Allotment and Garden Update

After a very busy couple of months, two fabulous family weddings, (one being in Italy), I am finally back to my normal routine. Well almost !!  The allotment was so overgrown when we got back from Italy and finally managed to get up there.  I set about pulling up the onions and drying them off to store.  The mangetout were almost over and the next later sown three rows ready to be staked and netted.  I am still picking runner and french beans. There has been so many that my neighbours have benefited too.  The flower beds on the allotment are amazing, especially the 'Asters' the colours are beautiful.  Just look at this bouquet I cut last week and I have more dotted around the house too.

Aster 'Duchess Mixed'  from 'Wilko's'

The Globe Artichokes are a good size, but I really only love the hearts and they were a little disappointing when I cooked some of them  as the hearts weren't worth all the effort that the cooking took, maybe next year when the plants are a year old !!

The garlic has been brilliant this year as have the onions, so they should all last me until next year.

Courgettes, not too bad but nowhere near as prolific as in recent years, and tomatoes not as good as I usually get either. In fact last year I couldn't keep up with either and had to make pasta sauce and freeze in batches, Oh well !!

As for my garden this year it has been fantastic. I grew more flowers from seed than I have ever done in the past and the Asters and Zinnia's have been so beautiful. I will grow them every year from now on. The 'Cerinthe' is a lovely and prolific as ever, the spikey marigolds unusual and lovely as long lasting cut flowers. The Dahlias never cease to amaze me for their longevity and the most precious one for me is my very first which is 'Pink Giraffe'  have a look at this selection of photo's to see what I mean.

The Garden in Bloom

                                                                      

Calendula 'Porcupine' 

Sutton seeds

Zinnia - Sutton seeds

Zinnia (pastel shades)  'Faberge Mix' Sutton seeds

'Cerinthe'   seeds collected from previous years plants

'Cosmos' Millennium, Unwins seeds, these are bright beautiful shades of yellows through to oranges and the foliage is less feathery than the pink and white shades, it's more ferny, well worth growing they are lovely. ( sorry photo a bit blurry)

  Dahlia  'Pink Giraffe'

 I have been visiting and catching up with the blogs I usually read but apologise that I haven't had time to leave comments.  Sometimes I long for the autumn and winter months so that I can get back to some reading and my crafts.  I love the allotment and garden, but between visiting my family and spending days at my son's enjoying the grandchildren life gets hectic and I never seem to have time to fit everything in.

Have a lovely week-end and let's hope the sun shines !!!

I've grown too much AGAIN !!!!

Last year I vowed not to grow excess amounts of veg on the plot this year, but I'm not sure how it happened but I have done it again.  Although it's lovely to share with the neighbours (which I did today !) but it all takes time to look after such vast amounts of plants. Trouble is I can't bring myself to compost healthy plants so even though I give away lot's of plants every year, I still have way too many.

I had a good harvest today and It's scary to know that although my fridge is full there will be more to harvest on my next visit. Next year I have to get it right !! how do you manage to just grow enough ? or do you also do as I do and grow too much ?

Here is some photo's taken on the plot today, it's all looking very lush. I dug up some garlic from the second bed  and this variety 'Cristo' is huge, it fit's into the palm of my hand.

The Globe Artichokes are enormous and growing like crazy.

The onions are growing well, they looked like blades of grass when I put them in as I grew them from seed.

I have lots of  self seeded Sunflowers and Calendulas, all brightening up the plot

The pumpkin and squashes are in

The Spinach has been amazing, but is slowly going to seed now so I have sown some more today.

The Runner beans and French beans have now reached the top of the wigwams and are all in flower.

The Tayberry has quite a few fruits now and I have been eating some for a couple of days.

The gooseberries have loads of fruit, the green ones are huge and the red ones are just turning from green to red and are delicious.

I am growing Cape Gooseberries in the greenhouse and this one is really getting big now and has quite a few fruits forming

And finally  here is the Broad beans, Mangetout, and Calabrese that I harvest today. I haven't grown calabrese before and I am so pleased with it as the heads have grown so big over the last week, I will definitely grow it every year.

