August

1^st August

Well it may be August but the rain continues. A constant light drizzle all day. Of course the good thing is that I don’t have to do any watering at the allotment. Imagine how many trips to the trough I would need to water the entire plot, and to have to do it maybe 2-3 times a week if there was a serious hot, dry spell. On our travels today we stopped at the allotment for courgettes and picked 5 including the first 2 of the yellow ones and yes, 2 of them found their way on to our plates for dinner, as well as 2 older ones. We are easily managing to consume them as we go, but then not every plant is in the full swing of production yet – that will probably happen whilst we are away. We leave on Thursday for 2 weeks in the Lake District and I can foresee a huge glut of overly large marrows by the time we get back. I would like someone to pick them while we are away but I really want to have an accurate record of how many have been picked for my records (how sad am I?) so I will have to ask and instruct someone reliable.

I haven’t really mentioned much about the garden for a while maybe because due to the weather we have not been spending much time in it. The flowers are doing well. The silver leafed cinerarias are generally coming along fine, and as for the salvias, some are in a good bloom whilst others have nibbled-off tips. The ageratums are in bloom and they are not as large as the picture on the packet suggest (one shouldn’t be surprised) but that may well be due to the fact they are cramped and were potted-on late. However, they are multiple headed and provide a good contrast and point of interest at the bedding level. The fuchsias are in full swing and looking good and the sweet peas are still doing well along the fence but struggling up the wigwams – are they too close together there? The container of nicotianas is absolutely stunning, a real success. My wife and I are so pleased with it. The white and pink roses are in their second bloom already and the lavenders are still going strong. The herbs are looking good; the fennel is setting seed and is over 6 feet high. The rosemary, French tarragon and sage are thriving but the oregano looks like the leaves have been affected by something but now it is in flower so looks better.

I have already had an idea for next year's bedding – cornflowers. They are doing really well on the allotment and if a flower can thrive down there it will be fine in the garden. I also saw a friend’s potted container of mixed cornflowers and that looked really good. They provide good height, a bushy appearance and some good sized flowers that stand out while also giving ground cover. What is more, you simply sow them direct into the ground, no seed trays, potting-on and planting out which for next year is something I’ll be looking for as I hope to be out of my easy non time consuming job and into something more meaningful but alas more like regular hours. I was going to sow poppies in the front garden this year but ran out of time because I need to make a decent bed with a good amount of soil, and make a border edge too and I also meant to repaint the (what was) white wall behind to give a good backdrop. I can do this in the autumn and be ready for next year. I may also put some poppies in the back garden. Look at me, dreaming of next year already and I’m yet to go on my summer holiday.

5^th August

At lunchtime I planted out about 27 purple sprouting broccoli at the allotment and scattered many slug pellets around – I will not be around to protect them at all for over 2 weeks after all! Looking at the calabrese, I noticed that about 4 heads were looking ready to harvest but not quite as large as I’d expect. Thinking that they would bolt whilst I’m away I picked them concluding that it was better not to let them be wasted but to have them safely in the bank, well, freezer.

In the evening I did a rush job of planting out all remaining cinerarias and to plant the laurentias in a container and I gathered all the containers together to be watered by my neighbour during the holiday. It is my ‘other’ (non DIY expert) neighbour who will be looking after things as there is a gap in our fence which enables us to water each others’ gardens. I picked one large bunch of sweet peas and gave them to a neighbour a little further down. Yes, it was a young, female neighbour so I was glad when her husband answered the door. He wasn’t at all jealous, just deeply hurt that they were not specifically for him.

6^th August

Passing via the allotment on work duty I picked a small bunch of sweet peas for someone at work and 15 courgettes. I gave some of them away but took the majority on holiday for one of my now favourite dishes - zucchini alla carbonara – yummy!

So it is off on holiday to the beautiful Lake District leaving the grass high before we even leave. We stay overnight tonight at a bed and breakfast place to break up the journey for the boys and get to our accommodation tomorrow. On the way back we are staying overnight at some friends in Leeds and visiting some other friends in Nottingham for lunch on the Saturday so it will be a little over 2 weeks away.

