Solstice gathering

Forgot to write about our small gathering we had to celebrate the summer solstice.

A few friends came and we had a bbq, drinks and even some running races, instigated by the lovely Oiana!

Here are some pics of the night:

Can you feel the love?!

Croc trying to hide.

Not sure what Carlos is doing here, apart from maybe making shapes despite there not being music or a dancefloor.

Ah, lovely family snap!! I love this picture. Going to miss you guys loads...but don't worry we'll be over visiting when we can!

Thanks so much to Philippa and Suzanne, Carlos and Oi for coming, it was lovely to catch up with you and scoff our faces with burgers and hot dogs!!

Until next time/hasta la vista!

-x-

What's with this weather?

Seems like we just don't get summers like we used to. I swear during my childhood we had two months of lovely sunny weather, July and August, ok well I've just realised we're still in June so maybe I shouldn't be too hasty in writing off our summer before it's had a proper chance to start! But even our allotment neighbour has said to us this is the 'worst year' he's known for growing veggies (he's been doing it 20 odd years). I thought we had the worst of the winds, but the last few days have brought lots of wind again.

Things are going ok at lotty. Stuff we've harvested so far, albeit in small proportions....

-rhubarb
-radish (only about 10% was edible though, not sure why, maybe left it too late)
-lettuce
-basil
-spring onions (ok only 2 very small ones!)
-cauliflowers (the smallest ones you've ever seen)

To be honest, we've taken home hardly anything, but it makes me feel better to think we've had a small amount!!

Baz keeps laughing at me for the amount of tomato plants we've got in the polytunnel. He keeps asking me where I'm proposing putting them, and I keep saying, oh I'll re-pot them. ''Yeh, but we don't have any more big pots, Steph''. ''Oh, well, I'll buy some''. ''Yeh but there's a blanket ban on buying things for the allotment'' (as we're totally skint and trying to save for a holiday we can't afford). ''ARGH, leave me and the tomato plants alone, goddamit!!''.

Here are the caulis:

Aren't they cute? I steamed them and mixed in some nutmeg, cinnamon, marge and soya milk and it was delish.

**********

Sunday, 1st July-

JULY?????????? What the hec?!

Spent most of today digging over one of the beds, and sowing lots of seed into it, namely:

- rainbow chard
- carrots (chantenay)
- swede
- rocket

Here is one of the 'Sam cucumbers'.....

Oh my god, how cute is that?!

Baz spent some time in the polytunnel today planting some more of the tomato plants into the ground. We dug up the first potatoes. Sadly, the ones we dug up outside had a puny amount of spuds, but luckily the two we had in pots in the polytunnel gave us quite a few. Baz is making them into roasties as I write....I can't wait!!

Came across four ants' nests today, kind of gross, I just moved the one from the bed I was digging over to an area which is kind of wild, though obviously loads of ants were still in the bed. Baz found two in both the pots with potatoes in, and the other one was in our compost. Kind of felt bad for them, they must have spent so long building their nests, only for a big clumsy human to come along and totally destroy it. At least I didn't kill them, I wonder if any of the ones left in the bed manage to find the new home I gave them. I always remember being on holiday with my family in the Caribbean (yes I know, I am really lucky to have had a holiday here!) and we were watching this line of ants carrying food that had been dropped on the ground, and I remember thinking, wow, it's amazing the way they all work together as a team.

Here's me sowing the seeds...

Still sowing....

And here are the spuds!

Weekend

So a bad headache and exhaustion meant I didn't make it to the allotment on Saturday, but Baz went and made a structure for the raspberries. We both went up yesterday (Sunday), me arriving quite late 'cos I got up so late, not falling asleep till gone 5am the night before. Oops.

So yesterday I spent a bit too long going over one of the beds- the one that Mike and Suzanne helped me to dig originally a while back. It's 'potatoes and curcubits' on the rotation plan, and currently has potatoes (a few random ones which Baz discovered which had come up from last year and he moved them here), 'Sam's squash', and some courgettes. I turned over the unoccupied parts and pulled out heaps of stones and bits of old carpet. It was both time-consuming and satisfying. Also took out all the weeds. I added a couple more squash plants and put up a wind shield. It was pretty windy yesterday, so those late May winds obviously hadn't quite finished doing their thing, even though yes I know it's June. Which is weird in itself, but let's not get into the passing of time and my inability to comprehend the months being sucked away.

