Making the Most of Failure

As you may remember, our sprouts this year (for the second year running) have been a total failure (sob!…), so much so that they just look like tired cabbages:

So we’ve finally admitted defeat and taken them out to see what we could salvage, if anything. In fact, once home, I have salvaged some decent looking greens and a selection of very tiny sprouts that look SO cute, LOL!! We could probably eat them raw – they are that small! Here they are on our kitchen draining board:

So it just goes to show that there’s always something you can make of disaster …

Anyway, in other news, the daffodils are going strong:

And there is a rather nice display of tulips on their way in a bed where we did NOT plant them – I blame the squirrels though it’s more likely to be my total inability to find all the bulbs when digging them up, to be honest!

Here is the harvest:

And here is the vase at home:

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

Daffodil Harvest

Managed to fit in an allotment visit first thing this morning before Storm Dennis hits us later on. Goodness, but the field we need to cross to get to the allotments was the wettest I’ve ever known it – like a marsh! We do appear to have some shed damage in preparation for the storm already …

K has slotted it back in but I’m not sure how long that will last!

Anyway, the daffodils are doing well – even the ones I abandoned near the compost bins are in flower:

And the single daffodil in amongst the leeks is happy too:

Meanwhile the tulip shoots are growing, which is brilliant news:

And the rhubarb is looking good too:

So today we have our first real harvest of some of the leeks and the daffodils. The leeks smell amazing – so much stronger than the ones in the shop!

Here are the daffodils at home:

Stay safe this weekend, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

A First Small Harvest

We have our very first (and very small!) harvest for 2020 – one lone daffodil that’s growing in a bed that … um … doesn’t have any daffodils in it. Then again, what do we know? Nothing, obviously!

Meanwhile, the daffodils that are actually in the bed we allocated for them are on their way, hurrah!

We were chatting with a couple of our fellow allotmenteers as well (hello, Pauline & Helen!) and Helen mentioned how useful she finds the GrowVeg site as a way of planning out the allotment, getting crop rotation under control, and getting reminders as to when to plant and harvest crops etc etc – so we will definitely look into that as a bit of planning is always a good thing when growing veg and flowers etc. Thank you, Helen!

Whilst there, we noticed that the tulips are now on their way, which is great news – so we’ve removed the netting and sticks that were keeping the squirrels away – as once the tulip shoots are visible, the squirrels don’t bother with the bulbs any more:

The second of the two tulip pictures above shows them growing in another bed where they’re not supposed to be as well! So they must have taken a lesson from that lone daffodil, LOL!

Talking of which, here is said daffodil at home in the vase:

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books