Grow Your Own Magazine

It's been a great week - I've been able to harvest us enough veg for all our meals this week and given away a few bits and bobs, too.

Cauliflower, potatoes, tomatoes, cucumber, courgettes, cabbage, spring onions, garlic, peas, carrots, lettuce, beetroot.

The strawberries in pots have finished at last and I can move them out of the way.

The shallots that I sowed from seed in February are nearly ready to harvest - the skins are beginning to dry a little...

Cutecumber

Today I have been cutting back brambles ready to dig them out and clear the next patch. Also sowed some sunflower seeds in a couple of bare patches of earth in the hope that they will hold back the emerging weeds, and if they do not then at least I can recognise the sunflower seedlings from the weeds when I weed that patch, in some places I sown them in rows so that I can use the hoe there and in other areas I just scattered the seeds. They will hopefully act as a makeshift green manure until I...

thyme

For some reason talking to the blackbird that visits my allotment does not seem too crazy, but now that I've started speaking to the potatoes, plums and peas I am a bit concerned. Because of the overgrown nature of the uncleared/un-nurtured part of my plot I cannot always see if people are walking past it on the path ( I cleared the middle section first and planted that area up). Not only must I appear crazy to take on this tangled jungle of brambles and weeds now they can hear me talking to...

thyme

Well it's been a while so here's what's been happening.
Bad news first ! Think I may lose my french beans to Sclerotinia - this is doubly annoying as they were beginning to produce beans all over the place. I have also lost several hundred cabbages to the pigeons - that'll teach me to be too fussy about weed control - tried to make the place look pterry but all I did was let the pigeons see them more clearly !!
Cucumbers are going bananas (if that's possible) The largest of the rows...

sewer rat

It looked more like a carrot shoot than anything, but the reason I know is definitely a good thing, since the Coriander shoots came through! They're similar but different, if that makes any sense. The leaves were thicker with reddish veins underneath (and two shoots to a seed – that’s value for money!)

I was right; my peas are like the Trojan army. Determinedly marching their way towards the sky, especially the pot noodle pea, which has a whole deep pot all to itself. The potted...

New_Bud