Above is one of the new squash plants. Hope they survive ok as I didn't harden them off at all. The other ones seem to be doing ok and I didn't do it with them either. I forgot to be honest.

I had to take a picture of one of the cauliflowers starting to show!!! I am pretty proud of the caulis 'cos I started them all off in the polytunnel from seed and loads of them survived despite me not thinning them out when I should have and them wilting and nearly dying when we had that really hot spell, and here they are, so far so good!! I hope they don't get attacked by any insects. They're all under netting at the moment, so hopefully this will help.

Baz has been busy extending the beds with the wood we bought recently. He's now brought them down as far as they are going to go, we just need to do a couple more, then they will be finished.

I'll leave you with a picture of the first sweet peas I picked this year. Beautiful! xx

Good times!

Ok so we went to the allotment again today! Spent most of my time sorting out the tomato and chilli seedlings, and putting them into individual pots. Not sure really how many of them will survive, the tomatoes at least, because they were so crowded, I hadn't thinned them out at all. I didn't really want to just discard the excess ones so we now have potentially about 25 tomato plants. If more than we need survive and flourish then I'm sure we can give them away.

I also planted the cucumber plants from Sam into the ground in the polytunnel, which are the first to go in the ground in there. This is how they look at the moment:-

Here's how the plot is looking....

Here are a few more pics from today-

Here are the runner beans Baz planted out. Mum gave us this Maypole structure back in February so it's nice to finally be using it!

These are the caulis.

The raspberries are doing really well.

Jerusalem artichokes.

And finally one of the first sweet peas! :) xx

All change!

So I went up to the allotment this evening, with Baz, and it looks really different than when I was last there, about two and a half weeks ago. I couldn't believe how much sweet pea growth there is- tonnes of it- and I could really appreciate how many hours Baz had put in whilst I've been visiting brothers in different parts of England these last couple of weekends. He'd created some more beds, and done some planting out, namely cauliflower and broccoli.

 Here is the (Sam's) squash that I planted out this evening.

Here are the crazy sweet peas.

We'll be going up again at the weekend, probably spend time there on both days, it's our big 'plant out' weekend, now that the winds have hopefully come and gone (though our neighbour still thinks there are some on their way) and everything is ready now to go out.

Have decided I'm going to join VON, as it's only £12 for the year. Exciting times!!

Oh yeh, I took all the seedlings that were growing nicely on our windowsill and are now ready to be transplanted up to the allotment this evening, didn't have time to sort them out, but will do so on the weekend.

Baz had a couple of ideas for the allotment today, which I didn't really like, I have this issue with using a lot of plastic, I just hate that it's such a planet-hungry substance, takes so long to biodegrade, and would rather use other materials if possible. I think it's too easy to just go into Homebase or wherever and see something that could be useful for the allotment, without thinking of the environmental impact of said item. I know it sounds like I'm being all high and mighty, but I also admit to being a sucker for plastic things. Just try stopping me from buying random, pointless garden ornaments made out of, yes, plastic. I guess I just want to make as little impact as possible, hence trying to do things stock-free and organic, and I don't want to get sucked into buying things for which there might be more environmentally-friendly alternatives. (When they make cardboard or wooden ornaments I'll buy those, haha). One idea Baz had was to get some plastic sheets the exact size of the beds to lay over them when they're not in use, to suppress weeds. I said I would rather use cardboard instead, which you can get from supermarkets for free and which can mulch down into the soil. Baz said, very dishearteningly, "I knew you wouldn't like my ideas".

The other idea was to get some of that cloche material and make detachable windbreaks for all the beds. I said I also didn't want to do that, partly because I feel like we have got around the wind problem by doing what our neighbour suggested and waiting until the end of May before putting anything out, and I said maybe we could do it for one or two of the beds, but I didn't want to spend lots of money getting loads of them.

I am quite good at crushing Baz's allotment ideas. I don't really mean to do it as such, I think he just has lots of ideas a lot of the time and I guess I am quite negative so I'm bound to be idea-crushing at times. Some of his ideas are awesome.

