A Review of 2019

My apologies for the lack of posts over the summer, while I have managed to keep up with the tasks on the plot and get a good haul in the process, time for posting here has been a bit short. Work and DIY does tend to get in the way, along with quite a few BBQ's of course.

The cold start and hot couple of months did cause a few issues but it's fair to say that everything planted put in some kind of appearance and we certainly didn't go short this year.

So here is a rather pictorial update of this years progress.

Love a freshly picked sweetcorn. They did well this year despite a bit of wind damage

50mph winds bent a few of the sweetcorn

The changeable weather meant that the sprouting broccoli put in an early appearance this year

Plenty of tomatoes this year, although the dry conditions did make some of the skins a little tough

Malbec carrots. The first planting had to be scrapped but the second produced a good crop. Carrot fly have been an issue this year

Even managed to get a couple of decent sized peppers

It was a good onion crop this year

Last of the onions strung for winter usage. I'll definitely grow from seed next year as well

Carrots, leeks and parsnips. The leaf miner has hit the leeks again this year but there are still some usable ones. Some kind of protection will be needed for next year

The biggest of 2 pumpkins, large squashes didn't have a great year

And they ended up like this!

A picture from last weekend. Leeks, parsnips and brassicas. Oca covered in fleece in the background. I need to remind myself what to do with them. 

This year I've pickled my own onions, they do have a bite! and even got to like a boiled beetroot

The plot is looking quite tidy. I've manured and covered all the finished beds and I've been working on tidying the fruit bed. I don't think I'll get the strawberries replaced this year but I'll have the bed ready in the spring.

We've had the usual end of season visits from the vandals and they slashed the pea cage netting and Brian's shirt. It happens every year, usually closer to christmas, but at least they left the veg alone.

Hope you've all had a good season.

Happy Gardening Folks!!

Meet Percy..

As some of you will remember, 2018 was not my year for parsnips, something I'm normally quite good with. In fact we have only two this year.

We popped down to check covers etc over the weekend and decided to dig up this fellow, one of the cleanest parsnips I've actually ever grown, at the moment he is destined to be soup. 

Elsewhere there is very little left growing, just some chard, kale, slightly eaten cabbage, holey carrots and the last parsnip.

The Cape Gooseberries and Chillies have been killed off by the frost and once again the allium leaf miner struck and ruined what was once looking like a promising leek crop. That's 3 years in a row now I have had trouble with these pests.  I know a few fellow plot holders have also had issues, although it seems totally random who they hit. 

There doesn't seem to be any chemical control available but here is an extract from the RHS site regarding non chemical control

"Plants can be protected by covering them with horticultural fleece, or an insect-proof mesh such as Ultra-Fine Enviromesh, at times when the adult flies are active and laying eggs (March to April and October to November). Crop rotation must be used, as adult flies might emerge from pupae underneath the covering if susceptible plants are grown in the same piece of ground in successive years."

I will be growing onions and leeks from seed this year and am unlikely to plant them out before May, so it appears that my best hope is cover any unharvested crops for Oct-Nov. Guess we'll give that a try.

Happy gardening folks!

The Clear Up Begins..

The farm never seemed to get as green and bushy this year as it has done in previous years, thanks mostly to the random weather. It always looked a bit like it was struggling this season with too many gaps.

Pretty much everything has finished now, we've had a couple of sharp frosts already in Essex, a look at the Currently Growing list shows what we've got left and compared to a few plot neighbours its not a lot really. 

My cross breeding pumpkins never really made it with only a hint of orange, but I'm pleased with the greyhound cabbages, kale and chilli's.

Given that we are not big fans of the winter gardening we've been busy clearly the beds ready to manure and cover. I have one more raised bed edge to do, which is scheduled for this weekend, the woods already purchased. This one will be the standard 19 x 8 1/2 feet with a 3 foot extra of frame on the end for the compost bins which are moving to a new spot for next year.

I emptied the compost bins last week to move them to allow me to do the new edges and got one full bin of useable material which I spread around, and a shock when a rat with a foot long body shot out as I lifted one of the bins. It's a good job Heather wasn't around, I'd be deaf by now!

