Flaming June. What a month it was! Everyone is saying the same thing; plants on the allotment are just sitting there, doing nothing, especially the runner and french beans, and the courgettes, pumpkins etc, that need sunshine and warmth to really get going. And they hate the wind. It has battered all the young plants relentlessly for weeks and they simply hate it.
Nonetheless, not all things have been bad. I am still picking and enjoying spinach and swiss chard, carried over from the winter and last year's sowings. They are tending to bolt, but even the flower heads can be chopped up and steamed with the rest of the leaves. I must sow some more soon to carry over to next year, as surely the existing plants will give up soon and end up on the compost heap.
And talking of compost, I have just emptied one bin and used the contents to top dress the asparagus bed.
And the strawberries have been amazing. They loved all the rain to swell the fruit, and then a week or two of warmth came just at the right moment to ripen them. Yes they have been very late, but for the last ten days I have been picking up to 6 pounds every day!! And that is after the birds and mice have had their share and in spite of the many that have gone moldy on the plant.

And in case any of my readers wonder why I have been silent for a while, it is because I have had my head down getting my next book through the copy editing and proof stages. The cover is now designed and it is all very exciting! But with the allotment and garden to look after as well, there are simply not enough hours in the day to keep blogging as well. Mea culpa.

Strawberries and virus disease

Since my last post I made it back to the allotment and dug up the old row of strawberry plants. These all went straight onto the compost heap, except for 4 plants that have shown signs of growth distortion this summer, and bore no ripe fruit (the fruit failed to swell). I feel sure they have suffered from a viral infection, but goodness alone knows which one. I have found a list of 21 such infections online, on a site which offers lots of other good information about strawberry cultivation. 

To be on the safe side I put the affected plants complete with their root balls into an old plastic compost sack which I have sealed and I will dispose of them at the local recycling and rubbish disposal centre next time I go there. 

If anyone recognizes this infection please let me know.

It was too hot to do any more work up there. Next visit I must tidy up the other strawberry rows and plant up a new row with runners to replace the removed plants.

Time Out from the Allotment

Look at these strawberries! They are being grown in containers raised three or so feet off the ground, and beneath plastic tunnels. Obviously these fruit are well protected from slugs, mice, birds, are at a decent height for picking without breaking the back, and will ripen happily in all weathers in the warmth of the tunnel. I assume that irrigation and feeding is laid on through tubes running along the rows.

I spotted these whilst driving in the Dordogne, where I have been on holiday for 10 days.

One of the problems with going away is that plants continue to grow in your absence. Even though I spent some time making sure all work on my plot was completely up to date before I went on holiday, when I went back to it today it was, to put it mildly, overgrown.

We obviously had rain here during the last ten days. Whilst I was enjoying temperatures in the top thirties for much of the holiday in the Dordogne, with absolutely no rain, it is apparent that they were not so lucky back here at home. The grass in the strips around my plot is really tall. Tomorrow I shall take my lawn mower up there and cut it all. And also, of course, the weeds have grown in my absence, but I mostly cleared those today and added them to the compost, which seems to be rotting away nicely.

But the most rewarding part of my trip there to the allotment today was that I came back home laden with marrows, courgettes, runner beans, swiss chard, spinach, beetroot, and broccoli. Enough vegetables to feed us well for a week!

In the beginning...

Here begins the story of my vegetable plot.
Three years ago, in winter 2007/2008, I became the proud lessee of a patch of ground in the middle of a grassy and oh so stony field. I had walked over the field earlier in 2007, when negotiations were progressing between the potential landlord and our allotment association, and it felt like I was walking over a kind of gloopy sinking mud, and that any moment this awful stuff was going to part me from my wellington boots.

There were no worms to be seen in the soil, and no birds in the air above us. It seemed a pretty barren field. But most of us were undaunted by such an unpromising start!

Our wonderful committee not only marked out our plots but gave them all a very rough dig with a rotavator. We were also lucky to have an unlimited supply of cow manure from a local dairy farmer. So that first winter the wise amongst us put that manure to good use and covered our plots with it - barrow load after barrow load of this stuff was carted across the field to our plots, and spread thickly, to be left to rot down over the winter months.


....and what a difference this thick winter manure dressing made! Those few who for whatever reason had not heeded the advice of our chairman and had not taken advantage of the freely available mulch found that, come the spring of 2008, their plot resembled a badly overgrown lawn - thick matted weeds and grass - well let's face it, an arable field. Not so much of a surprise there, but some budding gardeners never really caught up after that, and appear to still struggle to keep their weeds at bay.

As the old saying goes, one year's seeding is seven years' weeding. How very true.


Whereas those of us who had worked so hard in the winter cold that first year were handsomely rewarded. Sorry if I sound smug:

I even planted a few flowers - primulas - in the muddy cold clay - as a harbinger of that first spring that held so much promise for us all.

And the all important compost bin had high priority - seen in the distance. I made mine rather inexpertly from wooden pallets and string (!), but later we shall see, perhaps unsurprisingly, that it did not survive for very long.

I cannot remember why I covered part of the ground with fleece at that stage. Obviously I wanted to warm the ground for something, but goodness knows what!

My allotment had got off to a promising start.

In later posts I shall chart progress - how I marked out the plot, and why, the mistakes I made and the triumphs, the tears and the fun of it all, the camaraderie and the bleaker moments when thieves broke in. There is so much to tell.

And the rewards are huge. This last few weeks I have picked 50 or 60 pounds or more of the most delicious strawberries - they have been frozen, made into crumble with rhubarb, consumed fresh in vast quantities at every possible opportunity, and given away to all and sundry. And they have seen no nasty chemical pesticides to taint them. They are pure and as far as possible organic. And that is a huge bonus!