Twin Leeks

Weather: Cloudy morning with sunshine later in the day. Mild.

Today is the annual show at the allotment. We have a ‘fun day’ including a vegetable and flower show. Everyone is welcome to enter and all of the produce is auctioned off at the end of the day, proceeds of which all go to the allotment. We are still raising money for out new toilet so any money made today will go towards that. 

Jobs completed:

Checked over the vegetables still growing and cut and prepared them for the show. Some vegetables such as the potatoes and onions have been out a while and just needed cleaning and preparing.

We entered the following into the show:

A small posy of Asters. The judge highly recommended these.

Our largest remaining cucumber. We won second prize for this 

In the ‘Other Veg’ category we entered a fennel. This also won second prize

Onions - we didn’t get a prize for these as we didn’t string the tops as per judging requirements. We have done this in previous years but the heavy rains at the time of lifting started to rot the stems so we cut them so they would store better

Potatoes. We won second prize for these too.

We didn’t enter a top tray this year preferring to enter into individual categories instead 

Weather: Warm and muggy

The asters are really coming into their own right now having had a good amount of rain and sunshine. They seem fairly long stemmed so we are hoping to be able to cut some flowers fairly soon. They are a mixture of bright pinks and purples

Jobs completed:

Watered the tomatoes and cucumber and basil in the greenhouse

Watered the squashes, courgettes and cucumbers outside

Picked a cucumber for dinner

Weather: Overcast and warm with rain later in the day

Jobs completed:

Harvested the rest of the onions and the shallots. Hung them in the shed to dry off

Weeded the vegetable beds and cut back the grass on our borders by hand. We had asked to use the strimmer today but discovered that there had been a break in during the week and both of our strimmers were taken. What a great gift during national allotment week!

Harvested some salad leaves, spinach, spring onions, cucumbers and herbs for dinner

Turned the rest of the compost

Watered the greenhouse

Weather: Overcast and warm with the odd torrential downpour. The weather this week has for the most part been warm and dry but the rain showers have become more frequent as the week has progressed

Jobs completed:

Harvested the onions. We have noticed in this rain that some of the larger bulbs have started to split. As it was raining so hard after digging them up we were only able to put them in the greenhouse ready to be hung. Weeded and dug over the rest of the bed

Watered the greenhouse

Picked our first cucumber. We have grown marketmore and have some growing inside and out. The outdoor plant has the largest fruit so we will be looking to bring th eothers outside soon.

Picked a large range of salad leaves - little gem, lambslettuce, spinach, land cress, rocket and some spring onions for dinner

Picked some raspberries

Cucumbers

Weather: Hot and sunny with some cloud cover in the morning

Jobs completed:

Spent most of our time weeding the vegetable beds today as well as picking lots of produce for dinner. We made a broadbean risotto tonight with fresh broadbeans, tender mangetout, garlic, chives, onion, spring onion, rosemary and sage from the plot. it was lovely!

Peas

Basil

Sweetcorn

French beans

Courgettes

Weather: Hot and sunny with some cloud cover during the day

Jobs completed:

Watered the tomatoes, cucumbers and basil

Picked some broadbeans, spring onions, raspberries and sweetpeas to take home. Dug up some rocket potatoes. The harvest isn’t great but there are a few to take

Weeded the flower beds

Dug up some garlic that had started to show signs of rust and left it out to dry. The bulbs aren’t quite as swollen as they could be but they will be fine to eat and we have more growing

Started to dig up the pathways that divide our strawberry beds. They are lawn paths and the couch grass is forever getting into the fruit beds. Removing them should make the never-ending task of weeding less taxing

Weather: Warm but overcast. The weather this week has dried up but there has still been the odd shower and  the cloud cover has persisted

Jobs completed:

Watered the greenhouse - tomatoes, cucumbers and basil

Picked raspberries and strawberries to take home

Picked some sweetpeas to bring home. They are really starting to flower now so frequent picking is essential to stop them from going to seed

Weather: Warm and sunny all day. Blue skies with the odd cloud

Jobs completed:

Planted up the mina lobata into a large florist bucket and trained it up a bamboo support. It has been growing happily in the greenhouse for a while, not wanting to go out in to the cold but we are hoping it will be clement enough from now on for it to prosper outside

Weeded the onions

Weeded the sweetcorn

Weeded the strawberries and cleared away any old fruit

Started to turn the compost. We have two meter square bins that we turn annually. We have recently come to the end of last years soil so it is time to turn the other bin to give it some air and mix up the contents

Watered the tomatoes and cucumbers

Later in the day we went for a walk around a local village. Fulneck is on the outskirts of Pudsey and is a Moravian settlement dating back to the 1740s. It lies opposite another village, Tong, on the other side of a lush valley great for walking in. Himalayan Baslam seemed to be creeping in everywhere but there were still lots of lovely wild herbs and vegetables to see

Wild sorrel

Wild watercress

Plantain

Blue skies and buttercups

Weather: Cloudy but mild with the odd very light shower here and there

Jobs completed:

Planted some leeks where it appears the birds have taken some from our bed

Weeded the onions

Re-staked the indoor cucumbers and tied them in. They are getting quite big now

Potted on an Alicante tomato seedling we had been given

Weeded the front flowerbed

Trimmed back the vine

Dug up some of the garlic

Picked raspberries, strawberries and salad for  dinner

Weather: Cloudy but mild. No rain! We have had heavy rainfall everyday this week interspersed with the odd bit of sunshine. The hosepipe ban that spanned parts of the country has been called off and many parts of the UK are now experiencing bad flooding

Jobs completed:

Planted out the purple sprouting broccoli. We walked on the soil to firm the bed down first then planted each seedling deep in the soil adding a handful of lime and water. This helps prevent clubroot. We then put some bamboo canes around the bed at about waist height and netted the broccoli to prevent the birds getting to them

Watered the greenhouse tomatoes, cucumbers and basil

Weather: Cloudy and bright morning with sunshine throughout the afternoon with the odd heavy shower

Jobs completed:

Bought lime from the allotment shop for the brassicas

Spent the rest of the day with dad. We drove over to see him and spent lots of time in the garden. We helped him plant his tomatoes up in the greenhouse, mowed the lawn and planted out lots of flowers he had started off from seed in the greenhouse such as cosmos and peruvian apple. We planted the tomatoes in florist buckets with supported canes in a ‘tunnel’. He has Marmande, Teton De Venus, Black Russian and some other yellow varieties his friend has given him of which he can’t remember the name

Tomato Tunnel

Mowing the lawn - rain stopped play!

Weather: Overcast but warm in the morning, breaking into blue skies mid-afternoon. Heavy sporadic rain in the afternoon. We have had some very heavy rain throughout this week.

Jobs completed:

Weeded the celery, peas, beans strawberries and broadbeans

Planted out the remainder of the asters as the others that we put out last week are all doing well

Picked some strawberries, raspberries and salad leaves and onions for dinner

Watered the cucumbers and tomtoes with a comfrey feed

Tied back the tayberries and hops