Thursday 2 July 2009

Progress photos


The sweetcorn have really come on in the heat, some of them are starting to put up their flower stalks.


This is the first ever Romanesco sprout - it doesn't look like the ones you see in the shops, I thought they were supposed to be all green. This looks a bit like purple sprouting brocolli - talking of which, I have also picked two heads of that as well! I have also picked quite a bit of ordinary green calabrese. Despite all this, I have come to the conclusion that these type of brassicas don't really justify the amount of space they take up on my plot. The heads never get bigger than a couple of inches. Next year I think I will concentrate on cabbages (winter and summer) and purple sprouting brocolli.


These are the outdoor tomatoes, which are beginning to ripen. I have tasted a few of my greenhouse tomatoes, and they have so far all had rather disappointingly tough skins, so while I am hoping that the outdoor ones will be better, I have picked a few of the green greenhouse tomatoes and brought them into the kitchen to ripen in a box, in the hope that this will improve them. Otherwise they will just have to be made into soup and sauce.


Here are the first little runner beans developing! The french beans are forming as well. Not long now.

So currently I am harvesting new potatoes, peas, carrots, lettuces, cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, shallots, spring onions, and very nearly courgettes. The strawberries have slowed right down and are only producing quite small fruit now. I have amassed quite a few in the freezer for jam-making this weekend. The broad beans have just about finished.

In the garden, I'm afraid I have to confess to having resorted to spraying the asparagus beetles with Bug Clear. But it has certainly done the trick. As I mentioned in my previous post I also have a problem with raspberry beetle, but when I inspected my neighbour's allotment raspberries they appeared to be affected by it as well, so now I am in two minds as to whether I should put new plants in up there. Is this a very common ailment of raspberries I wonder? And do loganberries get it as well?

1 comment:

Jo said...

I've just found your blog and had an enjoyable time reading all your previous posts.
I got my allotment in March of this year and started a blog at the same time. I thought it would help me to remember when things were planted.
I'm sorry to hear that you've had vandals on your allotment. I hope the action you have taken with your shed will put them off.