July Week Two Sunday 8th 2007
The visit down the allotment this week bought feeling of anxiety and feelings of excitement as we await results of our potato patch. Had they caught blight or had the Bordeaux mixture postponed the inevitable. As with every week to the allotment these days we seem to be welcome by the most wonderful fragrence and colour from flower which are also growing as this week was no exception with the sweet peas in full bloom and a wonderful giant poppy just flowering also.
'Smashing sweetpeas'
Once we had arrived on the plot the first thing was to check the potatoes and the good news was that they had survived and still showing good green foliage. So we set about digging the two rows of first early potatoes and were very surprised to see that the potatoes were very large indeed and also very heavy cropping. After washing a few test potatoes it was very pleasant to see very little signs of scab, and we cannot wait to start eating them.
'Potato Heaven'
After digging the two rows up and tidying where they had been we had filled the wheelbarrow up with the fresh new potatoes and started to divide them into large, medium and small sizes and then placed them in Hessian bags to help stop them chitting and going bad.
The next task was to harvest the soft fruit again because with all the rain and mildly hot weather it had made them thrive. We picked the last of the gooseberries and again had picked another one kilo of large plump gooseberries which will soon be turned into gooseberry jam. The next fruit to be picked was the blackcurrants; we were very surprised to have got any crop off of the bush this year as it was its first full growing season. Even so we still managed to get about 200 grams of fruits from this bush.
'Harvest Basket'
The raspberries were where the main harvesting took place on the fruit and these have now started to crop in earnest with another large punnet full of glistening red fruits just waiting to be eaten.
After all of the harvesting we needed to check the rest of the plot and sadly not all of the crops are favouring as well. Upon checking the monolith the tomatoes inside are showing signs of the dreaded blight. Northamptonshire has a very high blight spore count normally and with all this wet weather it was inevitably going to happen. So we have cut off all the affected stems and burned these to stop the pores being transferred to the others and we have our fingers crossed they will still recover.
'Bad blight but the futures Bright'
On a neighbouring plot their tomatoes seem to have met a similar demise and are all back and rotten, and is just as well we kept some plants at home for growing which are safely behind glass and should be safe from blight.
On a happier note the onions and shallots are still going strong with the shallots becoming very fat plump bulbs indeed, and showing signs of going red which means that they should be ready within one month. The onion foliage is starting to bend over as the onions are starting to swell and ripen also meaning that these shouldn't be too far behind also and should start to be dried within six weeks.
'Smashing Shallots (sorry about the weeds)'
ALways a welcoming sight down on any allotment plot is the signs of the first runner beans starting to forms on the canes which they have been growing on. Very early in the year we put in some runners because they had become too big for the greenhouse and we are pleased to report the first runners are starting to form on these plants and we appear to be the first on the site whom have beans forming and look forward to tasting these very very soon.
'Sunshine and beans'
The Atlantic giant pumpkin which we are growing to try and beat the family record of 18lbs has made its first fruit and should start to show signs of swelling very shortly, to aid its growth we placed a handful of chicken manure at each of the plants roots and watered in well. With the forecast of hot weather for the next week at least these should start to fly off now and fingers crossed the family record should be beaten this year.
'A record breaker in the making?'
On inspection of the brassicas the cauliflowers which we had grown ourselves from seed seem to doing much better than those which we bought from a garden show with now signs of blowing and a nice healthy heart forming, which is protected from its own leaves. In the next few weeks these should be ready for harvesting also. The biggest surprise in the brassica section was the broccoli, which has started to form lush green florets which are poking through the leaves and again should be harvesting size within three weeks.
'Winter Veg already !?!?!'
The final jobs for this week was to harvest off some of the salad varieties which included the lettuces, radishes and also some carrots. However before we left we couldn't help sowing some last beetroots, carrots and radishes with these ready for harvesting towards late summer.