Where's Wally?

I just had a bit of time before starting work to do some housework and finally got round to checking the spring cabbage seedings on the patio.  Something was making them holey.  Sure enough each one (on average) had 2-3 little green cabbage white caterpillars.  Very good camouflage especially on the stems so I may not have picked them all off but most of them are now on the patio for the birds.  Fingers crossed the little plants will recover nicely to be planted out in the next couple of weeks.  The caterpillars seemed to have stuck to the outer leaves although a couple of the bigger ones were clearly en route to the heart for a nibble.  

Hopefully, more digging at lunchtime today...

Minor heartbreak

It had been a week I think since popping over to the plot so when I had a couple of hours to spare (yeah, right) on Saturday I was keen to see if the tomatoes had ripened yet.  On arrival, I found the 6 plants had been ravaged by blight.  Lots of the fruit looked savagable so I ripped the plants out and separated off the good-looking fruit.  Not too bad, I thought, I'll make lots of green tomato chutney on my day off on Tuesday.  I also harvested some sweetcorn, patty pans and bush beans and dug up all the spuds.

So I look the crate of tomato fruit home (discarded the blighted plant material) and washed them.  I had a work trip away Sunday-Monday so left them at home waiting to be cooked up.  On my way home yesterday, my husband sent me a text to tell me that all my fruit had gone mouldy (bless him - he didn't want me to have a shock by walking in and seeing them like that so forewarned me).  No green tomato chutney for me today.  We did manage to eat some of the redder ones roasted for brunch on Sunday morning and they were very tasty.  Shirley might be worth trying next year but much earlier to try to avoid the horrible blight.

I consoled myself with a 2 hour session down the plot this morning.  I planted out some purple and white spouting plants and tended to the cabbages and Brussels sprouts (weeded and fed).  I also cleared a square metre of grass and nettles.

I also came back with a big handful of broccoli sprouts from the stumps left after harvesting the main head. And 3 more patty pans.  And a potato that I'd left in the ground at the weekend.

Lots more ground to clear...

Patty pans a-go-go

After a long weekend away and a very busy work week last week, I couldn't wait to make a quick trip to the plot this morning before work.  The cupboards were getting bare so I needed to fetch some grub.

The patty pan squash (green tint) have been busy in my absence.  I was worried about the lack of fruit to date but needn't have been.  There were 4 fruit looking ready to pick in that they were measuring about 4 inches in diameter.  There were another couple at about 2-3 inches across which I left thinking they need a bit longer.  An Internet search suggests that they are ripe for the picking at 2-3 inches across.  Perhaps I'll pick the others tomorrow if I get a chance.

Anyway, I come home with those 4 squash, a couple of handfuls of mange tout, 1 cucumber, 2 handfuls of broccoli sprouts and 2 cobs of sweetcorn.  We had the sweetcorn, broccoli sprouts and a squash for tea.  Very nice.  I just steamed half the squash and added the rest to our pasta sauce.  The sweetcorn was steamed for about 30-35 mins and it was delicious - getting full marks from my husband.

Last week, I did manage a short trip to the plot and saw that the tomatoes were still green-as-you-like.  I hadn't caned them up at all so they were lulling all over the place.  I removed some more of the courgette leaves and put up some canes for the tomato plants to lean on.  The hope was that more sunshine would get to the fruit for ripening.  Today, I could see that a couple of the fruit had started to blush.

The weather has turned cooler now so autumn feels like it is approaching.  That makes me happy.  We've had a great warm summer and I've had a great first season on the new plot.  Time to get digging this weekend if the rain holds off.

Biggest harvest from the new plot to date

I had a day to myself today to catch up on some chores and to treat myself to some gardening.  Last weekend, I focused on our front garden at home and carved out a new bed (7x0.8m roughly).  It was tough getting the turf off of such dry ground and even forking over the patch was hard-going.  I under-estimated the task but it gives us more scope for a sunny bed because the opposite bed is shaded by next door's hedging.  So today, I started populating it with the Mediterranean herbs from the other bed, and the fig plant which was sitting in a pot in the back garden and not fruiting.  I am hoping that the new location against a south-facing wall, albeit sheltered to the east by our house, will make it happy and get it in the mood for fruiting.

