July 2008
July, very gratefully was the start of the summer season proper for us on our plot, with a halt brought (somehow) to repeated rabbit attacks, warmth in the air and in general a more
positive and productive feel. All this has sparked us into a flurry of activity and with harvests coming in every direction there is plenty to keep us busy.
One element of our allotment we continue to be astounded by this year is our fruit harvest and up until now, it has been one of the only things keeping us motivated. Our raspberries have produced a bumper crop of around 4 kilo's and on one visit thier branches were literally "groaning" with fruit and it took 2 people in one hour shifts to try and gather it all. With this glut we have been sucessful in creating some wonderfully rich jams and preserves to remind us of summer all year round.
Our strawberries unfortunately on the other hand did not fair so well, with relatively few fruits in comparison to the number of plants we have. We can only assume that either the fruits have not had enough sun to ripen and rotted off early, or the heavy downpours weve had have knocked off the flowers and young fruits. Although few and far between, the fruits we have had have been excellent in quality and flavour and we think you'll agree from the picture below, perfect little examples of the genous. We'll just have to pour more energy into getting a substantial crop next year but to get it on its way, a severe haircut to each of the plants is in order once it has finished fruiting. This will encourage it to invest in good new leaves to see it through the late summer and early winter months and promote healthy plants.
Another sucessful crop to be had was the broad beans, despite the hammering from blackfly they encountered early in thier life they produced an excellent harvest and mainly unaffected by thier poor begginings. At one stage the plants were bowing so much under the weight of thier pods we decided to harvest the whole lot at once and chop the bushes down to the ground (leaving in the lower stems and roots to fix thier precious nitrogen within the soil beneath) and share the wealth throughout family and friends.
Then came the spuds!!!!! Twenty seven kilo's this year and only one tuber showing any signs of significant blight damage, despite the rain. Rocket was its ever dependable, copius, monster spud producing self. The new varieties we tried (Pentland Javelin and Kestrel) were not the largest cropping in the world but produced some nice sized and well disease resistant tubers. The star of the show however was our wildcard experimental variety, purchased on the off chace, Anya. Idulgent numbers of perfectly formed, excellent sized, disease and scab free, easily lifted and very tasty potatoes were the result. Good texture and keeping qualities from initial results, will definately be giving this one another go next year, highy reccommended. All the varities benfitted from a few hours in the sunshine to dry off the soil remaining on them, then a quick brush and into hessian sacks for transporting home and keeping.
Other harvests to be had at this time of year are beans of all varieties which have finally managed to reach for the sun and find thier feet. Along with our first beetroot, shallots, garlic, salads and our first round courgette's.
The shallots have been somewhat disaapointing, we have to say, quite pewny and few, although we dedicated them more room than ever, we seriously doubt if we'll get anything like the number of pickling onions from them for the winter. Just goes to show you what unusual weather and a bit of pest damage can do! What little we have are now hung up in our shed to complete drying in specially bought onion sacks for processing and use later in the year.
We have had much more substantial scucess with our garlic however, we planted two varietes, Christo and Elephant, the latter of which seems to produce large bulbs consiting of one huge clove, excellent to use if you need a lot at one time, but certainly an unexpected result. Count Christo however is much more your traditional type of garlic and produced large quantities of good sized bulbs ideal for drying and domestic use. Currently these are hanging upside down in a shed for the leaves to dry, so in a few weeks it'll be plaiting time!
Our runner, french, climbing and purple beans have been a spectacular sucess and a pleasant suprise after being so very badly damaged by the local rabbit ruffians. Not only are they a tasty edition to the summertime dinner table, even thier lovely red, pink and purple flowers are a joy to behold.
Our tomatoes, pumpkins and sweetcorn are all thrivng and doing thier best to ramble all over the rear of the plot, plenty of water and food should keep the flowers and fruits forming, we look forward with eager anticipation over the next few months to see how they fair.
Our brassica's and root crops are also doing much better, although we must confess to there being some confusion and difficulty in idetifying the different types of brassica seedlings, which has lead to rather mixed bags of plants beneath our netted structures. As long as they dont decide to bolt in the warm weather we will actuially be in better shape with these than this time last year, despite our troubles with things chewing at them. Goes to show you as well that you cant depend on anything when you are allotmenting, as these parsnip seeds we planted in MARCH germinating now also go some way to prove! Wierd.
One slight disadvantage of the warm but still damp weather is one thing, weeds. Luckily however, unlike rabbits, weeds (although annoying) are relatively easy to deal with. Especially if you, as we have this year, allowed them to grow more substantial but not get to seed. If you then remove the whole thing root and all, thereby reducing its chances of reproducing itself by means of its roots (as tearing the top of immature plants via hoeing sometimes permits). We have also found this method requires substatially less effort than large scale hoeing of small weeds. Yes it does look a little messier in the interim but as long as they dont get to seed and you remove the root, there will be less in the long run and there is still nothing to stop you giving the surface a good scalping with a hoe once you have removed all the big unwanted specimines.
Our flowers are still helping to keep our spirits high and anyway, we never think its truly summer until the first Gladioli flower has shown itself.
Poppies, laveteria, dhaliha, nasturtium and calendula are all contributing as well, however thay are also producing something of great value to us for next year, seed. We are ardently going about collecting this tiny, often sand like material so that we have an even more vibrant and exciting show for next summer.
