Allotment geekery

It has been a busy, busy week at work so I haven't been able to get to the allotment during the week, we'll be heading off to plant more seeds and dig things over today.  To get my allotment fix I've been monitoring the progress of the following:

Borlotti beans, I cannot wait to get these out when it's warm enough I dug compost trenches back in the autumn and have been filling them with kitchen scraps and newspaper etc  because apparently beans love compost rich soil.  I  dug compost trenches last year and it seemed to work quite well, fingers crossed the beans like it!

Tomatoes and chillies, I really can't take credit for these, tomatoes and chillies are MozzyMr's pet project, we're still using the chillies he grew last year which we dried.  Plus the amount of passata we're still getting through is astonishing!  Great on homemade pizza though so no complaints here.

Pfft mushrooms.  These were supposed to be butternut squashes but nothing has happened with them so I'm going to have to buy more seeds because the butternut squashes we had last year were the best.  The compost we bought from Makro was riddled with fungus, green and blue mushrooms have been popping up all over the place.  The umbrella looking ones here only stay looking like that for a day and then they shrivel up to virtually nothing.  Whilst I haven't got the butternut squashes I really wanted it has been nice to see these develop, they're really delicate and beautiful (photographs them and unceremoniously chucks them in the compost bin).

Allotment Geekery

So autumn is here and when we got up this morning to go to the car boot sale it was cold, so cold that no one really bothered to come sell their tat, how very grr.  The prospect of an afternoon on the allotment in the cold was not very appealing so layers were the order of the day including my epic mustard coloured scarf, when held aloft it's taller than me and is the best thing to keep warm.  Did I mention I made it?

Of course when we got there it rained and I had to take shelter in the shed with the massive clumps of mud on my wellies that I'd collected along the way...

A view up the path, our allotment is on the left (you can't see it in this photo) and you can see the polytunnel where we have a plot.  I love that there is a guy who has decorated his shed with old skool Kentucky Fried Chicken shop awnings!

This is what it is all about, we grew those leeks, and those chilli's and we made autumnal soup...

..... included in the soup is butternut squash, we grew that, carrots, we didn't grow them, potatoes, we grew them.  I haven't included a photo of the finished whizzed up soup because I can't pretend it looks like anything other than puke.  Tasted good though.

Further Allotment Geekery

So this Saturday we extended our allotment empire by one raised bed, a mere raised bed?  Yep, but this bad boy is in a polytunnel which means tomatoes, chillies, and peppers galore!

We're plot 16 on the right in between two experts: Rodney and Liz (they already have seedlings on the go, this may not sound much but I haven't even finished digging over the rest of the plot).

Mmmmm new top soil (yeah you heard me).

And finally garlic (ignore the weeds they've gone now), just waiting for a frost to split the cloves. 

Well that's quite a lot of excitement for one day...... ta ra for now.