Heavy rain brings abundance....and weeds!

Seamus and I popped up the lottie in the rain this Saturday to get some goodies for us tea. Good grief it's amazing what a lot of rain can do. Everything is just blooming. Gathered broad beans, runner beans, peas, beetroot, potatoes, salad, courgettes, chard, parsley, radishes and rhubarb. I can't quite believe that we have managed to grow so much in such a short space of time....it's only been 4 months!

The sweetcorn is firming up and the squash/pumpkin/whatever it is is almost the size of a beachball! Even tho the sunflowers went in very late they are really coming on. Am off to Scotland this week and am taking some of our produce up for Mum and Dad to savour. It turns out my paternal grandad, who I never met, loved growing vegetables in his garden in Glasgow, so maybe I get my love of it from him!

Can't wait to see what it all looks like when I get back!

Mini harvest

I haven't been to the allotment for a week and when I arrived today I couldn't believe my eyes. We have beans, courgettes, big fat peppery radishes, cucumbers and a pumpkin that has grown from a golf ball size to a small football in 7 days!

I picked some beans, they were small but I go away on Sunday for 2 weeks and I wanted to taste them before I left. They were delicious. 

I got another yellow courgette from Shelley, and gave her some rhubarb as we still have loads.

I watered everything well and did some weeding, and dug up some potatoes. Some of the peas have given up, probably haven't had enough water, but that's fine because we can take them out and use the space for something else.

Last weekend we took up the carpet from a section of Shelley's plot that she's giving us. I'll take a photo tomorrow and post it. We'll probably put our winter and spring veg there when it arrives.

I made a delicious rhubarb and blackberry crumble tonight, it was so tasty and a gorgeous colour. This is all that was left....

Potatoes, beetroot and flowers

Spent 4 hours at the allotment today, mostly weeding, drinking coffee, talking to a couple of our neighbours and looking at all the gorgeous flowers. I dug up some potatoes, the leaves were turning yellow with brown spots, is it blight? Who knows. Just to be on the safe side I dug them up and will be having some for dinner tonight.

Shelley gave me some strawberry plants so I put them in where the potatoes had been.

I put some others in pots in case Seamus thinks they can go somewhere else on the plot, otherwise he and Paulene can take them home if they want them, I took four home.

It was quite nice and sunny with enough cloud to give some shade from the heat, and there were quite a few people there today, probably the most I've seen.

Here are some pics from today, a lot are of flowers from our plot and the ones around us.

Courgettes looking good..

Bindweed has such a beautiful flower...

One of our neighbours has some fantastic looking corn. Much further along than ours...

And their chard looks gorgeous too...

I had a visitor today, very cute little bird hung out with me most of the afternoon...

The sweetest peas

There's no nicer way to eat a pea than to pick a pod in the morning sunshine and eat the peas raw when they're young and sweet. Delicious!

I went to the allotment this morning and sat for a while, amazed how everything had grown so much since the heavy rain during the week. The ground was dark and wet, unfortunately the weeds had benefited too. I spent about an hour weeding, clearing grass and some nastursiums that were crowding the peas and beans.

I thinned some of the beetroot, we really need to thin all of it, but we really don't have any more room. So maybe we'll just have small beetroot instead. 

Some of the peas still aren't doing well, maybe they went in too late? 

Our jalapenos are doing really well, better than the plants I have at home anyway.

Beans are looking good, they're all climbing high up the bamboo poles and flowering well.

Here's a photo of nettle mountain! It scares me everytime I look at it...

Delicious leaves

I'm not going to buy any salad this week...I am going to eat only the delicious leaves from the allotment. I think my favourite are the nastursiums, they are so peppery and unusual. And we have an abundance, so I'll be eating a lot over the next weeks!

Everything is growing so fast. I spent a couple of hours on Friday afternoon and Saturday afternoon at the plot and even overnight some things had grown more.

Much of my time was spent weeding with our handle-less hoe! Slightly back breaking and always monotonous, but very essential.

I also planted some more salad and some radishes. It is salad weather after all!

I've just been looking back at my photos from the past 3 months since we got the plot. I can't believe the transformation, and I think we can be very proud of what we've achieved in such a short time:

Late June

After 2 weeks away I went to the allotment last friday and saturday to see how things were coming along. I was really pleased and excited and am really looking forward to eating some of the veggies that we're growing.

The broad beans that Matt gave us are looking great. Personally I hate broad beans but am determined to give them the benefit of the doubt, and surely beans we've grown ourselves are going to taste great! 

Some of our potato plants are looking a little sad, the yellowing leaves and slightly smaller plants don't look too good. Seamus was going to try and find out what might be the problem, fingers crossed we don't have blight.

The corn and beetroot are looking good. I picked some beetroot leaves and some lettuce and had them for lunch today, they were yum.

I think I saw a newt in the water butt...although it could've been a young frog. But it looked like a newt to me. We'll have to keep an eye out for him.

The best news is that we've been allowed to take over the plot beside ours, on the other side of the water butt. Seems like the committee are really impressed with our work so far and have agreed to us taking on what is known as 'nettle mountain'! At the moment its a scary prospect as its covered in very high nettles and bindweed. But a bit more hard work and we should have it up and running for next year. We're thinking we might grow some fruit trees and flowers on it and possibly have a seating area. 

Early morning allotmenting

As Paulene posted below, we were all really pleased to get the plants in on Saturday - we're finally growing some veg!

I woke up at a ridiculous hour on Sunday and after seeing a text from Seamus from Saturday night I got up and went to the allotment as there was some room in a skip and we had A LOT of rubbish to get rid of. I arrived at 7.30-ish, the sun was shining but it was still nice and cool. I picked up a lot of slugs and wandered around looking at our plants and willing them to grow quickly!

When we cleared the plot we had to pile up all the grass, nettles and other nasties, putting some into bags and the rest into the compost area that was there when we took it on. The purpose of my visit this morning was to try and shift some of the pile...I managed to get rid of about 20 bags plus 6 rubble sacks that I had bought with me. It was hard but satisfying work, seeing the pile go down inspired me to keep going.

This is how it looks now, not so daunting and ready for when we get a small skip in a couple of weeks:

Our raspberries are ripening, and they are delicious!

While I was there I heard a lot of fire engines then saw an ominous cloud of black smoke appearing to the south east. It turned out that it was the fire at the electricity sub station in Sydenham.