Running out of space

Last week we were busy planting and at the allotment it's getting around to the stage where we are wondering whether or not we will fit everything in. Beds are gradually filling up. If you fancy a walk around the allotment, I filmed a tour last week which is posted here. It is almost 25 minutes long so you have been warned, the length indicates just how much is going on.

The previous week the tomatoes were planted out in the garden greenhouse and last week it was the turn of the plants destined for the plot greenhouse. This greenhouse is exclusively for tomatoes and five growbag have each been planted each with three plants. There is one bag of each of the following varieties, Shirley, Albenga, Sungold, Roma and Rosella.

Martyn put together a video showing how our garden greenhouse is now packed to the rafters and if you feel so inclined it can be viewed here.

The first lot of climbing French beans - Cobra and first lot of runner beans - Celebration have been planted out so fingers crossed that the slugs and snails don't notice them.

On Gardeners' World, Monty Don suggested that you only needed two courgette plants per person. With a household of two which extends to supplying three people we have planted twelve. We have planted six Defender - a green variety and six Atena Polka - a yellow variety. Monty would say that this is overkill, but we are allowing for the sudden death of a plant, some creature biting off the plant at ground level, plants just failing to thrive or produce fruits and any number of other reasons plants may fail. We have often ended up with a far smaller number of plants producing fruit that we had planted so with respect we will ignore Monty and continue to plant more that we are told we need. We also have some willing recipients should we have a glut.

Along with planting we have also been sowing seeds. I sowed the second batch of hardy annuals, the third batch of peas, some beetroot, swede and spinach. Our swede never seem to develop the expected globe shaped roots for some reason but we keep on trying!

This year as an experiment we are growing some oca. We tried to grow this before with no success so this is a challenge. We planted four tubers in pots to start them off and they have now been planted out on the allotment. We have no idea what to expect. This type of thing just makes gardening a bit more interesting doesn't it?

One worrying development has occurred with our trial potatoes. All were growing well until last week we noticed that one variety  - Jazzy - looked unwell. All four plants developed the same symptoms. In the same bed one or two other plants had similar, although less severe, poorly looking leaves. We had one night when at home the temperature almost dropped to frost level and on the plot, with a much more open aspect, the temperature could have fallen slightly lower but if frost is the culprit it has been highly selective as no other potatoes have been similarly affected. I've checked for potato diseases and nothing seems to match the symptoms. I would have suspected weedkiller damage but the plants are in the middle of the plot and any weedkiller drift would have hit other plants first. Anyone any other idea. More detail can be seen in the video that Martyn posted here.

Onto happier things, the bees are enjoying the row of chives that are now in full flower. With foxgloves, sweet rocket and a blackberry loaded with blossom, this area is a bee banqueting 'hall'.

This is the third year that I have tried to grow nasturtiums in our old wheelbarrow and at long last things seem to be working - a prize for persistence? I just hope the small plants continue to thrive. We moved the barrow from a shadier position so maybe this has helped. With self seeded nasturtiums popping up all over the plot we didn't understand why they wouldn't grow where we wanted them to.

We had another tiny harvest. Our first two ripe strawberries may not have filled any tummies, but they are a welcome sign that good things should be happening on the allotment soon, when our time will switch to harvesting and away from planting.

Ripe strawberries are also a magnet to creatures of the non-human variety. It was time to construct the netting tunnels which unfortunately will not thwart the slug and snail population. 

Our strawberry harvest would have amounted to the grand total of three had we beaten some other creature to it. Molluscs often return to fruits that have been started on previously. If the targeted fruit has gone, they will track down another. For this reason I always leave nibbled berries in place, in the hope that this will cut down on damage.

The rhubarb is still keeping us supplied, should we actually get any decent rain, the leaves will double as an umbrella or maybe it will become a parasol.

Several mini salad harvests, similar to that shown above, have been gathered as required for lunches but not all have lasted long enough to pose for the camera.

Not for eating, but a welcome harvest nonetheless, was a small bunch of annual cornflowers.

During this hungry gap vegetables set aside in the freezer come into their own. We still have a supply of braised red cabbage, cauliflower, peas, climbing and runner beans, sweet corn and squash. Surprisingly a few small onions and some shallots are hanging on too. I also froze the leeks that were cleared at the end of the season and these were used to make a couple of chicken and leek pies so it may be a hungry gap on the allotment but we are certainly not going hungry.

Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on 

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

By the way, thanks to those who responded to my invitation to make a comment. I appreciate you taking the trouble to say hello. I know I get lots of visitors who never comment and I'd love to know who you are - unlike the annoying spammers who can't seem to grasp that their comments go straight into my spam folder and never see the light of day.

You don't have to have your own blog in order to join in conversations. It may seem that everyone who comments knows one another but bloggers always welcome new commenters, after all that is how we all started.

Copyright: Original post from Our Plot at Green Lane Allotments http://glallotments.blogspot.co.uk/ author S Garrett