them too early? It has been cold overnight. Well, I can but wait and see what happens. If they're all a no-show I'll simply try some more seed. The sunflower plant pots went into my mini-greenhouse with the rest of the potted seeds. The yellow scallop squash has started to show, and some courgettes. Hopefully everything will germinate soon.

I planted two hollyhock plants last time I was at the allotment but I don't think I mentioned it. They're at the 'shed end' next to the globe artichoke there. There is a white one and a scarlet red one. Looking forward to seeing them. They're such magnificent flowers. That's them, next to 'Bob' my plastic pigeon :)

My spring flowers are also coming on well. New to flower are these narcissi...

...and some tulips in red. There are white ones to follow.

There will be irises and ranunculus to follow. The big bushy plant to the far left of the photo is 'Black Stockings', which I put in last year after loving it at Hidcote Gardens. The smaller green plant is a Lady's Mantle (love the fan-type leaves!) and in the plant pot is the mint.

Bad news on the tomato front on my balcony... I did something really dumb and I fed them with too strong a mix, I think. They're looking very sad and I am not sure if they will recover. Damn. Human error!