22^nd August

We arrived home at 6.30 pm to find all container plants in the front garden dead, that is, the petunias in the hanging basket and the 2 pots of sweet peas, all through lack of water. OK I had not explicitly instructed them to be watered but I would have thought they would be included. What would the back garden hold in store? Well the lawn was higher and the pots and hanging baskets had been watered but the sweet peas also looked pretty dour, again due to lack of watering. I’m guessing my neighbours thought they wouldn’t need watering as they were in the border but they were right up against the fence which protects from the rain by a surprising amount. Again – not specifically instructed but . . . Later on I trimmed back all tendrils and deadheaded merely to get rid of all energy and water sapping material to give the plants a better chance. This was of course followed by a decent watering.

How did my Dad do with counting the courgette harvest? He told me he picked ‘about 15, no, let’s say nearer 20’!

24^th August

At the allotment I picked 12 courgettes and 10 heads of calabrese. Some of them we had for tea and very nice they were too, the rest I blanched and froze.

In the garden I borrowed a lawn mower from my neighbour (the least he could do considering the sweet pea situation which shows no sign yet of any improvement) and got the lawn under control. I must get a new mower soon though. The mower I used had no grass collection facility so my 5 year old helped me rake up the grass and he was kept busy and happy using his little wheelbarrow to take it all to the compost bin. He was a delight to watch. Apart from that I cut up the rest of the lilac branches I cut down at the end of the garden before the holiday to take the pressure off the back fence.

25^th August

The garden sweet peas may be finished but those on the allotment are still going great. I picked a bunch for my wife. What does the allotment look like I hear you ask? Well the paths and edges are overgrown with grass but apart from that and some strong bindweed growth in section 1 around the carrots, each section brims with good vegetable greenery and the weed suppressing membrane seems to be doing its job.

In section 1 the carrots are doing well. I have not had a huge germination rate but those that are up look large enough from what I can see under the fleece. The 5 teasel plants are just bushy leaves, no stem. I’ll have to check if they are an annual or biennial, the latter would explain this. (They are biennial.) The cornflowers at the end of the section are fantastic. Many are still in bloom and the bees are buzzing round them – a definite choice for the garden next year.

In section 2 the older leeks look great, we’ll be getting a good harvest this winter, and the leeks I planted into section 3 to follow the onions are doing fine, but obviously not as large – at least we’ll get something from that section as a double bonus after the great onion harvest. I’ve recently read that you should not bend over the onion leaves as I did as that breaks and bruises the leaves and can be an entry point for mould which would mean less storage time or damaged veg so I’ll have to keep a close eye on the ones back home.

In sections 4 and 5 the sprouts and purple sprouting broccoli have established themselves with some of the sprouts looking quite strong. Two of the first plantings are large plants with sprouts forming well. I just hope that the rest were not planted out too late for a harvest. Still, plenty of time to go yet. In section 6 the 2 surviving cauliflowers are large but with no curd that I can see from outside the netting, the sprouts I put in as extra seem mostly to have succumbed to slugs and the calabrese are now harvested so this section would seem to have finished but with a small amount of hope for any extra benefits that might just come my way.

In section 7, 2 of the yellow courgette plants I bought from the nursery are producing pumpkins! Otherwise, despite some courgette plants being rather large, I have not had the volume of courgettes I was expecting and I put that down to the bad start I had. That said, we have done well and feasted on courgettes a lot, I just haven’t had the lovely glut that enables me to give some away to elderly friends and work colleagues, something I like doing as I want to keep hold of pretty much all other produce as it keeps so well.

In section 8 the sweet peppers have been a disaster. After the holiday I have seen some small red ones which look more like chillies. I think it was a mistake to put them in the open ground where they were so exposed (I was expecting a hotter, dryer summer just as the Met Office predicted – hah!). Elsewhere I have one crown prince squash and a few pumpkins but the cucumbers are not producing anything.

In section 9 not only do I have the colour of some healthy sweet peas but also the grand upright sweet corn which is showing some good large pods and at ground level, most of the butternut squash plants have survived that period where a few looked as though they were dying (one definitely did) and there is definite proof of squashes developing. So if I do well with the brassicas I can say I’ve had a pretty good year, but as I said already, it is still early days.

27^th August

I did a bit of weeding in the garden but did not get too far. I think the garden sweet peas are dead. Whilst rummaging around for courgettes I found an enormous cucumber so that’s one for the year at least!

It is not even August bank holiday yet but already I have noticed yellowed leaves scattered on the road at one point of a country lane I drive along each day and cycling into work I have felt that it will soon be time to don a light fleece for the journey. Surely it can’t be autumn just yet can it?