I realise that I haven't been a very good blogger recently ! that goes for posting on my own blog and reading other blogs also. I have been busy on the allotment and helping my son out with a recent house move, a niece's wedding in Italy, and clearing out my loft and selling things on e-bay which is all new to me. Some things I feel reluctant to sell, but hey ! they were only hanging about in my loft (for years) and I do need extra freezer space in the garage, so I thought why not sell a few items to help save up for a fridge/freezer for the garage to take all the extra fruit and veg I grew that had to be frozen. I am learning that if your not careful it can cost rather a lot to pay for all the bits and bobs (Insertion fees, photographs of the item, to name a few) to put things on e-bay and if one isn't careful you can actually be out of pocket if the item doesn't sell.
The allotment news is that most of my beds are cleared. I have halved my raspberry patch which had started off as 13 canes almost four years ago and ended up looking like a forest of canes which made it hard to harvest. I think I may have grown and planted too many globe artichokes, so I may take a few out as they take up so much space. But I wont make the decision until next year or I may end up regretting it.
Today I went up to plant the garlic, a bit later than I planned but still within the time needed for them to go in.
I dug up all but five of my precious 'pink giraffe' dahlias and now have an amazing amount of tubers which all came from one plant purchased a few years back at the Hampton Court flower show. I still have a number of them flowering in my garden as well, so a good supply for next year. Here's a photo of the lovely flowers , as you can see they aren't your ordinary dahlia, the spikey flower is quite unusual and anyone seeing it for the first time always ask what it is and never recognise it as a dahlia, myself included when I first saw it.
The pumpkins and squashes were a little disappointing this year, but the little 'munchkins' squashes were good.
I have been thinking about what i want to grow next year on the plot and making lists and now need to plan what is going where. I'm not very organised with my planning and have to guess what went where last year and rotate my crops a bit haphazardly, so next year I intend to keep a proper record ( my inner voice is saying -YEAH YEAH, heard it all before !!!!!) So that's about all my news and now I need to find time to have a read at what all you busy people have been up to and hopefully gleen a few tips and great ideas that you might have.
Have a great week-end
M xx