It's been an amazing year so far, and there is so much more to come. All the potatoes are dug up now as I only grew first earlies. I will post the results on the varieties soon, as they were unusual  and I haven't grown them before.

Busy Busy Busy

I have been so busy these last few weeks, as I expect you all have as well. But I thought I should find a least half an hour today to do a post, as it's so easy to get out of the habit of regular postings.

Last Friday we went to stay with my son and his wife and enjoyed a day/night with the grandchildren, then on Saturday we caught the train and went to our other son who lives in central London. We had a fabulous time and visited Camden Lock , we haven't been there for years. It's an amazing place, buzzing with life and teeming with people. I must have taken over 150 photo's and have captured the spirit of the place, but that will have to be another post or even a link to flikr. If you ever get a chance to go I can really recommend it.


In the evening we ate out in Primrose Hill at a traditional Greek restaurant, the food and ambiance was brilliant. We then walked up Primrose Hill which is always crowded with people whatever the time.

On Sunday we went to Leicester Square and had lunch in a vegetarian South Indian restuarant and went to look around the amazing 'Liberty' store. The interior of the building is stunning, and for 'crafty' people like myself the haberdashery and fabric departments are awesome, I had to be dragged out screaming I WANT I WANT !!!!!!


Anyway ! that was the week-end, so now back to reality and the Garden (watered by a kind neighbour in exchange for Lot's of veggies) and the allotment watered by my daughter. I went up to check the greenhouse and the tomatoes were HUGE and some were ripe. There were courgettes (oh No) aubergines (moussaka today ) and hundreds of red and white onions to pull up and left on racks to dry, a few of the smaller ones I bought home to dry in the garden

Moussaka

These are the 'Abraham Lincoln' tomatoes grown from seed (VICTORIANA NURSERY)

the largest here weighed 12 ozs on it's own.

Little and Large ( a mix of different tomatoes)

The Newly built brassica tent, not quite a cage ! as we need more aluminum rods as I didn't buy enough, I have got all the 'Build a Balls' I need though.


Rosie has new clothes

Flowers picked from the garden this morning

Dahlias make a beautiful bouquet

That's about all for this post. I actually feel very tired today after all the walking about in London and I haven't done half the things I wanted to do. Never mind there is always tomorrow ! I now have to get on and get that moussaka cooked.

Have a good week everyone.

M x

A good start to the season.

I got to the plot yesterday to do some serious work and ended up staying there for four and a half hours. I dug another trench for the asparagus, that was hard work in itself, but then I had to fill wheelbarrow loads of manure and tip it into the trench with some compost and sharp sand. I planted the 'Conovers Colossal' that I'm trialing for 'Victoriana Nursery' I also bought 4 crowns of 'Pacific Purple' asparagus from a farm shop, which is why I had to dig another trench, I just fancied trying this purple one as well.

I pulled back the black plastic that I had covered some beds with over winter, it was great to see NO weeds. I have to work out where the potatoes and the Broad Beans are going, as both are ready to be planted soon.

Broad beans and Sweet Peas, photo taken 7 days ago

This photo taken today, they have grown very tall in 7 days

Onions, Red and White growing nicely and being hardened off each day, I have 3 more trays as well as these

Tomatoes growing in their little light box. These are 'Gardeners Delight' ( on the left) and just one so far has germinated of the 'Abraham Lincoln' but I'm hoping more will pop up soon of those as I am trialing those for Victoriana Nurseries. I have about another three more varieties that I'm going to sow next week. I want to try something different to the tomatoes I usually grow, and more varieties as well.

Needless to say I am aching everywhere to day, muscles I had forgotten I had. I will never learn that it's best to do little and often rather than long stints on the allotment. Ah well ! at least the sun was shining and I did achieve what I set out to do, so a very satisfying start to the season.

A surprise gift and other bits of chit chat

Special delivery

The postman delivered a small brown package for me today, I wasn't expecting anything,

so I couldn't wait to see what it was. Inside was this beautifully gift wrapped pressie. I knew at once who it was from because this person always wraps her gifts no matter how small, exquisitely.

