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September Week Four Sunday 30th 2007 With this weeks trip to the allotment it was clear that the weather was indeed turning into autumn itself with a definite chill to the air. Once we arrived on the plot it was also clear that the plants were feeling the cold with their leaves turning southwards and asking 'where has the warmth gone?'. However there were still some large harvests that could be taken and consumed from the plot this week. Our greatest surprise is that the strawberry runners which we had planted up to transport for next years crops had started to form strawberries, with a few near ripe and one 'stonker' which was perfect. Who would have thought that we would be eating English strawberries in September? The flavour of them still had the taste of summer; this proves that the growing season this year has been far from normal. As for the rest of the strawberry plants these were coming on leaps and bounds and continue to throw out more runners in an attempt to create future plants. 
'Summer is still here .... Just' The next task was to put in the over wintering cabbages into the ground. Unfortunately we had to buy these from a local garden centre as we didn’t foresee having any in this year, but netherltheless they will still taste marvellous coming from our allotment in the colder months of spring. These were placed into the ground the same way as the others have been with a handful of lime and firmed in very well. Also while these are establishing the have had plastic bottles to protect them from roaming pigeon and slug attacks. 'Spring harvests, here we come' Also on the plot the flowers were still in full bloom with the laveteria producing flower after flower after flower pink and white and make the view a pleasure to behold from the top of the plot. We also found the iris's which we had transplanted this year (which also flowered) have gone to seed and this was also ripe for harvesting, the seeds themselves look like small dried peas and these shall be planted up in spring as an experiment to see if they come to anything, and if so will be added to the tubers already transplanted a fortnight ago. 
'Iris seeds' The harvest basket this week was still bulging at the seams with fresh young salad leaves. Large and small beetroots and the carrots. Also added this week was a 'tester' parsnip just to see what the current growth is from the crop. The good news was that these had grown to a very good size however the problems came when trying to remove them from the soil. It took a hand fork, a garden fork and a lot of weight to try and remove this parsnip from the ground. Once dug up the problem was because the parsnip had produced side shoots which were also a good size. 'Fresh Veg keeps coming. Apart from those updates that’s all that has happened this week on the plot, however over the next few week the winter jobs start in earnest with rotorvating, new compost bins and a full sized fruit cage soon to be erected. Stay tuned. |
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