French Beans and Freesias

We’ve added in the rest of the French beans to the bed now we’ve remembered to bring the sticks for them, so that’s another job done on this lovely sunny day:

I’ve also decided to plant freesias rather than more gladioli this year, so we’ve put in half a bed of those and will add the other half (there are 200 bulbs in total) in a couple of weeks’ time so we can get successional flowers.

This week, we also had three alstroemerias delivered so I have added these to the perennial bed. They don’t look much now, but the roots seem good so am hoping for great things later on:

Also in the perennial bed, the roses are getting bigger:

Elsewhere on the allotment, the lilies are very happy:

And even the sweet peas next to the shed are looking slightly healthier:

Astonishingly, our dahlias are starting to sprout too, so I have put slug doom down for them as otherwise they won’t be there next week!

I’m a little worried about the courgette we planted last week, but we’ve given it a good water (along with the rest of the plot) and I’ve put more slug doom down so we’re hoping for the best:

This week’s harvest is some asparagus to add to lunch tomorrow, and a few sticks of rhubarb for a crumble:

Have a lovely week, everyone!

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Flower crazy

We’ve not been to the allotment for a couple of weeks now and the flowers have gone crazy! The dahlias are out in force:

The perennial bed is strutting its stuff:

The damaged cosmos plant is hanging on in there:

And even the gladioli doesn’t want to be forgotten:

The courgettes are looking pretty good:

Though sadly, some evil beast is munching its way through our sprouts, how very dare they! I have put slug pellets down and sprayed the plants to try to discourage the pests.

Nonetheless, we have managed a good harvest of sprouts, courgettes, beetroot, dahlias, roses, cosmos, gladioli and gazanias, and the colours are beautiful:

Here are the vases at home – I’m particularly proud of those pink dahlias.

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

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Late summer blooms

Goodness me, but it’s hot on the allotment today – the plants definitely needed a good drink! It must also be the silly season as when we arrived this morning there was a fluffy chicken wedged in the wire fencing. No idea what that’s about but I hope its owner catches up with it soon!

Anyway, the nasturtiums in the perennial bed look amazing. I do so love their leaf patterns. I know you can pick and eat the leaves and the flowers but, quite honestly, I can’t bring myself to do that so I have left them in their full glory just as they are.

The sweet peas are doing quite well and of course the scent is glorious:

However, the big news is we have our first dahlia!…

… and our first gladioli as well!

The mangetouts are almost over now and the French beans are doing better than last week though still suffering from black fly, groan. The courgette is doing very well though and actually has some fruit on it now – it is a round yellow version:

This week’s harvest is soft fruit (we had to chase a bird out of the cage so K mended the hole it came in through once it had escaped), mangetouts, French beans, roses, sweet williams, alstroemeria (very good in vases – they last for ages!), gazanias, gerberas, the gladioli, the dahlia, and sweet peas:

Here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

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An unexpected victory for the cosmos

Delighted to find I have two cosmos plants in the bed I was aiming to plant them in – a miracle really as I accidentally spilt the seeds everywhere when I opened the packet a couple of weeks back! I thought this would be an allotment disaster but apparently not:

Not only that but Nature obviously has her own methods of making the most of an idiot allotmenteer as one of the plants has even started growing on the stones between the beds!

Sometimes, I wonder if it would all be a lot better and more productive if I just left well alone, LOL! Anyway, we have our first flower head on the gladioli too which is nice:

And there are a few more sweet peas on the netting near the shed:

The roses continue to do well, though there aren’t as many flowers as last week:

On the vegetable front, the beetroot and shallot bed is looking good. One of the shallots has bolted (you can just make it out at the very back of the pic) but apparently if you just cut off the stems, the crop should be fine – you can eat the stems too which is great news:

Last week, K planted a second bed of Brussels sprouts and they are still there so the slugs haven’t found them yet:

Our lone courgette isn’t as big as those on some of our neighbouring plots but there are flowers on it:

The French climbing beans look a bit healthier than last week but still not much of a crop and the black fly infestation is hanging on, though not as bad – so I gave them another quick bug spray to put off the little beasts.

Whilst there, we noted a young sparrow had got caught in the fruit cage of another neighbour so K and I spent some time persuading the poor bird out. We got there in the end, thank goodness, and it flew out of its own accord. Phew!

Here is today’s harvest, which is French beans, mangetouts, assorted soft fruit, roses, sweet williams, sweet peas, and some gazanias and gerberas from the perennial flower bed:

Here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books
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Mangetouts and our first rose

We’ve had a lovely break in the Lake District this week – amazing gardens and views! – and are back on the allotment today. Much to our surprise we have our first mangetouts crop:

And the joint mangetout/gladioli bed is looking pretty good:

We also have our first rose, which is astonishing!

The asparagus is doing pretty well too:

On the other hand, the French climbing beans do seem to be struggling a bit but they are producing some flowers which is positive:

The fruit cage is looking good and the early blueberry even has some fruit on it:

The rhubarb has also benefitted from our absence:

Much to my amazement there are no lily beetles on the lilies this week, but perhaps they are hiding?…

In the perennial bed, something has definitely chewed the gerberas but appears to be leaving the gazanias alone for the moment:

And the nasturtium seeds I scattered around the plot vaguely a couple of weeks ago are starting to grow!

Whilst there, we did a bit of hoeing and strimming down the weeds, plus we took the last two half-beds of daffodils out so will store those for next year.

