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

Nibbly Creatures

Lots of nibbly creatures both on and off the allotment this week … here is the sweetcorn section where the middle is all but missing. Pigeons? Mice? Who knows. But we are not amused!

We also struggled with lettuce planting last week as the pigeons (or mice!) had had a good go at them before we even arrived at the allotment – you can just about see them here, still hanging on – just – at the bottom left of the really lovely lettuces (hurrah!):

Anyway, the beetroot section is doing well, and we even have one or two mangetouts lurking amongst the leaves, well gosh:

The autumn raspberries are growing well:

And the flower crops are doing well too. We have the first of the lilies out:

The carnations are still being totally amazing and I picked 128 of them – which is only about half of what I picked last week!

The verbascum is still blooming:

And the sweet peas we thought were a goner near the shed have a sudden lease of life:

Today, I planted the rest of the gladioli bulbs so that’s filled up a bed nicely. I also planted some coreopsis (which I picked flowers from before taking it to the allotment). They are a type called Golden Sphere:

Plus I thought I’d plant some annual flowers for the first time so here are four new pelargoniums – which again I picked before planting. I’m astonished about how beautiful the flowers are in a vase (see later) so will definitely do this again:

Here is the harvest of three mangetouts(!), verbascum, lilies and carnations:

And here are the vases at home. The pelargonium flowers are on the right between the carnations and the verbascum – I think they’re gorgeous. And the coreopsis are on the left.

Have a lovely weekend.

Anne Brooke Books

Preparing for Spring

Lovely weather for the allotment today, which is a total contrast to yesterday’s all-day heavy rain. We wore Wellington boots just in case but it wasn’t too wet in the end. Anyway, we’ve started preparing for spring. K took the rest of the potatoes out, and I planted stored daffodils into that bed. We’ll get some new ones too to fill one of the other beds, but here is the current one – before I actually plant them:

The Brussels sprouts we planted last week are doing well:

And K planted another bed of them today, so here are the latest ones:

Meanwhile the lilies are still hanging on to their buds, but the time for getting any actual flowers is very short now so I suspect we’re out of luck, oh well …

The asters, however, are having a wonderful time and of course autumn is really their season!

Here are a couple of pictures of our harvest, which is asters, a sprinkling of gladioli (well, one really …), potatoes, leeks and even a few late autumn raspberries, which we thought we weren’t getting – an added bonus indeed, and I shall add them to the apple crumble for lunch:

And here are the flowers at home:

Have a wonderful Sunday, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Frost Fallout

Earlier this week, we unfortunately had an unexpected frost on Monday and Tuesday, and so sadly the courgettes, dahlias and French climbing beans are no more …

So they have now all become compost, and we have added in a bed for Brussels sprouts instead, Sensibly, K put a net off to keep the butterflies away – there are still some around, in spite of the weather:

Frost survivors are the lilies, the last of the sunflowers and the sweet williams, so that’s good news.

The asters are also doing very well:

Here is the harvest of sunflowers and asters, plus the courgettes we could still salvage, potatoes and beetroot:

And here are the flowers at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

Narcissi Delight

Lots of the little narcissi tete-a-tete on the allotment today – very cute indeed, if tiny.

There are other taller daffodils coming along too, but they’re not ready yet!

Maybe next week, eh, LOL!

The tulip bed is looking grand and I’m really excited about that one. Can’t wait to see them in bloom.

We were also surprised to see some of the alliums I planted on the off chance are on their way too, which is great. I do love alliums.

No great changes in the autumn raspberry & summer soft fruit area, but I’m sure the rhubarb is coming along:

Can’t wait for the first rhubarb crumble of the season, but I don’t think it’s going to be soon.

Our harvest today has been the leeks (which haven’t done very well but smell amazing) and those narcissi (which look really lost in that tea towel …):

However, at home, I found a tiny glass and now think the narcissi look pretty good in it – I’ve put this vase on the dining room table to brighten up mealtimes.

Have a fabulous weekend!

Anne Brooke Books

Ring out the old, ring in the new!

The last allotment post for 2016 and indeed the last day of 2016 – what a rollercoaster year it’s been, LOL.

On the allotment front, we’re pleased to see that the January daffodils are well on their way:

And the later (Feb) daffodils are also starting to sprout, hurrah!

We’ve also taken the opportunity to replace our old and rubbish  (green & purple) secateurs with shiny new red ones that actually cut – which should make things a heck of a lot easier …

Whilst there, K dug out the potato bed (see harvest pic!) and I weeded the beds and fruit area, as well as the areas of pathway. This was made a far easier job by the lack of frost this morning, phew …

Here is today’s harvest, which consists of the last of the winter lettuce, potatoes and sprouts, together with a couple of gladioli bulbs we missed and which we’re bringing home for storage.

