Big Allotment Catch Up

Well, it's certainly been a long time since I've had an allotment update. Where I'd left off, we had just planted some spare squash and beans (we did have some spare runner beans after all) and since a lot of time has passed I think I'll group all the pictures into the different veggies.

The spinach is perhaps the least interesting as it definitely bolted due to the hot weather, it looked like a mini forest. I have since learned from a colleague at work that you should ideally sow spinach in the autumn months instead of the height of summer.

Our beans eventually did really well, we were inundated with French beans to begin with, and then also runner beans (which we have decided are nicer), we honestly couldn't eat or give them away fast enough. We also had a lot of beetroots but I can't find any pictures of them.

Our courgettes also exploded. The one we tried to save from the original group of squash, unfortunately, didn't survive, but the others did exceedingly well. We have eaten so many courgette cakes that we're starting to look like them.

We ended up with five pumpkins in total! We have eaten one and given one away, and the other three are waiting their turn in our hallway. Growing the big pumpkins this year has made me question the Halloween carving of them, they take so much time to grow... I'll have to brainstorm alternatives! I didn't manage to consistently take photos of their growth though, so the progress is a little jumpy.

And finally, a collection of a few other things we grew such as onions, chard, and flowers!

It's pretty much the end of the season for us now so there will most likely be no more updates until the spring.

Thanks for catching up with the allotment happenings!

See you next time,

Mort

Great Beans Disaster 2 - Electric Boogaloo

Sooooooo much like Rogue One, oooor Romeo and Juliet, you begin this post knowing how it ends! It's said that this increases the enjoyment of films, knowing the twists.

But small digression aside already on the allotment were the onions, looking good and strong, but something had munched on most of the baby spinach.

Possibly Two Weeks Ago

New to the allotment were two pumpkins and two courgette plants which I planted, and mum and dad planted the runner beans around the trellis. (This meant that we still had half the courgettes and pumpkins, and all of the french beans at home.)

We undertook all of this new planting in torrential rain. I found it incredibly fun, bad weather always increases the sense of being in nature, the dog didn't agree with me though...

Immediately following, we had a run of about a week where we weren't able to visit the allotment, in which there were storms, and immense heat, and also some super chilly weather. Needless to say, that didn't bode well for our freshly planted veggies.

When we returned, box of the spare plants in hand, the grass was up to our knees and the runner beans were completely decimated. Three out of the four squash plants had been eaten through at the stems, and even more of the spinach had gone missing!

So over the next two days, I mowed the grass, mum chopping the bits the mower couldn't get to, and we all planted the spare squash and beans. We're even attempting to save the one still marginally alive plant from the original group by potting it!

So we'll see how the new plants fair. It does, unfortunately, mean we're not going to have any runner beans this year, but hopefully the french beans will do well and we'll have loads of those to go around!

That's all for now,

see you next time!

Mort

Parsnips to Spinach

At home, we're almost at the point where we can bring our nursery plants to the allotment. Our French and Runner beans shot up and are quickly climbing into the air, the courgettes and pumpkins have all been successful (now we have too many!) and are in the process of being acclimatised, and our cosmos are standing nice and tall too.

French Bean sprouting

French Bean

All the beans, all growed up!

Pumpkins and Courgettes

On the allotment, the onions and rhubarb are going strong and we even have some strawberries flowering. The parsnips are still a no show, so we turned the soil over and I separated and planted some baby spinach! And dad planted some chard, covering them with half bottles to act as mini-greenhouses.

The pond is also at an exciting stage, the toad spawn we spotted a month or so ago has turned to tadpoles and they're all so wiggly and gathering at the edges of the water. We also discovered that something has been making its nest in our twine, so we're finding other ways to ties things to other things and hope that whatever lives in there is having a nice time.

That's all for now! I'm super excited to see the toads develop and can't wait to see how all the plants get on, hopefully, next time we'll have planted the beans and pumpkins.

See you next time,

Mort