18th - 22nd August

Last week was a complete washout. On Monday I had a dizzy and fuzzy head all day that worsened through nausea and one of my trademark thumping headaches (I don’t get them a lot, but they tend to accompany any virus I have. By Tuesday I was in the throes of diarrhoea and feeling sure I would be vomiting. So that was 2 days in bed followed by not feeling great until yesterday. Bending over made my head go funny as did any exertion, so no gardening. I did harvest some courgettes on Thursday as well as some salad leaves, spinach and a large cucumber. Today I harvested 12 more courgettes and made recipe number one from my book ‘What Will I Do With All These Courgettes’ – a simple soup that only used up one courgette, albeit one that weighed a pound. It also called for an onion, chicken stock, pepper, rosemary and oregano and the ease of it is that you just put all the ingredients in a pan, heat to boiling then simmer for 20 minutes then blend and serve or store. I had a taste before freezing it and was very impressed. We also have 6 sweet peppers on the window sill in the final stages of ripening. I figured that if I pick them, then the plants can put energy into making more. We used one of them in our dinner tonight and it is the first home grown pepper I have ever had, and I could certainly taste the difference even in the overall flavour of the dish.

 As I was washing up I saw the sprouting broccoli on the garden table and remembered that I really must plant that out soon. We go on holiday for a week on Saturday and they will be better off in the ground. I had completely forgotten them over the last week. My sage and oregano still sits in pots on the table as well. I fear the slugs having a feast if I plant them out.

The flowers in the garden still look great and we have had 2 roses in bloom again the last 2 weeks. The tomatoes are doing well but all fruit are still green. We have had an almost total lack of hot sunny days this month (maybe the forecasters were right about August after all) and so ripening has not begun. A small dream of mine is to return from holiday to find the plants sparkling with juicy, red, ripe tomatoes. They’d better get a move on as after our holiday it becomes September very quickly.

 

 

19^th August

I had borrowed some electric hedge clippers from my Dad a few weeks ago and not yet got around to trimming the privet hedge with them due to time and the weather. Yesterday he called to ask for them back as he was borrowing them from someone else too. So after work I set about attacking our overgrown hedge. I was ably assisted by my 2 hedge clipping protégées and in between heavy showers we accomplished the task both on our side and our neighbours and made a huge sprawling pile of green waste.

 

 

20^th August

I made a visit to the allotment and weeded sections 2, 3 and 4 of all the milk thistles and whatever else was easy to grab in a hurry. I gave the last section a quick hoe then placed down the black weed suppressing membrane and held it down with a few thick wooden batons that I have been acquiring from the skip at work. I checked the rocket protected under fleece within the chipboard frames. I don’t recall rocket being an expensive item in restaurants but if it is, I’m not surprised due to the slow growing nature of mine. I found another crown prince squash growing under the rapidly advancing foliage. Maybe I should just be a squash grower as the cucumber, crown prince, pumpkins, courgettes and last year, the butternut squash, all grow well with me – maybe it is my love of manure that helps. I could barter the surplus for other types of vegetables.

 

21^st August

Finally, I have planted the purple sprouting broccoli. I even had a few left over to plug the gaps left by 3 failed Brussels sprouts plants. Mind you, the replacement broccoli doesn’t look too vigorous. I harvested 2 fairly large cucumbers, 9 courgettes and a batch load of spinach. We go on holiday on Saturday for a week so I cut as much as I could.

Looking at some other plots it seems they have nearly finished for the year. So many people were growing large quantities of onions and potatoes that now they are dug up their plots look pretty vacant.

 

22^nd August
I chopped up and froze some basil into ice cubes for recipes after the season finishes. I also chopped and froze 3 red peppers and boy, are they different from the ones you buy in shops! They are a vibrant red, with very noticeable scent and the dark red juice that is left on your hands really tells you they are home grown and brimming with goodness.

