The scented lilies are late, but they’re finally here, hurrah! The scent is totally amazing, and I LOVE the colour too.
The sweet peas are also doing well – the ones near the shed are coming along, and the white ones we planted just because we had too many of them at home are really going strong, plus their stems are just so long.
The echinacea also look great:
The early gladioli are blooming well …
… and just look at those sunflowers:
In vegetable news, we have our first ever pumpkins – two of them, well gosh! The shoots are amazingly long so in each case, the root is the other side of the raised bed, lengthwise, double gosh.
The marrow is looking good:
And there are flowers on the climbing French beans:
Here is this week’s harvest of the rest of the mangetouts, a (very bolted!) lettuce, and a wide variety of flowers:
The start of the soft fruit season is upon us in terms of our allotment as the red currants and blackcurrants are now ready. I do love picking blackcurrants as the smell of the plant is just fantastic and it’s so satisfying. However, there aren’t as many as last year as we have got all of the offering in one session (see harvest picture later on) and have left the netting off so the birds can have the rest. Last year, we had three currant harvest sessions before doing that. Is this an issue with the year we’ve had or aren’t the bushes happy? We’ll have to see how next year goes.
Anyway, we have a couple of lovely marrows, one of which we’ve picked. We’re desperately looking for marrow recipes, but today we fried some of it, then added salt and cheese – and very nice it was too!
I also think we’ve got the last of the mangetouts or almost – and the ones there today are a bit old and scraggy. Mind you, we’re still eating the crop of last week so can’t complain.
Flowers are also doing well – the gladioli are out, hurrah!!! I am LOVING that gorgeous red colour.
We also have alstroemerias and echinacea in the perennial flower bed, which are both lovely.
And the coreopsis are still holding their own against being nibbled to death – though the stems are much shorter than usual.
The main lily area is still producing some blooms, and the sweet peas next to them are just starting too – here they are all white, and the stems are beautifully long (which is so much easier for flower arranging!):
Plus we have our very first sunflower, hurrah! It’s not as big as many others in the allotment right now, but I’m definitely still happy.
Here is the harvest of blackcurrants, red currants, a lettuce, mangetouts, a marrow, gladioli, coreopsis, carnations, pelargoniums, dahlias, sweet peas, sweet williams, verbascums and lilies:
Once again, the lilies are the outright queens of the allotment and look simply amazing this week.
In addition, the gladioli appear to be heading for the bloom and the first one to come will definitely be red!
The sweet peas have finally decided to bloom as well, which is great news:
And the wonderful K has managed to fool the pigeons/squirrels/mice (or whatever they are) by surrounding the coreopsis with a cat’s cradle pattern of string. Let’s hope it continues to work!
There’s good news on the sweetcorn front too – there’s been no more nibbling since K added the wire cage around them, hurrah:
Meanwhile, we have one autumn raspberry just starting to mature – I hope there might be some more to follow it at some point …
And we have a marrow in the making, hurrah!
The mangetouts are still going completely crazy:
Here they are at home, after I’d washed and trimmed them – we’ve only just finished last weekend’s bowl! However, we’ve found they’re very nice indeed in a stir-fry with spring onions, mint, mushrooms and even some crystallised ginger – or any combination of these that takes your fancy!
Here is today’s harvest – which is mangetouts, a lettuce, lilies, coreopsis, cosmos, carnations, verbascum, sweet williams and sweet peas:
Yet more sweetcorn has gone missing this week, sob:
But we are determined to fight back(!) so I planted some new ones and K netted the area. We hope that will be enough to deter the evil sweetcorn nibbler, but who can tell …
In other news the asparagus forest is on its way – as we’re leaving it to do its thing now as the season is basically over.
The lettuces are doing amazingly well and I also planted a couple of others just to lengthen the season – if they don’t get eaten!
Fresh from netting the sweetcorn, K has also today built a netting pod for the currants to protect them from the greedy birds (who have already taken the gooseberry crop in total, double sob!). As you can see it’s a home-made effort and we’ve secured it down with stones from the plot, bits of wood and also hooked nails made from old hangers from home. The ultimate recycling creation!
The lilies are doing very well:
And the pelargoniums and cosmos are trying their best:
The sweet williams are struggling a bit – which is a total contrast from last year – but the beetroot behind them are doing well. I have pinched the tops off the beetroot as I thought they were getting a bit straggly, and we want the energy to go into the crop rather than the leaf.
Today’s harvest is one lettuce, mangetouts, verbascums, carnations, pelargoniums, sweet williams, cosmos and lilies:
Here are the vases at home.
Have a lovely Sunday, everyone. Oh, and happy birthday to me – I turned 55 (gosh!) on 21 June.
Never say allotment life is dull! I managed to rescue a female grass snake who was totally tangled up in some fruit netting on the allotments today. Luckily, I LOVE snakes and this was one absolutely beautiful. It took me about 5 mins or so to cut her free and then, after K had taken a quick snap, I let her go in the hedge. She slithered away quite happily. Just call me the Allotment Snake Whisperer, LOL!
In more normal allotment news, everything is growing fairly well, probably due to the whole week of rain that we’ve just had. However, some wicked creature has eaten all my lovely coreopsis, sob! I suspect a rabbit or a pheasant, but either way I’m not impressed …
However, the carnations have survived the onslaught, as have the cosmos and the verbascum.
There are more lilies in bloom this week, and the sunflowers have grown taller, hurrah!
The autumn raspberry area has now grown so thick that I can’t get in to weed any more. I just have to rely on spotting any tall weeds and pulling them out if I can reach them.
The lettuces are doing well and the mangetouts have exploded!
This week, we planted cabbages – which we’ve never grown before so this will be a voyage of discovery for us. We netted them which should keep off the butterflies and pigeons, we hope …
We’ve also planted out two courgettes – a green one and a round yellow one (which is already in flower!):
We brought leeks to plant but there is no room! So we have planted them under the climbing beans for the time being – though I suspect it will be too shady later on for them, so we may have to rethink it.
Here is the harvest of mangetouts, verbascum, lilies and carnations:
And here are the vases at home:
Have a lovely Sunday, and watch out for snakes, LOL!
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.
