Tales From Our First Allotment
This year we've grown three different types of courgette (defender, cocozelle and tondo from left to right in the photo). With varying degrees of success so far - mainly down to our lack of knowledge on the best way to care for them! Having grown a few last year which produced some fruit but all …
This seemed a quick win in my 'collecting seed from crops to grow for 2019' ambition for this year. Although I'm not sure I'm really counting my herbs as crops.... but anyway.... I left a lot of the flowerheads on the chives and they've dried in-situ and you can clearly see the little black seeds …
Finally started planting out the kale - it seems quite late in the year! Same as last year I've surrounded the base of the plants with crushed eggshell (to deter slugs) and covered the whole area with netting (to deter cabbage white butterflies) which seemed to work well. Last year we did have some problems …
Despite it being June, the whole of the North of England, Ireland and Scotland have been under a severe weather warning today. Last night I battened down the hatches as best as I could by securing the cold frame lid, closing up the plastic greenhouse and trying to weight down the front of the greenhouse …
June is working its magic and we've got baby round courgettes growing and in the greenhouse the aubergines are about to start flowering I think!
So, not technically from the plot but I'm having a go go at making sourdough from scratch and as it's such a lengthy process I wanted capture all the steps and be able to look back on how it goes. From reading around online the main steps are: Make a sourdough starter Use the starter …
Three days in and the beer Traps are definitely working!
Things have been ticking over on the plot through May. I've also just reached the stage where I sat down to sow seeds and realised I only had kale left to do. In a way that's great because I was starting the logistics of getting everything sown at different times, and potted on, and moved …
I started some pea and runner bean seeds indoors early this year in the hope of getting an early crop. That plan's been somewhat scuppered by all the snow and cold weather. The young plants had started to take over the bedroom windowsill and the beans were getting so entwined I thought I'd had enough …
8 hours on the allotment over this weekend and we've got 3 beds weeded, dug over and planted up with potatoes! After trying just a few potatoes last year to see how they went and really loving them we've gone for a whole bed each of colleen (1st early), Osprey (2nd early) and Picasso (main …
Bean Allotmenting 