Next post: 25th August

1st - 7th August

Well, the hot month is upon us and therefore it has gone dull and a little wet with promise of more rain over the weekend and into next week. I saw a newspaper headline that said the country was in for a month long soaking. This was taken with a huge pinch of salt due to recent experience of this type of shock and scare weather reporting. Two years ago we had a really hot May, June and July. I remember coming home from work and being washed out simply due to the heat. When we had a dull day I recall coming home and getting so much done and having so much more energy as it wasn’t being sapped by the heat. As August approached the papers carried warnings of even hotter weather for the next month and into August, and it would cause lots of frail and elderly people to die of heat related problems. In actual fact we had a terribly wet month. In the run up to last summer we had a fantastically hot and sunny April and the reports were of more to follow throughout the summer – drought and death would ensue. We then proceeded to have the wettest 3 months for quite some time. During the heat wave 2 years' ago we were told that the unusually hot spell was due to global warming whereas the next year we were told that the usual wet summer was due to global warming. I wish global warming would make up its’ mind! So forgive me if I don’t take too much notice of a headline saying we are in for a near continually wet August. As gardeners, we just have to do what we do and leave the weather to do whatever it will do.

 4^th August
At the allotment I repaired the various holes in the fence which is a must to keep rabbits out before I plant out the leeks. I harvested 5 more courgettes, the equivalent of about 8 in the shops, also an Italian lettuce, as well as a good supermarket bags’ worth of spinach. We had the spinach and lettuce, together with home grown basil in a salad for tea. The evening was more sweet pea cutting and pruning as it is fairly obvious that the stalks are getting shorter. This is because there are too many side shoots that are producing flowers and so the lengths of the flowering stalks get shorter.

 

5^th August

No allotment visit today as it has rained quite a lot. When I got home, I did go out into the garden with the boys as they needed some fresh air, and I perused the sprouting broccoli plants and found a fair few caterpillar eggs and a few caterpillars themselves. The plants are better for them having been removed. The rocket plants in the pots have had a sizeable amount eaten from them, so too have some of the broccoli and the curly kale. Other broccoli plants are doing really well, with decent, well developed leaves.

Onion harvest

 

6^th August
Six more courgettes from the allotment, as well as seeing that 2 more cucumbers are coming along, and I’ve seen a few pumpkins too. Squashes seem to be my speciality. Today was the day I finally got round to planting out the leeks. I gave the ground one more raking, laid out and fastened down the weed suppressing membrane and then cut cross cuts into the fabric every 9 inches in rows 15 inches apart. I dug up the leek seedlings and after making a good, deep hole with the dibber, gently placed the leeks in. You don’t back fill earth into the hole when planting out leeks, you simply water and the water does the rest. Further to my previous estimate, there are, in fact, 36 leeks, better than 29 but not quite 160. I found another onion that I dug up last week but somehow missed. I also planted out 6 rocket plants. A while ago we decommissioned a white laminate covered chipboard bookcase and chest of drawers, and now 2 small drawers from the unit plus the overall rectangle of the bookcase reside in section 2. These are my protective frames for the rocket, and might be a raised bed for carrots next year. With horticultural fleece over them all, and pegged down, they should be safe from attack. Apart from that, it was a quick watering for the cucumbers and a liberal sprinkling of organic slug pellets, then home.

7^th August

Not much gardening today, only a well-overdue mowing of the lawn. There are large areas where the grass has not grown much, but there are some grass clumps that have bolted so we had lots of tall, thin stalks showing, as well as 3 large swathes of clover, so it was good to give it an army haircut – short and uniform all over. It looks so much neater now. It is also neater due to the fact that when I mow the lawn I have to remove and tidy up all manner of toys and scooters and ride on-diggers and the like. The 2 mower boxes full of clippings that were produced were put into the second compost bin and mixed in equal measure to some shredded paper I had from work. This now completes the bin and I will let that rot down whilst I go back to using the first bin. I put a few handfuls from the second bin into the first as this is good accelerator, as well as containing a large number of special tiger worms, who, unlike earth worms, are the sort that really love eating compost material and breaking it down for the bacteria to get a hold of. It is the bacteria that really do the composting. Most of the compost in the second bin was pretty well rotted anyway, but I put in this last load of grass to add a little more volume. I won’t be using it until autumn so there is no rush.