Oh, Baz just reminded me that he fixed our wheelbarrow. Which is soooo good because it was such an effort pushing it around with the front wheel not working. As you can maybe imagine.

Ok well until next time amigos xxxx

New Additions...

...I forgot to mention in my last post that we also have a couple of squash plants doing very well in the polytunnel, which were given to me by my lovely friend Sam, who also has an allotment and had some spares.

She's also just given me a couple more squash plants, as well as some Shillong chilli and some cucumber plants. So they will join all the rest of them in the polytunnel on Sunday when we next go up there.

I went up yesterday to water and I did some weeding which was very therapeutic and just what I needed to make me feel less restless, and I think the crops appreciated it too!

I've gotten back into food (a little too much into the eating...) lately, and I was thinking the other day that I can't wait till we grow our own carrots (one of my all time fave veggies) as the ones we are getting from the Co-op at the moment are so tasteless and not fresh at all, even though they are UK grown.

You might be glad to know that the polytunnel is still standing, only a couple of weeks and the winds should hopefully all have died down.

Last weekend I bought some new seeds, namely:
- squash
- Gardener's Delight tomatoes
- chives (sadly the ones from a birthday card I had from my sister didn't come through)
- aubergine (really fancied growing this, don't know how easy or hard it is to grow)

I have started some more Chilli Pepper Pete chillis off as all the ones I tried about two months ago never showed. I'm still thinking that perhaps the seeds are too old, I think our friend (who used to work for the company) gave us the seeds around a year or two ago........ Anyway, this time they are on our kitchen windowsill, with cling film over them, so fingers crossed this time they will germinate. Also on the windowsill...

- tomatoes
- sunflowers
- carrots
- squash
- cress (doesn't really count but still)

et voila:

see ya................

March / April......

I have been slack again at updating the blog...

Mainly we've been trying to start crops off in the polytunnel. With only a little success. I have managed to get ten cauliflower plants off to a good start, but failed miserably with chives, red pepper, chilli, tomatoes. Actually that's not quite true, there is one lonely tomato plant still sticking in there. Baz managed to grow some mixed lettuce leaves, but the pot is now over-run with ants unfortunately and to stop the ants from discovering the other things in the polytunnel, Baz put it outside, so not sure if it will survive. He's also got two pots of potatoes and some jerusalem artichokes on the go. He tried to get some bay growing from a cutting off the huge tree we had (before being lovingly lopped down), but sadly it just didn't survive.

Outside of the polytunnel we have lots of potatoes growing nicely (three types) and a row of radishes, as well as white and red onions. We did attempt to grow kale under a cloche but alas, it's died. We have a few garlic from last year, which we left in over winter as they just hadn't got very big by last summer. Some chard was growing in this big pile of soil near the compost, so we moved that into its designated space in one of the beds.

I put some flower seed in a couple of months ago and I think some of them are showing. I tried to grow some sunflowers, but they never showed.

Above is a picture of how the plot looked at the beginning of March.

And here it is at the end of April. You can see the compost bins have moved. Actually not much else is different!

Here are some pics of Baz on our seemingly weekly nomadic traipse from home to allotment......

Baz is basically obsessed with reinforcing the polytunnel. Any strip of wood or metal pole he comes across gets incorporated into the polytunnel structure. He is convinced it will take off if we don't do this. There are winds coming in May some time, as they come every year, and he is determined not to be the laughing stock of the site, and for the polytunnel to stay put. I swear he lies in bed thinking about it, and wakes up still thinking about it.

Here is an early reinforcement.
And here's how it looks inside:

The sweet peas near the entrance which have been there for years have sprung up, I built a bamboo thing for them to climb but as yet they haven't got what they're supposed to be doing:

We went to Brighton Vegfest a while ago and spoke to a guy on a stall for Vegan Organic Network. We got a dvd they sell called 'Growing Green' which we've yet to watch, but when we do I will post about it as I'm sure it's got heaps of good tips for growing fruit and veg the way we are doing, ie organically and without using anything which is harmful to animals.

I will leave you with a picture of the cauliflower plants, the one thing I am proud of at the moment!!

see ya....