Preparing for the new season?

We haven't really been doing much gardening recently but have been to the allotment a couple of times over the last fortnight, although each time we haven't stayed very long. Visits have mainly been to harvest  although, Martyn has done a bit more clearing and digging over the old honeyberry bed.

It's been roughly dug and there is still plenty more to do before the bed will be ready for replanting.

So what did we manage to harvest?

On our first visit we harvested a couple of cabbages, there was  plenty to use from the larger of the two but, to be honest, hardly anything from the smaller cabbage. The constant rain has ruined quite a lot of crops and the cabbages have suffered quite a lot of damage some of which only becomes apparent as leaves are stripped off.

We were lucky with the two small cauliflowers as any that grow beyond this size are again ruined by the rain. We also managed to pick a few sprouts

Fortunately the parsnips seem to be surviving being planted in mud.

On our second harvesting visit, the wind was whipping round the plot so one task was to recover the brassicas as the enviromesh had been partially blown off leaving some plants uncovered. The wood pigeons had taken advantage of this and nibbled the broccoli leaves but fortunately had left the florets untouched so we had quite a lot of PSB ready to pick.

This was photographed in the shed to avoid it blowing away. As we had quite a lot, I decided to make broccoli soup. The recipe stated that just the florets were to be used but after picking off any damage leaves I used the leaves and stems too, why waste them?

We also picked a small cauliflower. There were some larger ones but the wet conditions had spoiled them and the curds were brown.

We picked quite a few leeks as we decided to freeze a batch before they spoiled. This year, for some reason, quite a few have developed a hard core.

This post seems to have developed into a tale of woe as our red cabbages are very small too so we picked three.

To rescue things the parsnips were still going strong.

I'm really glad that this year isn't our first year for growing vegetables as I think I would be rather disheartened.

Our other garden related activity last week, was to visit out local garden centre's potato day. As usual we bought six varieties to try out. These were Gemson, Maris Piper, Mayan Rose, Pentland Javelin, Sarpo Una, and Ulster Prince. We bought four tubers of each variety. Some are quite well known varieties but are ones we haven't grown before or maybe have in the past but can't remember how they fared. We've bought Maris Piper from the supermarket but that doesn't mean that it will grow well in our soil.

Our main selections were  Apache, Casablanca, Elfe, International Kidney, Nadine, Osprey and Rudolph. Apache, Elfe and Rudolph were promoted from last year's trial varieties. Casablanca is a firm favourite early variety which will be sown in tubs in the greenhouse as well as in open ground.

Whilst we were at the garden centre we also bought onion and shallot sets.

We have bought Red Karmen, Centurion, Hercules, Sturon and Pink Panther onions. Pink Panther is new to us but the rest we have grown before. They are all globe shaped as I prefer these to the flattened varieties. We were going to buy a small pack of Red Karmen, as the red onions never do as well for us as the brown ones, however when it came to it, the small pre-packed sets cost exactly the same as the larger quantity in the net bags.

The shallots we selected were Red Sun, Golden Gourmet, Longor and Meloine.

Some of the potatoes are already chitting and all have been set out in the summer house and will have fleece thrown over them if it promises to be frosty.

Martyn posted a video of our trip to the garden centre here

Let's hope that the weather and soil condition improves before we need to start planting! To finish on a positive note, our early rhubarb doesn't seem to be letting the prevailing conditions deter it from making a start.

 

Our complete monthly harvests are listed here.

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on 

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

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