Next post: 18th August

31st July

I bought another strip of weed suppressing membrane for the leek section. With only 29 leeks and a lot of bare soil, I don’t want to be weeding until winter or be overrun with weeds like some of the other plots. It is my plan that next year, I will use this membrane over nearly all the plot. I say nearly all as some veg that are grown in rows like the Italian and Oriental salad or carrots would be tricky with membrane unless you use it as thin strips between rows but then it ruins the effectiveness. I would then rotate the membrane with the crops because the onion section will have holes 6 inches apart but the leek section will have holes 9 inches apart, then the courgettes would be 2-3 feet apart. Ideally this would also be combined with some wooden barriers, about the width of scaffolding boards, up on their sides so that the membrane can be right up to the edge of the section so that weeds in the cultivated section can be really blanketed out and weeds from the grass paths won’t encroach in. Of course, if possible, once I have sides up like that, I would like to obtain more soil of a lighter nature and make fully fledged raised beds, but that is an awful lot of soil!

Today at the allotment I took 2 bamboo sticks from home to give the 2 older cucumber plants something higher to be tied into. Apparently there is greater benefit in having the plants grow as high as possible as opposed to letting them sprawl on the ground like other squashes. I used one of the now spare poles to give support to the third, younger cucumber plant. After tying those in I went to harvest the onions. They looked poor and pathetic and some were starting to implode and shrivel so although the books say August for harvesting, I didn’t want to lose the precious little amount of onions I had. I dug up 77 healthy bulbs, and around 6-8 small, mushy ones that were rotting in the ground. I am reminded by this journal that back on the 9^th April I planted out 161 sets and was rather optimistic of a great harvest of about 140-150 large bulbs. That date sticks in my mind because it was our anniversary meal out (one day after the actual anniversary) and while waiting for our lovely Italian food to arrive, I was telling my dear wife of now 13 years how much we would save on onions, considering the fact that onion prices were set to rocket this year due to last year's poor harvest. Pride certainly does come before a fall.

On examining my pumpkins and squashes, I stumbled on a huge pumpkin – well, for this time of year it was huge – about the size of a slightly deflated child’s football, while others are about a tennis ball in size. The crown prince squash nearest the fence has sent 2 runners out through the fence and they are making their way across the path towards the next plot. I gently bent them round and fed them back through the fence.

After this I set about weeding the showcase first section, the one that used to have such a good, fine tilth, no weeds, and nice straight rows of salad leaves. Well, the salads are still in straight lines, but many have bolted (mainly the leaves that we don’t like though, so no great loss). It is covered in thistles which were a pain to pull out, and I couldn’t help but shake them and in doing so send little fluffy seeds everywhere, including into my hair. I did a little more yanking up of bindweed around the chard and the cucumbers and under the stems of 1 or possibly even 2 pumpkins growing from the home made compost I placed in for the sweet peas. On that note, there is now a blue sweet pea flower.

I was pretty much spent and so called it a day. I didn’t even get round to repairing the holes in the fence before I risk planting out the leeks. On standing back and viewing the whole plot, it looks rather pathetic. A now bare onion section, what will be a sparse leek section, 2 sections of sprouts and a few calabrese that contain more and healthier and higher weeds than veg, and a still vacant section for broccoli. Yes, the squashes are doing great but what else will be so productive? I am comforted by the fact that this is a learning exercise and I have never cultivated so great a patch of land with such a variety of crops as this before. The theory was great but I didn’t count on such a sharp slice of reality cutting into my optimism.

 

The papers include news of a bee crisis. There is a mite that is infecting the honey bee population and decimating their numbers. Some source valued the bee community as being worth £165 million due to the fact they pollinate commercial vegetables, let alone the private ones that yours truly tries to grow. It makes me more inclined to consider the possibility of having a beehive, not just for free honey (which will be far more expensive by Christmas due to this) but also to do my part to help the lovely little insects.

