New Rose Garden and the Developing Fruit Cage

Back in the allotment today after a two-week hiatus due to mental health issues. K has been nobly keeping things going and also working on our massive fruit cage, which is coming along amazingly well. He calls it ‘woodhenge’!

As you can see, we have decided to skirt round our rhubarb bed and the door area can be seen next to the rhubarb in the photo immediately above. A work in progress and a major undertaking from my amazing husband, but it will make life so much easier when it’s done.

We have also decided to take the verbascum out – well, it was just becoming a nightmare and to my mind is a terrible flower for cutting – it sheds petals every second or so and it’s a hive of moth caterpillars! Yuck. So I dug those out for the compost heap today and instead – inspired by our trip to Hampton Court Flower Show last week – have planted three scented roses for cutting. We have Desdemona, Lycidas and The Poet’s Wife. We also bought a fourth rose – William & Catherine – but we will plant that at home.

As you can see, the lilies are doing wonderfully:

And the sweetpeas are finally starting to grow:

Another thing that struck us today is that the weeds are just crazily out-of-control. Honestly, this year is the WORST year for weeds both on the allotment and at home that I have ever known. Must be to do with the amount of rain we’ve been having, but it’s just crazy.

Mind you, the rain does mean vegetables are doing well too. The cabbages are beginning to ‘heart up’ which is great news:

And the beetroots are doing okay too:

My favourite of all of them though is the climbing French beans which have already reached the top of their supports:

We have discovered a small wasp nest in the shed which is a real pain – K went back after we’d come home to deal with it, as we certainly don’t want those sort of shed tenants!

Here is another allotment view for you:

You can see that the gladioli at the front are doing well too. Today’s harvest is the lilies, some mangetouts and a decent amount of blackcurrants plus one redcurrant, all alongside my boot, LOL:

Here are the gorgeous lilies at home:

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Fruit Cage Plans

We’re planning to put a permanent fruit cage around the whole of our soft fruit area to save having to build it each year which is a real pain. The allotment committee have said yes (thank you!) so we are now starting to build it. Here is the wood which we took a couple of goes to get from the car to the allotment:

Today K put in 4 corner posts so the structure is basically in place (sorry – forgot to take a picture of that!). It’s tough work, but it will be so worth it.

I have also done a huge amount of weeding – as everything is going crazy with the rain we’ve been having. Here are some views across our plot:

The verbascums were knocked flat in the rain so I have tied them up to give light to the other plants around them:

As you can see, the gladioli have not fitted in with our succession planting efforts as they’ve all come up at the same time:

We finally have some lilies!

And Monty Don made me grit my teeth a bit last night on Gardeners’ World when he told us we should be picking our sweet peas regularly. Ha! Not in our case!

Good news on the veggie front though as we have our first small harvest of the mangetouts:

And the French climbing beans are slowly on their way – I do love their dark stems. So elegant.

Here is the harvest of carnations, lilies, asparagus (our last cropping of this one) and some mangetouts:

Here are the vases at home:

Have a lovely weekend, everyone! And happy Fathers Day

Anne Brooke Books

Brussels Sprouts & Carnations

Hot work on the allotment this morning! We have finally cleared the rest of the second bed of tulips and planted up the Brussels sprouts in their place.

I’m pleased to say the courgette gift we planted last week is still with us, hurrah!

The rhubarb continues to do well and there’s enough of it for a crumble this afternoon.

As promised, here is the picture of our sweet williams which I planted up last week – they are still with us, which is great news:

Plus the verbascum is going for it – but honestly it is NOT a great cut flower as there are just so many caterpillars and ants that come with it so my plan is to dig it up later in the year and just put it in our garden somewhere. Good display though:

We are very pleased with how the dianthus are doing and the spicy smell is just wonderful:

Today’s harvest is rhubarb, asparagus, verbascums and dianthus:

And here are the vases at home:

Enjoy the rest of Sunday, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

The kindness of gardeners

I must say once again how kind gardeners are! After my courgette disaster of last week, the lovely Maureen at my church job has donated one of her courgette plants and a cloche into our tender care – thank you, Maureen! Here it is in its new position, and I am praying hard for its survival!

Whilst we were on the allotment this morning, the equally lovely Melissa kindly donated one of her spare rhubarb plants to us as well, so a huge thank you for that too!

We have removed most of the old daffodils and some of the tulips so we have space for other crops. I leave the daffodils at the allotment for planting out for next spring, and I take the tulips home for planting in the garden (and get new tulips for the allotment next year).

So we have planted out our cabbages and netted them to try to ensure survival:

And K also planted some fresh pea seeds so we can get a succession of crops:

Though of course all you can see at the moment is netting! Speaking of which we have netted our gooseberry bush in the soft fruit area now as it has fruit on it and the birds go crazy for them even when they’re not ripe so we are determined to gather as much of the harvest as possible for ourselves:

Our sweet peas are also doing well in their new position on the other side of the shed:

Our verbascums are also out at last – late due to the poor weather in May, but still welcome:

I also planted out a whole lot of sweet williams but for some reason didn’t take a picture of them, so I will try to remember to do that next week!

