Making space

There was lots to do on the allotment this weekend but I didn't think I'd get chance to get through it. Today was showery until 1500 when I finally went over. It was quite wet under foot and almost too wet to dig. Not enough to put me off though.

First task was to transplant the globe artichokes to give them more space. As the piccie below shows, they were a tad crowded.



The largish one had even produced a couple of chokes (see piccie below). I removed these so that the plant can save its energy for its second year. On closer inspection, it seems that a couple of the others have also started to grow very small artichokes.



The second main job was to transplant the leeks from the four pots that have been sitting on the patio for a few months to the bed that has recently been almost completely vacated by early potatoes. I hope it isn't too late. I tried to select the thickest specimens - I planted 6 rows of about 12 (see first piccie below). There were about 27-28 thinner ones which I planted three to a hole with the aim of getting some miniature leeks (see second piccie below - a tad out of focus though). It was that or waste them.





As an aside from the main tasks, the piccie below shows how much the parsnips are romping away. I wish that I had sowed some more - lesson learnt for next year.



Also, I think I spotted a ghost slug on the plot (see piccie below). It was quite sweet really (until it starts doing some damage).



I am a tad worried about blight. One of my fellow allotmenteers popped over and mentioned that he spotted the start of blight on his tomatoes. He sprayed Bordeaux mixture on them to prevent it getting any worse. Although we both saw that my tomatoes look fine, when I inspected my main crop potatoes, there do seem to be a couple of suspicious-looking brown patches on a couple of the leaves. I may need to be prepared to cut back the foliage next weekend or to dug up the spuds. Unfortunately, the spuds have only had 12 weeks in the ground (since May 17th) which is not long enough for them to be fully-grown. The flowers do seem to have come and gone though. I will return tomorrow if I can to remove the leaves that look like that they have got a brown spot. Fingers crossed - it would be nice to harvest the potatoes in four weeks time and not sooner.