Alan's Allotment

Taking the advice of my sage and guru Mr Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, I decided to try growing my spring onions in guttering this year. At the River Cottage HQ Open Day, we had a demo of the technique and had seen it working well in his polytunnels so thought I’d give it a go! Guttering was obtained from freecycle, cut into 1m lengths and we were ready to go. The plan was successional sowings, every two weeks. Starting in early spring and following through the summer. Quick to grow, quick to harvest was the advice! Well, a phrase commonly used by Jim Royale springs to mind! As you can see, I kept going for 8 weeks and then stopped sowing and I’m still waiting 5 months later for my first pickings And as for my leeks...In heeding the advice of my gardening tips email (remember the one which said to sit back in August?) my pencil thick leeks should be ready to plant out this month! Mine look more like matchsticks! I don’t think they’ll be going out any time soon.

I know Pyracanthia is regarded as a good hedge for deterring intruders but ranking a pretty close second has to be the Gooseberry bush! I've been 'training' mine (no, not to attack) for the past two seasons as I inherited them in quite an overgrown state and continued with the obligatory summer prune yesterday. The patch they're on has a lot of bind weed in it, so that had to come out too, and boy did they put up a fight. I have numerous battle scars, but I won, and have gained two new plants in the process as two of the lower branches have layered themselves. One I'll use to replace the one which just upped and died this year, and the other will become a bartering tool....what do I fancy swapping it for? On the subject of fruit, my strawberry runners are doing well. More bartering fare coming from this bed me thinks! However, there seems to be a bit of a North South divide going on, which surprises me for a 10’ x 5’ bed. I didn’t think it happened on s...

Need I say more?

I’d seen this advertised months ago and it just so happened we were free this weekend so decided, if the weather was fair, we’d go. And after a bit of drizzle Saturday morning (and some umming and aahing as to whether we should risk it) it brightened up into a lovely afternoon and we were glad we made the effort to go. It was a small Fair, compared to a lot that we’d been to, almost not big enough for the number of people who came. Either way, for £4 per adult we couldn’t grumble. We arrived just before 11, and headed, with tea and cake in hand, to a talk by Simon from ‘Rough Old Wife’ Cider on Cider Making. Quite interesting, I would say. I now know the difference between the West Country cloudy ciders, and the clear Kentish ciders. And no, its not just the alcohol content. It’s all to do with starch and the apples they use. Dis you know, the worse an apple tastes, the better it is for cider? We decided to buy some to try. I’ll give you the verdict once I’ve cracked it open. Th...

Today was time for my second earlies to come out to see the world and I wasn’t disappointed. Orla gave the highest yield and Kestrel were the biggest by far. Definitely some good sized jackets to be had. I lifted a third variety as well today, but I’ve lost the label (repeat offence, I know). I’ll have to go back to my receipt, if I still have it, and see what I ordered. They suffered a bit with the irregular watering and quite a few had split. I positively enjoyed the ego boost as I sat having my lunch alongside my three piles, strike that, mountains of potatoes while my neighbours cooed over my harvest. Although, in true allotment tradition, one gentleman took the liberty of telling me how he thought I wouldn’t get much off my six little rows and that actually I hadn’t done too bad! How nice of him to stop by and say! I collected some raspberries and blackberries today too...not too many...because I ate most of them while I was picking...but enough to do something nice for tea...

...as I collected my potato sacks to head up and lift my potatoes, one stray leftover had turned into a Christmas Bauble!

So I was checking my emails today, and my monthly tips email from the garden centre came though with the advice of... "August really is the time to sit back, enjoy your garden and contemplate the hard earned fruits of your labours." "The most important thing this month is to enjoy your garden; heady scents, glorious colours, an abundance of fruits and vegetables and hopefully more sunshine. What could be more enjoyable and satisfying than surveying the results of your hard work throughout the year?"     Yes, that's right, all I do on the allotment in August is sit back and given myself a good old pat on the back! As you can see from the pic below, these piles of weeds picked themselves yesterday while I sang 'Bibidi-Bobbidi-Boo' interspersed with 'A spoonful of sugar'. Oh what a magical time August is on the plot...ha ha! Am I getting old and cynical? Surely not.

Well, I thought I'd head up to the allotment today for a bit of a break. After chewing the cud over last nights events with my neighbour, he headed off to pick a marrow to make his marrow and ginger jam. I tried this a couple of years ago, but made a bit much and got fed up of it. Maybe I'll try again this year if I've got a glut of marrows. I've got a recipe for chilli jam I pulled out the paper to try when I get a spare moment. I, however, had a weeding and planting marathon on my hands. I managed to completely weed one bed and get 40 or so leeks in. I had a few stray tomato plants in the bed which had self seeded from the compost I presume. Now, how is it that these self seeded beasts were bigger than all my tomatoe plants put together? Seriously, they were massive but had to come out I managed to turn the top half of the compost heap today too. I only did the top half as the bottom is ready for spreading but I thought I'd leave that for now. I then ha...

Just couldn't resist posting these on here straight away...The 'Golden Globe' really were golden! Here are my ingredients... I'm making roasted beetroot with rosemary, red onion, garlic and balsamic vinegar. Not bad that the 4 main ingredients have all come from the allotment. I'm having it simply with some good sausages. I get mine from a local farm shop and I'm having Lincolnshire with these.

So here is the first of (hopefully) many posts... So I have a full allotment, progresing from half to a full allotment last year. It took a year to get the new half under control but I now have it all cultivated. I wouldn't say this was my best year on the allotment, a combination of poor weather and time constraints early in the year have led to a few gaps although I am now starting to reap the benefits of what I've sown. I'm back on top of the weeding again - although this new venture into blogging might detract from that - and have (for the first time ever) brought some seedlings on ebay to fill the gaps. They're in the capable hands of Royal Mail and should be with me shortly. I'm as organic as I can be with no pesticides or fertilisers in use for the past 4 years. I did dabble in making comfrey fertiliser last year, but accidently strimmed through the bucket. The scene was something akin to the outtakes you see from cookery programmes when the food proces...