The raised beds have already saved me a lot of time managing the grass edges this year so if I can get the last one done soon we'll be in a good position for next year. I am going to divide the beds in half with a raised wood chip path across the middle. Ideally I'll get this done before we put the covers on, but time and weather may affect that one.

The digging was pretty easy but did show that the soil was still pretty dry, I'm going to leave the covers off for a bit longer in the hope of rain to replenish the moisture ready for next year. I have to go and collect some builders buckets of manure before they go on too. It was worth digging the potato bed over again as it yielded about a plants worth of spuds that had been missed...

I love the look of a freshly dug and raked bed

So still growing we have:

Bed 1 - Cape Gooseberrys, Chard, Spring Onions and Tomatoes  

Bed 2 - Carrots, Parsnip!, Beetroot, Leeks and Asparagus

Bed 3 - Cabbages, Kale and Courgette

Bed 4 - Chillies

Bed 5 - Just cucumber and the last sweetcorn plants to come out.

The fruit bed is next years project, I'm still thinking about that one. 

The blog posts have been a bit sparse this year, a time thing again, something that affects a lot of bloggers I think. I'm thinking of changing the format from a large blog articles which take time to sit and write, to smaller posts from the mobile app, more like Facebook or Instagram posts. Smaller but more regular. I'm still thinking about this one. 

Hope you've all still got plenty growing and are on top of the jobs.

Happy gardening folks!

Squashy Strangeness!

Even more strangeness after the courgette/marrow conundrum that Mal helped out with.

I'm not sure if it is the heat, bad labelling of seeds or if there is some kind of courgette inter-breeding going on on the farm, (well it is Essex!), but there are some strange results amongst the squashes.

On the top should be spaghetti squash and on the bottom should be pumpkins.

 

The spaghetti certainly look the right colour and shape, the pumpkins near enough, but neither are growing out on trailing vines, they are growing from the centre stalk like courgettes or marrows would.

Heather says they must be courgettes, so we should pick them, but I'm wanting to just let them grow and see what they end up like. Possibly some wierd new species. It's not like we are short of courgettes.

Anybody else come across anything like this?

Total for courgettes is 41 so far this year, and so far we are managing to get rid of the surplus. I've restarted the counter but as we have so many varieties this year I'm just doing a running total.

The small Yellow Scallop patty pan style ones are just starting to come through. It didn't look like these were going to produce but it looks like they were just late starters. I've not done these before so looking forward to eating them.

Happy gardening folks!!

Foreign Soil

We've just come back from a few days in Barcelona, one of my favourite city's to visit. I love visiting food markets in other countries, the range of produce, especially the seafood always amazes me. The price of prawns on the continent also makes me very jealous, what we pay here is criminal!.

The market on La Rambla is well worth seeking out if you take a trip there, here are a few shots of the fruit and veg stalls, the presentation is always perfect and so well organised. The meat, fish and cheese stands are worth checking out too, as long as your don't mind coming eye to eye with the odd sheeps head.

You can even buy prepped fruit cups, and my favourite the cones, cheese, meat or seafood is available like this and makes a great snack for only a few euros.

As well the markets we find ourselves looking out for allotments and veg gardens these days as well.

Near our hotel we found a community garden that has just been started as an experiment by the city council. It allows the local residents the chance to grow some produce, most live in apartments, in a joint effort. The garden is divided into small plots, but the work is shared, no one owns a plot. They are also organic, no chemicals are allowed.

They seem to be doing well with tomatoes, courgettes, chillies and beans all growing nicely. They have a year round growing season, it must be nice not to worry about a late frost.

Just before we went I managed to get a solid 11 hours work in on the farm, progress report to follow shortly, until then...

Happy gardening folks!!

The Bullet is Bitten

What a lovely Easter weekend, or should I say typical...

We go away tomorrow for 9 nights and predictably the weather improves, just not where we are going. The broad beans were starting to get pot bound so we had no choice but to brave it and start the season on Sunday.

