a cammomile and phacelia posy

broad beans

rampant cammomile

baby gooseberries

cherry tomato plants in the greenhouse

peas

phacelia as green manure

 

 

 

purple asparagus

 

barely any rain for weeks now but everything is growing  remarkable well reagrdless, no doubt due to our constant efforts to improve the soil. looking for a place to plant out the goji plants this week, and lots more seed sowing.

first carrot

ashley and i decided to pull up our first transition carrot today

had a bit of a job getting it out of its tube ...

but it was long and straight

and delicious !

kohlrabi looking good too, i must find out what's good to do with them

the sweet peas finally took off, exploding in a riot of flowers

sweet peppers are forming in the greenhouse


some giant garlic was harvested

and there's plenty of beetroot, the roots are good raw and we've discovered that the leaves are delicious steamed, much like spinach.

ooooby.org

we had a nice hello from Po, a new zealander, letting us know about 'oooby.org' and also his blog http://ooooby.blogspot.com/ it's all good interesting stuff, go and take a look.

the acronym is out of our own back yards.

so, i took stock of my own back yard this morning and photographed most of the edibles we are growing and enjoying at the moment.

the garden is small, perhaps 3m x 10m, there is a large, mature apple tree right in the middle, a decked area, a place for the dog to pee, a compost bin and a washing line. this is what i've managed to pack in !

in pots by the back door:
some chamomile from seed, with the intention of tea making, i now realise you'd need way more, but heck, it's pretty

also in a big tub, my trusty old blueberry bush,just beginning to ripen. this is the fourth year i've had homegrown blueberries

then there's a couple of brassicas, we tested these out at the allotment last year so i'm quite confident that i know what to do with these

and runner beans, two wigwams, 12 plants, starting to flower now. the easiest thing to grow ever.

some peas, bought as seedlings from the garden centre, first time i've tried to grow them, seems to be going well

and lovely sweet peas, grown from seed got at our seed swap. i will definitely be finding out how to save seed from these for next year

strawberries and raspberries, again first time crops for me, the birds seem to like the strawberries more than the raspberries but i don't mind them having a few.


more fruit, this is the crab apple tree, at the moment they are all going straight in the compost bin, does anyone know anything better to do with them ? they are exceedingly tart.

a couple of courgette plants are more than enough for any family and easy peasy to look after

then there's some herbs, mostly in tubs, this is the thyme flowering and there is also some mint, basil and rosemary, they all get used in dinner-making

moving indoors, strawberry and alpine strawberry seedlings

this is camellia sinesis which is the tea plant, it took 3 months to get to this point from a seed that looked like a malteaser and i'm very excited about it.

and this is a lovely dog rose that will provide us with hundreds of rosehips in the autumn and is just now home to a blackbird family who made their nest with straw from the strawberries :)

a sunny monday morning spent building fortresses for our treasure,

rabbits have been spotted nibbling at the rye and the pigeons will soon be hungry

tess has very kindly offered us some of her jerusalem artichokes, either to plant or eat, thank you tess.

and hello to isobel who who'll be joining us from this weekend, it's lovely to have you.

it was a beautiful day on sunday and i had been looking forward to getting to the allotment all week. it was so lovely to see akram, begona, isabel and aysha again, and with such enthusiasm!


we all worked together to clear the first bed ready for a green manure crop of rye grass.
kim and i were thrilled to find that the beds we weeded last week had remained pretty much weed free, hurrah ! this feels like a real achievement .


here's ashley sowing the rye over the beautifully clear and raked soil.
he's also expressed an interest in sowing some oats (!) watch out ladies :)

the girls were drawn to the beauty of this allium, we've picked it and will see if it'll be our first bit of seed saving ... kim took it home to investigate

the brassicas are comtinuing to astound us, despite no ground preparation at all they appear amongst the most handsome of all the plots. the purple sprouting broc should be ready to harvest feb - may and the brussels sprouts - hopefully ready for christmas.

hope to see you next week !

xx

so kim and i made a tactical decision to meet for tea in the rain this sunday and go to the allotment on monday instead. it proved to be a good decision.

we got to see the poo that jules has kindly delivered, it looks mighty fine.

we lifted a LOT of comfrey ( comfrey is good for composts and making fertilizer ) and so perhaps fortunately we have tonnes of it.

we weeded around the brassicas, which are now looking magnificent, in preparation for sowing a green manure crop sometime in the next few weeks.

then we dug up the last of the treasure.

now we'd like to think about what to grow next year and we'd like there to be a good variety of interesting and unusual crops. and most importantly there must be something that even the fussiest eater ( that's you mr. may ) will want to greedily devour.

please take a minute to vote in the poll to the right here ............................................................. ta

Victor Veghead

kim and i met at the allotment for the second, very pleasant, friday afternoon in a row yesterday. it was sunny, and calm and just what we both needed.

we enlarged the brassica enclosures,

fed the tomatoes

weeded a little

dug up potatoes and onions

stuffed ourselves on raspberries and blackberries

generally shot the breeze

we think one of the bext big things to tackle must be removing as much bindweed as we can from the softfruit, before it's too late !

and i'd like to get a pond in somewhere soon.

then it was home and roast tatties for tea.

the plan

(click to enlarge)

we're getting sorted, we've made some decisions.

and we would still like to meet some more enthusiastic people.

if you don't have a garden but would like one, fancy an allotment but not a whole one ... would like to learn or would like to teach ... we try to meet there on sunday mornings but folks pop in during the week too.