Allotment Geekery

Hooray hooray!  Bonfire season is upon us at the allotment.  For weeks now we have been drying out material for the first bonfire and what happened the night before?  Masses, and masses of rain.  Never the less we (MozzyMr) got some level of fire going and we are well underway clearing all of the weeds.

I think I'm a little early here but I'm getting my first onion sets in, as in first time I've ever grown onions and first batch of successional planting.  The garlics turned out well so I'm feeling optimistic about growing massive onions.  The bigger the better!

As per Monty's instructions I've cleared away the foliage from my pumpkins so they can start ripening, to carve or to eat?

Carrots.  They didn't work out so well for me.  We saw a man on Gardener's World plant them in tubs and he produced lots of small but perfectly formed carrots, mine were just small.

I have a new found love of runner beans, my gran used to grow them in such quantities that as a kid I never wanted to see another runner bean in my life.  Plus there is the runner bean chutney incident, we don't speak of the runner bean chutney incident.  

Last of the tomato crop, we must have had around 120lbs this year, not bad going.  We have a lot of passata in the freezer now...

Allotment Geekery

The allotment has been ticking along quite nicely recently, next Saturday will be the first day since March that we can have bonfires at the allotment so we've been clearing down the spent veg and weeds. 

The celeriac hasn't been doing that well so I'm trying home made cloches to give them a hand.  The chewed up swedes to the left were a donation from Malcolm across the way, they're being eaten by caterpillars at the moment so I've turned all hunter/gatherer and brandish the hoe like a spear and cut the little feckers in half.  Don't judge me, my step-father-in-law goes out at night with a torch and a pair of scissors and cuts slugs in half.  Yeah, you heard me.

 

 

And finally... I accidentally grew some parsnips, long story really but hey here they are in their ugly glory!

Allotment prep for spring

Saturday was great.  Every first Saturday of the month after 12 noon we're allowed to hold a bonfire at the allotment.  Being the first of the year we thought we would make a bit of a celebration of it, so we prepared homemade soup, rustic bread and a cheeky tipple or two...

MozzyMr got the fire going with some of the weeds and general detritus we've gathered up whilst preparing the allotment for spring.

Once the fire got going and the sun started to set we were grateful for the warmth it was pumping out!

A number of friends and their children joined us so there were plenty of shouts of "Train!" (as we're right next to the track and they go by every half an hour or so), sticks and digging holes in the mud.

Of course there was a little something for the adults to help keep the cold at bay, the hip flask; most useful allotment item to date.  Having said that next Saturday the scarecrows mum and dad bought us for Christmas are going to go up, at the moment they malevolently guard the hallway and freak the cat out.

So excited to be preparing the allotment for sowing hopefully as early as February.  Having crossed the "old" line some time ago I have no qualms settling down with a hot chocolate and a fruit and veg seed catalogue.  So far we've ordered golden beetroot, zebra and black tomatoes, purple potatoes, butternut squash, yellow courgettes, sweetcorn, and lots of chilli's.  Nom nom.