Starting To Crop

This haul was from the allotment the other day.

Gooseberries, strawberries, beetroots and my first courgette. Sunflowers, dahlias and statice.

Broad Beans

Picked my first crop of broad beans today. Not many but enough for dinner.

I planted two lots, one batch of seeds I planted in the ground back in February, the other I grew in the greenhouse and planted out in May.

I don't think either have done better than the other, but certainly the number of successful plants from seed was much better from greenhouse raised plants. Probably only about a third of seeds in the ground germinated. Probably due to the cold spring.

I also picked another punnet of strawberries this afternoon. They are some of the biggest and tastiest strawberries I've ever had. Made a strawberry flan this afternoon.

Warm Weather, Works For Some Things

A few more crops are ready recently, the two most exciting for me are new potatoes and strawberries, neither of which I've managed to grow before.

I dug into the soil at the end of June to check my new potatoes (Epicure) but they were still quite small so I left them for another 2 weeks.

Now they look like this and are lovely cooked with sprigs of mint and served with butter.

You can't beat the taste of home grown spuds.







I netted my strawberries about a week ago, I thought the birds wouldn't find them up their, but one afternoon I went up to weed and found a couple of strawberries scattered with chunks missing even though the weren't ripe.

So I loosely draped a net over the whole row and
yesterday went and picked my first crop.


Alas not everything on the allotment is enjoying the recent weather, my cauliflowers are a disaster. I think the ground is too dry for them as we've not had any proper rain for weeks. Most of the row have just flopped over and died, I have about 5 plants left from a row of 20. Strangely the cabbages are doing really well, they don't seem to mind the dry.

First Crop Of The Season

The allotment is coming along well at the moment, thanks to the rain last weekend.

My cauliflowers were really suffering from the weeks of no rain, many have wilted and flopped over. I'm really hoping they'll recover, but most are not looking too good.

Technically I picked my first crop of the year on Monday, I thinned my little gem lettuce and made a salad with the plants I pulled, but yesterday was my first proper crop.

I picked a carrier bag half full of spinach leaves and made a spinach and feta cheese pie. Lovely.

Spinach: first crop of the year.

Spinach and feta cheese pie.

 
Other crops coming along ready soon are strawberries, gooseberries, blackcurrants, spring onions and broad beans.

Never Ending Battle With Slugs

If you read my posting from last year you'll know I had major problems with slugs.

I try to be organic, but sometimes I resort to slug pellets, although I'm not keen on them as they potentially kill birds that eat the poisoned slugs.

So this year I'm trying a new ploy, I've bought some slug traps.

Small cup with beer in the bottom

They are a small plastic cup with a top on them, that has a gap of about an 1/2 inch to let the slugs in. You fill it with beer and this attracts the beasts, they then fall in and drown.

Put the top on and see what happens. 

Be interesting to see how well they work, and how much beer they need.

It's time to get those brassicas in

In case you are wondering, brassicas are the cabbage family and they need to be planted around now. The brassica family include cabbages, cauliflowers, sprouts, kale and broccoli. 

I've grown the ones I want from seed in the greenhouse, and they're about the 4 leaf stage now and ready to go out. They're pretty hardy so no need to worry too much about the frost.

This year I'm growing:-

Romanesco Cauliflower

1. Cabbage - Mini cole - A Small cabbage should be ready in the autumn
2. Cabbage - Tundra - A good winter variety
3. Cauliflower - All Year Round - As the name suggests should be available all year, but that depends on when they were started. I've never been very successful with cauli before, so bit of an experiment.....
4. Cauliflower - romanesco - A spiky green cauliflower, saw them on the farmers market in Inverness last autumn, another total experiment.

When growing brassicas they must be covered over with netting for two reasons

1. when they are young the pigeons love them and will strip them to the ground in a day if they find them..........I speak from bitter experience. 
2. Later in the summer the cabbage white butterfly will lay their eggs on them and the emerging caterpillars will eat them. 

Nice neat rows with netting over them.

I plant a line of them across the allotment, they need to be planted about an inch deeper than the seedlings where grown and the earth must be firmed up around them to stop them flopping about in the wind and damaging the stem.

I put 5 sets of sticks in triangles over the plants. I then run a piece of garden twine along the line over the sticks and weight each end down with a rock, then I put netting over and hold down the edges with stones. Luckily their is no shortage of stones on the allotments.

I bought my netting on Ebay and paid the same price for 5 lengths and a single pack in B&Q, so shop around. 
 





  

Fruit Bushes

If you've read my page from last year you may have noticed that the first thing I ever planted was 6 gooseberry bushes. They're doing well so far.

Then in January of this year I bought 6 blackcurrant bushes and planted them along side.

At the end of the row was my asparagus from last year, but that failed, too cold for it I think. So I decided to extend the fruit. I've added 3 redcurranr bushes, never grown them before and added another 2 blackcurrants.

Don't think the currents will do much this year, but hoping for good things from the gooseberries.

I bought the blackcurrants as bare rooted plants for about 6.50 each over the internet. Seemed a good price at the time until I found that B&Q are currently selling potted, more mature plants for £6.98 at the moment.