 

Next post: 1st Aug

28th & 30th July

Yet another hot and sticky day, it is most unpleasant. Even a lady at work who is a sun worshipper thinks it is too much. What state would I find my courgettes in? Well there were some huge pickings. I collected 14. Four of the largest weighed 7 pounds – they were swiftly donated to both next door neighbours who were amazed and delighted. There were about 3 or 4 courgettes still growing that I could have picked as they were of a decent size but I just had to leave them there to stay fresh as there would hardly be any room for them in the fridge. I also picked 2 cucumbers – 1 from each of the two larger plants. Together they make the equivalent of one supermarket cucumber which at today’s price was 69p. My assistant was delighted to see a cucumber at last from his plants. I gave him a good encouragement by telling him that he was the one who grew the plants, starting out as just little seeds some months ago. I would love it if he catches the gardening bug!

 

Whilst in Tesco’s (for milk – not veg!) I noticed that the price of garlic was 35p per bulb. Mine weren’t all of a uniform size, but looking through them I reckon I have the equivalent of 17 shop size bulbs, which is a saving of £5.95. Even more pleasing news to my wallet!

 

What I really haven’t mentioned for a while is the state of the garden. Out of 6 sunflowers that germinated, 3 have helped to feed the slug community, 2 are progressing very well, and one was struck by a football and its head fell off. However, a side shoot is emerging from the stem so it will probably flower. The fuchsias are doing well, both the bedding ones and those in the hanging baskets. The self-seeded crops in the front garden are definitely pumpkins. I’m not sure whether there are 3 or 4 as they have grown so well. The garden is a mass of huge saucer leaves and jungly tendrils that manage to turn a few heads of people walking past. They have certainly grown much larger than those at the allotment. There are also 2 tomato plants there as well.

 

The hanging baskets are a major bonus for this year, providing an immense ball of colour suspended in the air. The petunias in particular are a runaway success, they just keep on blooming, but then I am deadheading them regularly to keep up their strength. The role of the flower is to attract bees to pollinate them. Once a flower fades, the plant puts energy into setting the seed now that it has been fertilised. By deadheading, you stop this energy direction and the plant then starts to set more flowers so that it will be pollinated again and try and set seed this time – it’s all to do with the blueprint to reproduce. The bedding petunias look great. They have filled out now and provide a good carpet of varied colour. There are blues, purples, pinks, reds and even a red and white one, a really fortuitous addition all thanks to Dad ordering a bumper box of them.

 

My herb area is coming along. Three fennel plants give a lovely, light feathery display. The French tarragon is established and I did a taste test between that and the Russian tarragon and it’s true what they say - there really is no comparison. I cannot really describe the Russian one but the French is a definite aniseed flavour, and strong too, you wouldn’t want to use too much of that in a recipe. Basil, the king of herbs is great once more; I absolutely love the taste of it. The sage plants in pots are growing well and when the forecasted wet weather for the weekend and beyond is out of the way, I may plant out a few, keeping back the rest as backup for any slug attack. In the same situation is the potted oregano, although the one oregano plant in the ground already has survived thus far. Chives, rosemary and thyme are all standard, and the mint is progressing well too in its container. I have a few chard plants in the border which are at various stages of achievement but I am yet to taste any. The phlox plant has more than doubled its effect from last year, but that was its first. Despite planting a few score seeds of nicotiana I have but 4 plants that have made it to flowering. Mind you, they are very nice flowers with a lovely and delicate scent. We have had about half a dozen strawberries but this year is really a time for getting established.

While I write all this, I hear a few heavy drops of rain on the roof of our conservatory. Soon it is a refreshing downpour, aaaahhhhhhhhh.