I did get some time over at the plot in the afternoon.  It was warm - about 23 Celsius.  The priority was to put some sort of barrier around the sweetcorn in an effort to put the badger off.  Two of the bits and pieces left on the plot when I took it on looked promising.  Someone had taken two sheets of plastic netting and attached thin planks along both ends of them.  Each plank was about a metre high so I cut them all in half leaving me with four pieces of netting with short planks at the ends.  I could then use them to form a boundary around 3 sides of the sweetcorn patch, keeping them upright and in place with bamboo canes.  The fourth side of the patch is covered by the courgette plants so it shouldn't be a problem that the netting doesn't extend that far.  Fingers crossed.  Some of the plants have cobs starting to grow nicely so the badger will come round soon.

The mange tout flowers look stunning (not that you'd know it from the photo below) and a closer inspection revealed a small handful of purple pods that were ready to pick.  Obviously, I tried one.  Sweet and crispy.

And I harvested a cabbage, two heads of calabrese, some onions and a few handful of chard leaves (for tonight's curry).

A whole carrier bag full of treats!

I watered everything then returned home for a lolly to cool me down.

My very first calabrese

I managed to get 40 mins or so at the plot today while the little one was napping.  I dug over a little bit more of the recently uncovered patch but less than I wanted.  I watered a couple of things but didn't have time to attend to everything.

I was very happy to be able to harvest my very first calabrese head.  It looks like it was about to start opening its flowers so I grabbed at the chance to pick it.  It wouldn't have won any beauty contests (ha - I can talk) but it tasted great with roast chicken and allotment-grown potatoes.

I really need to sow some spring cabbages this week before it gets too late...

I did forget...

...the brassicas!  Progress as follows:

• Calabrese - growing nicely and one plant looks like it might be ready to harvest by the weekend.  A couple of others are growing nice curds (not sure that is the right word)
• Brussels sprouts - growing ok but not particularly distinguishable as sprouts
• Cabbage - doing good with a couple looking ready to harvest though they are a bit soft when I squeeze them so they need to fill out more

This evening I picked up two compost bins (eBay bargains) for the plot.  Yay!

Summer update

I had a lovely couple of hours at the plot yesterday.  My main task was to dug over the patch in the top right corner that I'd uncovered the previous evening.  It was full of black mares tail roots and couch grass so it was quite satisfying to clear it.

The freshly dug patch can be seen in front of the potatoes in the top right corner of the piccie above.  It is worth giving an update on the crops right now...

• Potatoes: I have harvested 2-3 plants of small potatoes so far.  I planted them at the very end of April/beginning of May so they still have a few weeks of growing to do.  
• Leeks: These are growing well with their blue flags looking quite healthy.  
• Onions: I pulled one up accidentally yesterday but the rest look good.  Bigger than any of the ones I grew on the original Plot 35 on the clay soil.  A couple even look to be the size of tennis balls.  I think it down to the soil and feeding.
• Broad beans: Finished now really but one of the plants has a few pods left on.  These weren't the healthiest looking plants so some of the pods were very short and/or oddly shaped.  Tasty beans though.
• Tomatoes: 6 plants all very sturdy with green tomatoes looking good.  Variety - Shirley.
• Sweetcorn: Looking good with the frilly bits on top.  I need to fence around them very soon to defend them against The Badger.
• Courgettes: I've had a single yellow one off one the plants and am waiting to see more fruit.  The plants are like triffids and are shading the tomatoes unfortunately.  I am hoping that the removal of the lower tomato leaves will at least help the air to flow around.
• Sunflowers: 3 nice sturdy plants with main flowers open but looking toward the ground.  Smaller satellite flowers are budding up nicely.
• Jerusalem artichokes: 4 plants next to the potatoes.  Looking ok.
• Parsnips: Starting to fill out and they probably need more thinning out.  
• Celeriac: The two surviving plants look strong though I can't tell what is happening beneath the surface.  I'll take a look soon.
• Squash?: Someone kindly left 3 squash plants for me last week and I've planted them out.  I think they are squash as someone did mention that they may have some spare ones but I can't remember who it was.  Very kind.
• Horseradish: Looking good but hard to tell if it is happy or not.
• Mange tout: Growing strongly after a late-ish sowing.  A couple of gorgeous crimson flowers in places.
• Hyssop: Looking very striking in blue next to the broad beans and peas.  A clump of it came off in my hand when I touched it last week and I hope this isn't a bad sign.
• Cucumber: There is a single plant climbing up one of the end canes of the pea frame.  It has 2-3 flowers on it some fingers crossed for my first cucumber.

May have forgotten something...  The piccie below shows the top left corner of the plot.

I've applied organic chicken pellets 2-3 times on the various beds and have been watering frequently (every 2 days in the very hot period in July).