Under the covers the ground is a bit warmer and not too wet. A quick hoe down to about 6 inches to break up any lumps of manure or compressed bits where the securing stones have been, a rake over and its ready for planting. Here's a before and after shot.

There is still fair bit of rain forecast in the next couple of days so the spuds and asparagus can wait until we get back, for now it was the broads to go out, some peas seeds and a few odd bits under cloches to plant. Oh and the usual weeding.

The broads have been living in the cold frame so should be fairly well hardened off, the worry as ever is any high winds. As you can see they were getting desperate to be planted out. There are 34 plants in all so hopefully a good crop. Maybe this years bad weather will keep the black fly at bay. You live in hope. Here's the finished job.

Under here are couple of short rows of radishes, beetroot, lettuces and something called Red Orac, a spinach substitute, we had haven't tried it before, we found it at a garden show. Could be interesting.

I know this may seem like a lot of pea seeds to put in a trench, but our luck with them is appalling, so carpet bombing and thinning is the way forward this year.  

Heather gave the garlic, remaining leeks and asparagus bed a good weeding, once she'd finished lunch in the boot of the car that is, surprisingly little had actually grown. The beds behind H are next doors, he is currently putting us to shame.

We are still harvesting last years crops, the weather had kept us away so they are lasting us well. Some of the parsnips are huge now, the leeks never really got that big, the sprouts are done and  finally the purple sprouting broccoli is coming through.

The rhubarb and the raspberries are showing new signs of life, so mother has got her act together somewhere at least.

I have a day off when we get back so that will be spuds and asparagus day, fingers crossed for good weather!

Happy gardening folks!!

Death, Destruction and Blight..

Or at least that's what it felt like this weekend.

Yes the dreaded tomato blight has hit, just when things were really getting going nicely. We had been really pleased with the choc cherry and the Alicante were a fantastic size, but alas we had one really long day of rain followed by some humid days and bang....we've lost the lot.

We've picked everything we think we can salvage and the rest have headed for the wheelie bin, its best to deal with it early rather than help ruin everyone else's crop as its wind spread. We have one plant that popped up in a different bed left unaffected, (so far anyway), and we each have some backup plants at home that hopefully will keep us supplied. With a bit of luck of last bowl of plot Toms will keep long enough for us to use them all.

A lot of people on the gardening forums and blogs we follow have succumbed so we are not alone this year, it's just a bit heartbreaking when things are going so well. A lot of seasoned plot holder don't bother to try growing them in the open space of allotment sites anymore.

 

I had planted a couple of rows of Tom Thumb lettuces, which while fast growing, weren't very tasty, rather watery and bland. We were working our way through them but suddenly they all decided to bolt at once. Another addition to the compost bin!

This leaves us rather short of lettuce, down to salad bowl only in fact  as I have been a bit remiss in my planting duties of late. In desperation I have returned to buying in. A tray of Lolo Roso from the local market will hopefully plug the gap until my hurriedly planted Little Gems are big enough. 

Finally, another bolter! This is the first time I've ever grown bulb fennel. I wasn't quite sure when to pick it, but as some of the bulbs looked a good size I consulted the Alan Titchmarsh gardening book. "Pick when big enough to use" he said so I made a mental note to start picking on my next trip down.

You can imagine my displeasure therefore when I got to the picking moment, and the lot had bolted, which according to Alan "makes it useless for kitchen use"............oh bugger!

I've picked a few bulbs with the least top growth to try and use them for the braised fennel and fennel with parmesan I had in mind, but as Alan knows his stuff I'm not sure how it will go. Once they bolt they get a very woody core which I'm going to try and cut around.  You can see them in the first produce pic below, the rest sadly are compost.

Learn by my mistakes and better luck, and fore warned next year!

So while it was a frustrating farm visit this weekend it hasn't been all bad news, we are still producing far more than we can use, (see the courgette count), and taking away a wonderful range of veggies. We even managed to trade some produce for a couple of drinks in the local pub, so that cheered me up a bit. 

It is pics like these that make the low spots worth it.

Its also a good job Heather got a bike with a basket!

The full August Update to follow soon.

Happy Gardening Folks!!