Here is our harvest of verbascums, asparagus & rhubarb:

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

Sweet Peas in bloom!

A quick trip to the allotment today as it’s my birthday weekend (21 June) and I have lots of other things to do!

We were pleased to see the sweet peas are finally in bloom, though they do have a lot of greenfly on them so I’ve sprayed them thoroughly.

We did a weed round and K trimmed the plot edges. Here is the harvest of sweet peas, verbascum, alstroemeria and carnations:

And here are the vases at home:

Have a great weekend everyone, cheers!

Anne Brooke Books

Netting and Thinning Out

It was definitely time to thin out those sunflowers today before they start exploding! Here is the ‘before’ shot:

And here is the ‘after’ shot – I think I’ve done a pretty good job with them too:

K and I also put the netting up for the soft fruit – we’d ordered a new net and pins to hold it down, but the new net still wasn’t big enough! So we’ve had to add an old piece to one end of it and we’re hoping for the best. We’re also hoping the structure will stay upright as it’s been pretty windy today …

While I was doing a fairly serious weed, K also added the netting to the peas so they can get going:

The Brussels sprouts are also doing okay, which is good news, though I added more slug pellets to them just in case:

Plus we’ve given everything a bit of a water as – in spite of the rain yesterday and today – the soil is still terribly dry …

Here is the harvest of verbascums, carnations, asparagus and rhubarb:

And here are the vases at home:

Have a good weekend and stay safe, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Verbascum Explosion

Goodness me but the verbascum is the best it’s ever been, with more flowers to come.

The carnations are also in bloom, and I’ve planted a few more in the middle of the patch, where it’s getting bare.

Our sunflower seeds are growing very well, and I really must thin them out in the very near future or it’s going to be chaos in there!

I also have a few rudbeckia plug plants over from planting them at home yesterday, so I’ve added them to the perennial bed:

Meanwhile the asparagus is becoming a forest, LOL! I’ve harvested these for today but I think that’ll be the end of the season now.

We have also planted the Brussels sprouts which ended up filling one and a half beds. The photo below is taken before we put the netting on but rest assured we did rescue the trowel before putting the netting in place!

The peas are growing well, and K has now put in some stakes they can grow up.

We are amazed at the amount of currants on the current bushes – they’re already so thick with fruit that the branches are weighed down! We’d best buy more netting to sort them out before the birds get there first …

I have to say that the soil was also the driest I’ve ever known it so we did as much watering as possible while there. Here is the harvest of asparagus, verbascum and carnations:

And here are the vases at home:

Stay safe, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books

Carnation Posy

Much to my delight, the first of the carnations are in bloom at the allotment today – I’ll definitely be bringing some more up to plant alongside them – I do so love that spicy scent of cloves they have.

We’ve also now dug up the daffodil bulbs for storing for next year – there seem to be loads of them too. Much more than before – I will have to bring up yet another big pot to put them in! We’ll probably plant some of the Brussels sprouts plants in the bed that is now spare, but will have to see how things go.

I also planted the rest of our gladioli bulbs so there is now a whole bed of them. The asparagus is also doing well and there was plenty for today’s lunch, hurrah:

Here is today’s harvest of verbascums, carnations, asparagus and rhubarb (the latter of which I added to today’s apple crumble – yum!):

Here are the vases at home:

The verbascums do straighten out once they’re in water but look like a weird alien at the moment, LOL!

Have a lovely Bank Holiday and stay safe.

Anne Brooke Books

From the Plot to the Plate

We used some of our home-made allotment compost today, and cut up a few old raspberry branches to add back into the mix. Also trimmed the edges of the plot, and planted a couple more rows of gladioli.

The lilies continue to grow well, but no buds yet!

There was enough rhubarb to add to my apple crumble:

And, of course, asparagus for lunch – from the plot to the plate in just a few hours!

Here is the harvest of verbascum, rhubarb and asparagus:

And here is the vase at home:

Have a great Sunday, and stay safe, everyone!

Anne Brooke Books

Sweet pea puzzle

We are bamboozled by how yellow and sad our allotment sweet peas are in both areas where we have planted them …

I’m really not sure what is going on – we protect them against slugs and we certainly mulched before we planted – but the colour of these is totally different from the lovely lush green ones we have at home. It’s a mystery, hey ho …

In better news, however, more gladioli shoots are coming up and I planted two more rows today as well.

The lilies are also strutting their stuff:

I’m also happy to say that the autumn raspberry bed is looking very good indeed (see below pic), so here’s hoping we get a good crop. (In other news, the gooseberry cage is doing a great job at keeping the birds away, so we actually still have gooseberries this week!).

And there’s enough asparagus on the plot to last us several meals:

Today’s harvest is a couple of spare tulips, the first of the verbascum (hurrah!), two alliums, and the asparagus:

Here is the vase at home:

Stay safe, everyone.

Anne Brooke Books