This week’s harvest is mangetouts, asparagus, rhubarb, sweet williams and one rose:

Here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely Sunday, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Gazanias and gladioli

Gorgeous weather at the allotment this morning and not too hot for working either, which was great. I planted up a couple of rows of gazanias (Red Shades) in the perennial bed for summer colour – I have more of these which I will plant up at home in the front garden.

The lilies are doing well though I did spray them to deter the dreaded lily beetle!

And, thankfully, our second planting of sweet peas next to the shed is still surviving:

We are happy with the rhubarb but will let it grow for a while longer before we do any harvesting to give it time to gather strength:

The mangetouts are looking okay, and – as ever! – the gladioli are going for it. Nothing will ever destroy that flower, honestly! I planted up another couple of rows whilst there, so only another row to go before I’ve filled that bed:

In the week since we’ve last seen the allotment, the asparagus has grown so that’s a nice starter for tonight’s dinner:

The French climbing beans are still happy and we even have a flower on one of them which is great news:

And the beetroot and shallot bed is looking good:

So, only a small harvest of the asparagus this week, though we have dug out the rest of the tulip bulbs to take home for planting:

Whilst there, we also did a jolly good water round to give everything a drink – always a worthwhile task!

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Planting up the season

We really focused ourselves at the allotment today and planted up the rest of the vegetables we’ve been looking after at home, so it was hugely busy but fun. First off, the beetroot is now all done:

And we have put in the cabbages, netted them, sprayed and put slug doom down so we hope they will survive!

K also built the structure for the French beans and we have put those in as well. There were some left over so we put those on the allotment shared table for people to take if they would like some – such a useful facility to have!

The Brussels sprouts which we planted earlier in the month continue to do okay:

The fruit cage is also really going for it, with lots of flowers so that’s good news:

The gerberas I planted last week are still there but a bit slug-chewed so I put some slug doom pellets down to protect those too:

Whilst there this week, I also planted three more rows of gladioli – though the bucket I’ve been storing them in appears to be doing its own planting without needing me at all! That’s the joy of gladioli – I swear to you I could just chuck them onto the bed without bothering with planting them at all and they’d STILL produce leaves and flowers, no problem. I could probably leave them in that bucket and they’d look fine!

Here is a view of the allotment which almost makes it look as if we know what we’re doing – as if, LOL!

Here is the harvest of asparagus and sweet williams, plus a bed of tulip bulbs I dug up which I will take home to plant in November:

Here are the sweet williams at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

First Beetroot and More Daffodils

Lovely day on the allotment today though the wind is still a bit chilly. The daffodils continue to look good with more to come:

The tiny tulips are also looking quite bright and are just about long enough to cut this time!

I’m happy to say that the mangetouts we planted up last week seem to have survived the mice and I’ve added some more slug doom to them while they are at this vulnerable stage:

I’m a bit worried about the sweet peas next to the shed though, which look very unhappy indeed. I’ve given them a water and am hoping for the best. At least the rhubarb is doing okay:

I have put some sunflower seeds in around the tulip bed as we’re not planning to use that for anything in particular, and the tulips will be over by the time the sunflowers arrive – if they do! We have also planted up our first row of beetroot. As ever, we are using a non-red variety so it doesn’t stain when you handle it. Tastes exactly the same though.

Here is the harvest of daffodils and tulips:

And here they are at home:

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Planting for Spring

There are many more daffodils on the allotment this week, which is lovely news:

The little narcissi next to the shed door are also out, which is very cute – I have to be careful when opening the door, but they seem to survive:

We also have our first tulip but, annoyingly, it’s one of the small ones (way too small for cutting!!) that I thought I’d got rid of last year. Oh well, the splash of colour is still very welcome:

This morning, we put up the stakes and netting for the mangetouts and have planted them out. We used most of them, but put the remainder on the allotment bench for other people if they can make use of them. And, yes, I put slug pellets down to protect them. Here’s hoping the mice don’t eat them all first though!

I also took the opportunity to plant up three rows of gladioli for the first of our successional planting. I’ll do the next few rows in a couple of weeks or so to elongate the season:

I’m pleased to say the rhubarb has come on well in the past week and is looking quite happy:

I even had time for a bit of a sit-down and admiring the roses, which was nice:

So here is the daffodil harvest:

And here are the vases at home:

Have a good week, everyone, and let’s hope that the world news gets better very soon.

Anne Brooke Books

I Spy The Work …

… of the leaf cutter bee! Which is fabulous news as I was only moaning to K last night that we’ve not seen the leaf cutter bee at home for a couple of years at least, whereas we had a few of them for several years on the go before that.

Even the great Monty Don mentioned he had them in his garden last night and how thrilled he was about it – thus explaining my moan. Well, we still don’t have them at home (alas) but the great news is we have them on the allotment!

As you can see from the marvellous circular bites taken out of the rose leaves on the right of the picture above, they are busy making their homes somewhere nearby. They cause absolutely no damage to the plant and I think the patterns they make are very beautiful, so this is a wonderful addition to our plot!

However, not all visitors are good ones as it’s obvious that some evil creature is eating our poor cabbages:

Still, at least the cabbages – once we’ve removed the damaged parts – are edible, but I wasn’t anticipating on doing this much sharing with the wildlife …

However, the lettuces and yacons are surviving well:

In other news, I’m happy to say that the first of our asters are now in flower and the butterflies and bees are LOVING them:

In this perennial bed, we also have the dahlias arriving and a second showing of the roses, which is good news too:

Meanwhile, the sweet peas are still going strong:

And the sweet williams are looking happy too:

So, today, we have a harvest of one cabbage, one courgette, three beetroots, French climbing beans, sweet peas, sweet williams, asters, roses, gladioli, dahlias and a coreopsis:

Here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books