30th July

I picked 12 more courgettes from the allotment but also put in some work. I weeded nearly all of the leek section but I had to go really carefully at the end with the seedlings. After a little bit of weeding there, I decided that as I was not going to finish the task today, I would leave some weed cover to camouflage the leeks from the rabbits who have found their way in through a few holes in the fence. I discovered 29 leeks. Not quite the 160 that I was hoping for (if all had germinated). I would have hoped on at least 100. Next year I’ll have to start them off in a raised seed bed or in little pots or modules indoors.

It looks like I will have to harvest the onions soon.

Back home I potted up 15 curly kale seedlings (I always want to call them crunchy kale for some unknown reason). I did my usual round of watering the tomatoes so that the compost doesn’t dry out. This will prevent 2 problems – blossom end rot caused by too little water, and split fruit caused by a dry spell followed by good watering.

Next post: 30th July

22nd - 27th July

Back to the allotment for a little more weeding, watering and picking courgettes. The courgettes are really in the swing of things now. I’ve picked 30 including today’s lot and in Tesco they are selling for £1.89 for a pack of 3 small organic courgettes. Mine have mostly been larger so I have already had about £20 worth of vegetables from just one section of the plot and we still have over a month of regular production to go. This is the kind of arithmetic I like!

 

I weeded only a little part of the leek section, but I also got down on my knees to carefully examine the seed bed area to track down the leek seedlings. I found the 4 rows and marked them out. The last thing I want is to finish weeding this section by taking out the leeks!

 

Last week I viewed the garlic plants and thought that they were nearly ready to harvest. Today I looked and knew that now was the time for them to be dug up. The leaves had yellowed so much more and the plants were beginning to flop over, so despite my father’s inadvertent attempts to destroy the pleasure this day would bring, I harvested 22 garlic plants. This is further good mathematics of the kind I like as I only planted 20 cloves. One plant was actually 3 in 1. I guess that all my Dad did when he dug over that ground was to spread them around in a more random fashion and slice one up in order to make 3 plants, so well done Dad.

 

 

23^rd July
Today there has been a noticeable improvement in the weather. A while ago I was complaining about the wet, then recently I was moaning that although it was dry it was not really sunny, and so now it befalls me to say that it is a bit too hot. I really want to get on with weeding the leek section but the heat put me off. I just can’t be satisfied weather-wise!

 

Back home, I checked on my sprouting broccoli. Of the 40 Claret types, 9 have died and only 6 look positively healthy, whilst the 10 Rudolphs include 2 dead and 3 lively looking ones. The rest are in limbo.

24^th July

Another day of increasing heat, so much so that I really didn’t want to do anything at the allotment, or in the garden except to water everything. We are going to Leeds tomorrow morning for a wedding on Saturday and return on Sunday so I wanted to get as much moisture into the ground as was practicable especially since it has been dry and is now getting hotter. For only the second time this year I used the hose – it was simply too much bother to walk back and forward 30 times with a watering can. Everything got a thorough soaking. My tomatoes are going really well. The turbo toms are doing what they said on the label and are growing tall, thick and bushy and are starting to set some small fruits. The other 2 plants are the cherry tomato which is setting lots of fruit or at least flowers, and the Ailsa Craig which is going well. I learnt from last year not to count my tomatoes before they’re harvested as I had a count of about 120 before blight struck.

 25^th July

I had time before we left for Leeds to do my ‘feed on Friday’ and another quick watering to the crucial, most needy plants. My wife’s parents popped over to collect something so I was able to give them some sweet peas, and then whilst we are away, the plants can put forth more flowers!

27^th July

We arrived home early evening after a very hot weekend, but a very enjoyable one. The wedding was one of the better ones by far that I have been to, which was good considering the hot sticky journeys we had, it was well worth attending. I went out to the garden to cool off and water and to pick some sweet peas. The plan had worked and the plants had blessed us with an abundance of flowers. I got a large bunch of the light blue Charlie’s Angels for one vase and a large bunch of the Red Arrow and white Sweet Chariots to make a rather striking red and white display. I also picked some of the ones that I planted by the bamboo canes which were a mixed Spencer batch. There are dark red and light pinks.

