Gardening: because murder is wrong!

Happy New Year, everyone! I had a totally wonderful Christmas present from my lovely husband which is just so me! Here it is in pride of place on the allotment shed:

Whilst at the allotment today, we pruned the roses and added them to the compost heap, and I did do a quick hoe round though there weren’t many weeds. The sprout beds are looking okay:

And the daffodils are on their way for the upcoming spring now:

And we have a nice harvest of sprouts for the weekend:

So, I have decided that I won’t be carrying on with the allotment blog next year as I’ve written this for a good few years now, and I think it’s time for a break. We still have our allotment of course! It’s just the blog that is closing for now. I will continue to add the photos over at my Facebook page, as I usually do, however. So thank you very much to everyone who’s been reading about my time as the Allotment Wife(!) and here’s a last view of our allotment for you:

May I wish you all a very happy 2024 and indeed all the years ahead. Keep gardening!

Anne Brooke

Christmas Sprouts

Just a quick trip to the allotment today to do some weeding of the beds and to collect sprouts. Here is the allotment looking rather bleak, which is natural for the time of year of course.

The daffodil shoots are coming along nicely:

As indeed is one of the rhubarbs in the older rhubarb bed:

Here is a partial picture of the sprout bed:

And here are the sprouts we have liberated for our Christmas lunch!

Have a lovely Christmas, everyone!

Anne Brooke

Signs of spring and a sprout harvest

Definitely signs of spring at the allotment today with the daffodil shoots coming through:

And there is even an early rhubarb leaf in the first rhubarb bed:

Today we did some weeding across the allotment.

And we took a small harvest of sprouts from the older sprout bed for lunch:

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

Anne Brooke

Tulip planting

It’s November so time to plant out our tulips at the allotment. Here is the first tranche of them:

And here they are with their essential protection from the squirrels! We’ll keep them protected until the first shoots appear and then they’ll be safe:

Elsewhere, the daffodils shoots are still doing well:

And there’s even one lone freesia trying to bloom which we left for any late bees or insects to enjoy:

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone!

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Allotment views and signs of spring

Not much happening at the allotment at the moment though we did do weeding across the plot and also caught up with the composting. I thought you might like to see some views of the allotment in autumn so here they are:

The fruit cage is also looking quite nice:

And the blueberry looks particularly stunning in its autumn colours:

The Brussels sprouts are also coming along and so nearly ready for a first harvest now:

The first Brussels sprout bed is certainly looking good on the whole:

Though the one we planted up later has a fair amount of catching up to do!

And in stunningly good news, we have the first of our daffodil shoots now! So wonderful to see these early signs of the spring to come:

In non-allotment news, I’m pleased to say I have a new 5 star review of my latest novel, An Unexpected Haunting, which you can read here:

An Unexpected Haunting at Goodreads

I rather like being described as “unusual, unconventional, alternative and singular” – that’s certainly made my day!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

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Frost disasters

This week, we had a snap frost on Sunday night/Monday morning which has, sadly, resulted in a dahlia disaster at the allotment …

…. and a courgette crisis, sob! –

So we have had to cut down the dahlias and take out the courgettes and have added them to our composting bin. To cheer ourselves up, we have planted the rest of the daffodils for spring:

In better news, the asparagus forest is looking pretty with its berries, but we’re not cutting those down yet until they go brown:

So, due to the frost, we have the world’s smallest harvest consisting of three roses, three mangetouts and the rest of the beetroot:

At least the roses look pretty at home – though apologies for the poor quality here!

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.

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French Beans Galore!

A crazy amount of those French climbing beans at the allotment this morning and there are still flowers coming, so plenty more crops to hope for there. We will have to make soup with them as we’re running out of freezer space!

The mangetouts are also still looking healthy which is great news.

And from no courgettes last week, we now have plenty of them:

The alstroemerias are also doing well:

This week, K has taken the roof netting down from the soft fruit cage so the birds can get the rest of the crop we don’t need though there’s now not much left of course. They can also deal with the pests as well, which is great. I’ve planted another bed of daffodils, and probably still have about half a bed to do. The mix consists of both old bulbs from last year that have survived (I take the bad ones home for the garden waste) and new ones bought this year.

Here is the harvest of French climbing beans, courgettes, mangetouts, dahlias, alstroemerias and one rose:

And here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

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New Rhubarb Bed and Daffodil Planting

We’re just back from a wonderful holiday in Devon celebrating our 30th (pearl) wedding anniversary, so are busy playing catch up at the allotment! Here are pictures of the harvest just before we went away:

And here are those flowers at home:

Post-holiday, we did a lot of watering as the plot definitely needed it, and were thrilled to realise that we have our first crop of mangetouts from the late planting of those:

The flowers were also doing well. Here are the dahlias:

And we even had a freesia at last!

Here is the immediate post-holiday harvest, with at least six million French climbing beans, LOL!

And here are those flowers at home:

Today, K has finished creating a new rhubarb bed so we now have two of them. Here is the new one, with three new plants in it:

K has also raised the height of the first Brussels sprout cage as they still need room to grow:

And I have been planting the first of the daffodils for spring!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

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The First Summer Roses

Much to our delight, our roses have started to bloom this week, which is wonderful news.

And the flowers to one side of the perennial bed are doing well – I can’t quite remember what they are, possibly gerberas?

Sadly though, the alstroemerias I added to this bed are definitely on their way out which is a shame but they were quite dodgy when they first arrived with us, so I’m not entirely surprised. If I see any others on my way round the garden centres, I’ll grab them if they look any better though.

The peas have put on some height so we had to retie one of them in today:

And the French beans look quite happy too.

Husband put down some more weed suppressant fabric in the fruit cage, and I planted up some lettuces, and added another couple of rows of freesia bulbs into the freesia bed. Here are the lettuces:

We also took out one of the beds of daffodils to save for next year – in the hope that our Brussels sprouts might possibly arrive with us this week so we can plant them out at some point. Whilst we were doing that, we disturbed one of the mice that lives under that particular bed and it ran for cover towards our shed. So cute!

Everything is struggling a bit with the lack of rain but we watered as best we could and are hoping for the best. This week’s harvest is the last of the asparagus and some of those roses:

And here are the roses at home:

In non-allotment news, I have reached the 80,000 word marker of my current novel project, so am rather pleased with that. Still a fair amount of story to go, however. Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

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Seasonal planting and a poor harvest

Last week, there were some lovely & caring people worried about my one lone pea plant, but all is now well as it has a couple of friends which have come to join it! It’s a shame that there’s nothing at all so far from the other peas we planted, but we live in hope.

In the fruit cage, we put down another strip of weed suppressing fabric, but will need to bring more from home to finish off the job. We were thrilled to see that the gooseberry plants both have fruit on them already! They’re always the first to produce any fruit (which is why we’ve lost all their crop in the past to the birds as we hadn’t got round to netting them) – and as they’re safely in the fruit cage this year, we hope they’ll be fine. It will take a while for them to be ripe enough to pick though.

We have now planted some of the French beans – but we ran out of useful sticks for them to climb up, so we’ll have to do the rest of them next week:

I also planted a courgette in one of the old daffodil beds – I lifted those bulbs first and put them in the shed for next year.

And a very poor harvest this week! It’s a shame about the lack of flowers – all our tulips peaked way too soon though they were a lovely bumper crop. We will have to think of getting some later season tulips for next year if we can. So here are some asparagus we found – am hoping for more next week though!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

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