I ♥ Loulou

Seamus' dog Loulou passed away yesterday, here she is looking very regal at the lottie with Daz in the background. Will miss you Loulou.

Ta daaaaah!

Check out our new fruit cage! I asked James to build one for us a couple of months ago. It took about 5 hours to put up, the weather was glorious, we both got proper farmer tans! Each panel comes off so we can get inside and its really sturdy. I wasn't expecting anything nearly this fancy but its great, it'll last for years. Am really looking forward to having loads of fruit, we've got 10 raspberry canes, two redcurrant bushes, one white currant bush and one black currant bush in the cage.

I made nettle quiche the other day, it was delicious but if I made it again, I'd definitely put more nettles in.

A very different plot...

Allotment 28a is a very different plot these days. Since my last post 5 months ago we've been hard at work transforming the lottie. We've got loads of raised beds now, they're all in, and working is a lot easier. There's a part of me that's sad that it won't be the same overgrown patch as last year, but its great having level ground and space to move around between the beds. Last year when we watered, the water ran straight off into the grass, but now it seeps into the ground where its needed.

So. What have we planted/moved. We picked 10 of the best raspberry canes and gave the rest to other plot holders and planted them in a long bed where they were before along with 2 red currant bushes, one white and one black currant bushes. We ditched our onions as we got bored of watching them doing very little, but we kept the shallots. We split the rhubarb and planted it at the ends of 2 raised beds. We moved the lavender bush to a different bed and made it a herb bed. 

We got all our potatoes in at the end of March. We've got Dunluce and Rocket which are both earlies and good old King Edwards for roasting. That's 3 beds of spuds. Yum.

Our winter/spring veg has been really funny. The birds kept on stripping it so by the time we managed to cover it properly it had basically had enough and did nothing for months. Now there's a bit of warmth and sunshine its growing although not enough to harvest anything. A bit of a waste of time but at least we'll know for next time. We might get enough for one meal of purple sprouting before we have to get the plants out to make way for something else. Oh well.

We've got some horseradish in a container. That's something that I'm really looking forward to, I ADORE horseradish. Horseradish on everything please.

I started some broad beans, Seamus started some peas and they've gone in, and looking rather fantastic. We've got leeks and french beans in the propagator and some other bits and pieces. 

I'm making nettle quiche right now for dinner, didn't manage to last year, hope its good...

Here's some more pics:

New beds

Its a long time since I've blogged anything about the allotment. But its getting into winter properly now, there's not much going on at plot 28a. Apart from....our new raised beds! Its very exciting to finally be putting them in so we can be more organised for next year. 

This was the first one that Seamus and I put in.

We've managed to place a few more now, but it will be a while before they are all in place.

We've had to move the onions and the cabbage and cavelo nero that we'd already put in into the new beds as they were in the way. 

As we're so close to the trees our plot is totally covered by the falling leaves, I've collected 4 bags so far to make leaf mould, but there's a million more to collect!

Its almost like its snowing leaves when its windy...

October already!

Tanya, Seamus and I managed to all get to the lottie at the same time on the same day..... that hasn't happened for a while. We managed to get through a lot of work clearing the plot, taking out the old bean wigwam, taking out the pumpkin, courgette and cucumber plants. We also cleared more of the new plot that Shelley has kindly lent us.

We harvested masses of jalepenos and the last of the salad leaves. The sunflowers are looking fabulous. And we discovered another frog in the old water container.

As you can probably tell I am still struggling with organising the layout of this blog and one day I will master it, just not today!!!

Can't wait to get all the new veg in the ground and start the winter harvest! Bring it on!!!

Sunflowers & Slugs

Paulene, me and my dogs went to the lottie this afternoon, it was so lovely the sun had just moved so that the plot was in the shade. We dug some more of the patch that Tanya had started. Something slug or pigeon had been munching our winter brassicas some of them look almost totally stripped of course it was the lovely Italian black kale. So we strung a network of bamboo string and CD's to keep away the birds. I watered all the remaining fruit and veg & Paulene harvested a load of lush veg: runner beans, courgette, cucumber, parsley, salad oh and raspberries yum.
The multi-headed sunflowers are looking lovely so here are a couple of pics.

Newts, squirrels and the late summer harvest

Its been a busy month, we've all been on holidays, its rained a lot, we've harvested a lot, and we've experienced some highs and some lows with our allotment.

Our successes have been the runner beans, broad beans, potatoes, parsley, courgettes, sunflowers, rhubarb, pumpkin, radishes and chard. We've all harvested lots of delicious veg, and personally I've been blanching and freezing like mad, my freezer full of runner beans. I've made delicious beetroot salad, vast quantities of lettuce soup, and I've finally got over my childhood fear of broad beans!

And now to the less successful moments... not so good were the peas, melon, aubergine, cucumbers and sweetcorn.

We were all so looking forward to some gorgeous corn. In fact it was the one thing I really really wanted to grow and eat, to experience how sweet it really should be. Our plants were doing really well and the cobs were forming and getting plump. One day they looked like this:

And the next day this is what we found:

The local $£@!*&^% squirrels had carefully peeled each one and eaten most of our gorgeous corn. We managed to salvage three nearly ripe cobs and so at least we each had one. And they were even better than I expected which made it more disappointing. Next year we'll still grow corn, but in a cage!

We've got in some autumn and winter veg - kale, cavelo nero and cabbage, but the slugs are dining out on the young plants. I've recently seen what a slug pellet does to a slug, and it ain't pretty!! I've been collecting them in bags and chucking them in the bin. Dead slug smells bad too.

We've cleared and dug most of the bit of Shelley's plot that she gave us a month or so ago, we've put most of the autumn and winter veg in there:

We've also got lots and lots of what I think must be newts in the metal water butt. There were loads of these ones about a month ago:

Today I had a look and there were lots of smaller black newts, I caught one in a cup to get a better look and it was very black and had 'whiskers' coming out from below its head. There really are a lot of them in the tank, but I can't identify them from any websites as there don't seem to be any good pictures of baby newts.

We spent yesterday evening eating a gorgeous roast chicken dinner (thank you Seamus!) and looking through catalogues and deciding what we're going to grow next year.

Finally, here's a new pic of our plot, there are gaps appearing again where we've taken out the sweetcorn, broad beans, peas, beetroot and potatoes:

Am looking forward to our first autumn and winter at 28a!