I t was a surprise gift from my blogger friend Pam she makes the loveliest things. Inside the blue tissue paper was this little pin cushion with it's lovely beaded edges and complete with some bright coloured pins pushed in around a circle on the fabric.

On the other side is another coffee cup.

This was made from some fabric I had sent to Pam as a bit of a challenge, I had bought half a metre of the fabric to make something out of it, but I was stumped for ideas of what to use it for, so I thought I would share some with Pam. The fabric design is lots of squares of different brightly coloured coffee cups & saucers, and mugs. So when I sent some off to Pam, I never expected I would enjoy one of the results of her many talents.

Thank you so very much to Pam, and I look forward to her posting some other things she makes with the other pieces of the fabric.

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Baking

If you like baking, and especially like cup cakes for special events I can recommend this book. My son's girlfriend made him some delicious ones for his birthday recently using the recipe's from here. I was so impressed I had to buy my own copy to have a go at making something from it.

The best price seems to be from 'Amazon.co.uk' where I got it for £8.49 and no postage costs. It varies from £12.99 to £16.99 elsewhere. There are lots of lovely goodies to bake in here. bye the way 'The Hummingbird Bakery' is a famous bakery in London where they sell the cakes made from the recipes in this book.

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The Cutting Bed

Just to say that if you like dahlias, and want to add to your cutting bed then you can't get better than these 'Pink Giraffe' Dahlias, I cut them last Friday and they were already in flower for days before that on the allotment, and this photo was taken this morning and they still look fresh, I'll maybe get another day or two out of them.

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Harvests

A few photo's of the latest pickings from the allotment: some very large beetroots and two tiny ones pulled up accidentally.

Five very large tasty onions. I have pulled up around 70 ( drying off in the lottie shed) and still have more to pull, so shouldn't need to buy any for many months.



And last of all bags of French beans 'Fasold' I am picking these most days as I hate them to get too large, the runner beans are starting to come fast and furious now.


We all seem to have powdery mildew on our courgette plants which is slowing down the fruits developing, I look at other plots as I pass and everyone seems to have the same problem, I hope it doesn't spread to other squashes and pumpkins.

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Well thats about all my news over the last couple of days. The weather is foul, raining all day today so couldn't get to the lottie and I need to bring the onions home to dry out as they are overpowering the shed with the smell and the space they take up.

I've learnt to plait garlic.

Below is my first Italian red onion, with the round courgette, all ready to go into a stir fry. I bent over the foliage on lot's of the onions today ready to dig them up at the week-end, or whenever they look ready to come out. I should be self sufficient with garlic and red and white onions until well into next year. That's providing they all keep well. I grew all the onions from seed as I read that they store better for longer than onion grown from sets, we shall see !!

I went onto the Internet and googled 'plaiting garlic' , I found a good site that had really clear instructions and diagrams, so printed it off and had a go as i want to store the garlic traditionally. Below is the first and final attempt, it was fiddly but worth the effort as it looks nice as well as being good for the garlic as the air circulates well and help preserve it for longer.

This is how the garlic started out, it had just been dug up.

Dry, clean and roots trimmed.

My first attempt at plaiting, it's trickier than you think.

I got better on the second attempt

And below is the link for the instructions and diagrams for plaiting your own garlic.

http://www.powen.freeserve.co.uk/veg/BraidGarlic/braiding%20garlic.htm

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PHOTO'S OF THE PLOT TAKEN TODAY.

Nasturtium's, 'tom thumb'

French bean flower, 'Fasold'

A Squash flower, they are so beautiful.

First squash.

The sunflower hedge, 'Velvet Queen'

As you can see from this photo the plot opposite has been strimmed of all the tall weeds, it looks so much better.

The blue painted wheelbarrow that was given to me by Ken, another plot holder. I planted it up and it looks great.

Cosmos and dahlias

Dahlia 'Pink Giraffe'