Next post: 28th July

18th July

My wife and children were off on a long day trip with her parents today so I knew I could spend ages at the allotment after work and not be missed. There was plenty of watering to be done as it has been dry for a while although not really hot and sunny. I tied in the 2 taller cucumber plants as they had grown up their stakes some more and noticed that one of them is bearing a small, almost semi-circular fruit.

The main task was weeding section 5 for the leeks. There were thistles and bindweed as well as a quite enthusiastic annual that has shot up all over the place. I think I managed to clear about a third of the section. The question is will I be able to find the leek seedlings amongst the weeds at the other end? I was just getting to the point where I had had enough when a light shower started so I needed no further encouragement to go home.

 

The shower didn’t last long and at home, after dinner, I set about potting up the sprouting broccoli plants. These have been in a plug seed tray for ages and it is quite remarkable that they are all still viable (well, nearly all). In all I now have 40 of the claret variety and 10 of the Rudolph.

After that, I planted out my rocket seedlings. I will grow some at home and some at the allotment.

What I have not mentioned for a while is the situation with the sweet peas which are a wonder to behold. Even most of the smaller, weaker plants are showing signs that they will bud and flower soon. I am getting the planned effect of a sea of light blue on the middle of the 3 fence panels, with a decent display of red on the one furthest away (of the 3) from the house. The Sweet Chariot mix is doing well, but there are far more reds than blues and whites.

 

Every 6-7 days I am cutting most of the flowers to make a display or 2 in the house. I have given a little posy to my wife's Mum and also been able to take a decent bunch to a couple who invited us all over for Sunday lunch.

Next post: 22nd July

1st - 10th July

A quick visit to the allotment to see that my one remaining sunflower has been eaten as well. There is simply no sign of it anywhere.

It’s true what they say about sweet peas. The more you pick, the more they grow. Whereas a lot of plants really take a hit when pruned severely, these sweet peas just thrive on regular cutting. This means we get a steady stream of cut flowers for indoors whilst the outside ones keep producing flowers – fantastic! There are rumours of heavy rain tonight so rather than have rain-soaked and damaged flowers tomorrow, I decided to pick a load tonight, and there seemed twice as many as 2 days ago.

 

 

2^nd July
Just a quick visit to the allotment to water the plants.

4^th July

Spent an hour and a half weeding the 9^th section, where I’ll be planting out the sprouting broccoli. It was tough going as the ground is pretty hard. I will trial that weed suppressing membrane on this section this year to see if it is any good against our variety of weeds. I watered, tied in the cucumbers, and planted out 8 spinach plants in section 2.

5^th July

The 5 free lavender plants I ordered as a special offer from Gardeners’ World Magazine arrived today so they were promptly potted on. Apart from that, I weeded and mowed.

7^th July

We’ve had a fair bit of rain the last 2 days so gardening has been put off. I did, however sneak a quick visit to the allotment just to see if any courgettes were ready for picking. A couple looked promising last week. To my delight, 3 were ready for harvesting, 2 green and 1 yellow. We had a green one for tea. So the courgette harvesting season is upon us and if it's like last year we will be well provided for.

10^th July

The heavy rain has continued until today when we just had a few light showers. The ground is sopping wet and I can only imagine what the allotment would be like if I were to try any ground work. When I did pop in I found my Dad picking raspberries and blackcurrants. He gave me some runner beans which were part of a swap he did with another plot holder. I like runner beans but as soon as I find a stringy spine I am put off eating anymore. At the Gardener’s Question Time garden party, I spoke to Pippa Greenwood about a comparative trial of runner beans that she wrote about in Gardener’s World Magazine. She had found that some were truly stringless. I asked her if that really meant stringless as I wasn’t sure if there were other parts that may be stringy or not, but the spine always is. She assured me that unless you left them on the plant for months, they did not get stringy. So next year, I may grow them!

Whilst at the allotment I also picked 3 more courgettes.

 

Next post: 18th July