Allotment update ... ...

It's been a few weeks since I last visited the allotment, this time I dragged everyone else along as well.

On the face of it it looked terrible, but all is not what it appears, yes it did need a fair bit of weeding, but the majority of the weeding was done by digging up the potatoes, of which we got 20kg ! that's 10kg more than last year, although the reds (I forget what they were called) didn't grow at all, so it's all whites and with the 3kg we managed to grow in the gardens we nearly had 25kg, still hope to get more next year.


The view when we first got there -

We're going to need a bigger spade !

Not all that bad really, this is how it was once the spuds got dug up -

See that's better isn't it.

It took a bit of doing, but we got 2 bucket fulls of spuds -

Can't beat a home grown spud, especially with a load of butter.

I still haven't got round to building the poly-tunnel, all in good time, so I had to hack back a load of weeds at the top of the plot, and as usual we had to cut down the line of weeds that grow between our half of the plot and the other half.

We did wonder if spuds was all we were going to get, but as it turns out there's a fair bit of stuff that hasn't been eaten by the squadrons of slugs and snails we've had in our area.


Some other veg -

Corn is doing well, unlike the ones in our garden at home.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the corn hasn't been destroyed, there's about 20 plants there, not many I know, but they (like the spuds) are doing much better this year than they did last year, the spare tomato plants are also doing okay, perhaps a bit small.


Corn plants -

Hopefully we'll get to eat some before the kids do.

Tomatoes aren't in short supply this year, we've grown a load, most of which are currently turning my green house into a jungle, we normally have trouble with tomato plants getting blight and other such problems, so this year I have them all in tubs in the greenhouse and they are doing much better, the spare plants have been put anywhere we could find space, this includes the allotment, and it would appear that although the plants are small they might bare fruit as well.


They have flowers, we'll see if they turn into tomatoes -

Fingers crossed.

Here's my current view when I look in the green house - 

There are loads more in the under growth.

Last year we managed to grow all the pumpkins we used for Halloween, and this year we have at least one pumpkin, and we should get some more, as well as some winter dumplings (another type of squash) need to make sure they get as big as possible.

Our first (of many hopefully) pumpkin - 

Fingers crossed it gets big enough to carve a face on it.

Some of the other things we have are turnips and some broad beans, all of which are doing okay, we have lost a lot due to the hose pipe ban and pests, especially the pea crop which got stripped bare by birds, so I have plans to build a netted cage type area for the growing of peas and other legume type things, I'm kind of learning as I go along what pests and problems the plot has.

The strawberry plants we got from free-cycle last year are going mad, runners everywhere, so I might have to extend the strawberry bed, but that's a few bits of wood and a couple of screws.

All in all with what we have at home and the plot we should get a better crop of things than we did last year, and although it's not going to be huge amounts it's an improvement on last year, so if we can keep that trend up then next year should be even better, well that's the theory at least.

Here's what the plot looked like after we left - 

Still needs work, but it's not too bad.

Thanks for reading.