Have a fabulous new year, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

Rhubarb City and Magical Asparagus

Goodness me but the asparagus has grown like a gazelle on speed this week. We’ve harvested a couple of the larger stalks and eaten them for starters tonight. One of them was utterly perfect, but the other was rather woody – so it looks as if we’ll have to harvest them more often to gain the benefit. We’ll have to stop harvesting by the end of May/beginning of June to allow them to set seed for next year though.

The spinach is also doing very well so I’ve picked some for eating during this week as well. But our crowning(!) glory is the rhubarb – we pulled out some of the stems today as you apparently have to pull them rather than cutting them, and I’m planning rhubarb crumble and custard tomorrow – bliss! Here are photos of the rhubarb and of our harvest today, together with one lone tulip:

Speaking of tulips, they’ve been pretty good so I’ve picked more for the house. They last about a week, which is fine really.

And the freesias are beginning to come up next to the lilies, which is very exciting.

I’ve sprayed the lilies to avoid the dreaded lily beetle – arrgghh!! – a subject I’m used to as we have loads of lilies at home. K also did a hoe round and we trimmed the paths around the plot, so it looks a lot neater. We’re preparing ourselves for the Allotment Inspection on 7 May as we certainly don’t want to let the side down on Election Day! Ooh, and I’ve also planted some sunflower seeds – Russian Giants – in the runner bean bed and in one of the other spare beds, so I hope they come up.

Have a great weekend!

Anne Brooke Books

The onset of Spring

Earlier in the week, I harvested quite a few daffodils from the allotment, plus three or four more this weekend. Here they are from allotment to vase!

Such happy flowers, I always think. Meanwhile, the tulips and astilbe are on their way, with the tulips now having buds, which is great:

Anyway, today, while I hoed round, K added chicken pellet manure to the bed where we plan to plant the beans, as they’re hungry critters, we’re told. We also have plans to trail some sweet peas up the side of the shed, but we need taller poles than were in the garden centre this morning, so will need to get them later.

Meanwhile, the rhubarb, spinach and winter lettuce are doing well:

And in the fruit area, the autumn raspberries and blackcurrant are coming along. Yesterday, my stepfather told me that he never cuts back his autumn raspberries but just gets rid of the dead wood and leaves them. So next year we might experiment with half cut back and half not, and see how things go.

Happy Easter to you all!

Anne Brooke Books

Raised beds and soft fruit

We’ve spent a happy couple of hours on the allotment in crisp sunshine today. I did the weeding and also gave the soft fruit area as thorough a clear out as possible – which is a lot easier now the autumn raspberries have shed their leaves.

And K very nobly started building two new raised beds so we can extend our crop choices. And very good they look too, I think.

Of course they’re not finished yet. We need to hammer them in properly – we did our best today with no hammer and no spirit level, so go us! And we also need to add more soil, and think about what we’d like to grow in them. We also need to put lining down and create a shingle/gravel path between them and the shed – so it’s in keeping with the raised beds path which was already there when we took it over.

So a lot to think about for sure! Oh and we harvested the last of the beetroot, a few carrots and a huge bunch of the winter lettuce.

Anne Brooke
Gay Reads UK
The Gathandrian Fantasy Trilogy
Tales from the Typeface: a Secretary’s Life and How to Survive It

The Whole Allotment and Nothing but The Allotment!

Great news today! The other half of the allotment is ours as of this weekend, so we are hugely excited! This means that, as well as having the raised beds, we now also have a shed, space for another raised bed (and perhaps also a greenhouse depending on what the Allotment Committee might think), and a glorious display of fruit bushes.

In the fruit area, there are at the moment a lot of raspberries, some currants and also rhubarb, so that’s wonderful. Plus there’s space to add more fruit once we decide what we like. Today we were there for a couple of hours or so – in the unexpected sunshine too! I did the hoeing and also cleared out about a quarter of the fruit bush area, while K put new windows in the shed as both of them were broken. We’ll need to add more insulation to the shed too, and get a couple of chairs and maybe a small table where we can sit and survey the land, so the winter is going to be hard work but lots of fun, I can see.

No more foxgloves today, but I did plant the rest of the tulips which I remembered to bring from the car this time (hurrah!) so we’ll hopefully have a lot of spring cutting flowers to look forward to next year.

Here are the pictures of our new expanded allotment:

Anne Brooke Books
The Gathandrian Fantasy Trilogy
Gay Reads UK