Things are starting to move on our allotment plot. Fruit is setting. As well as the honeyberries, pears, apples and jostaberries shown in the photos below, plums, greengages, and the various currant bushes have set fruit.
Whilst some fruit has already set other trees and bushes are flowering. Shown below are later flowering apples, blueberries and quince. All have lots of flower which I hope will convert to lots of fruit.
The raspberries, tayberries and blackberries have produced lots of flower buds which have yet to open. This succession is good news for the bees and other pollen and nectar loving insects
It's not only the bushes and trees that are sporting flowers. The first lot of broad beans are flowering and the earliest varieties of strawberries also have lots of flowers. With potential frosty nights forecasts I only hope the flowers are not spoiled. You may notice that the bean leaves have the tell tale notches that show bean weevils have been lunching. The pea shoots are also their favoured food but hopefully the plants are growing quickly enough to shrug off the damage that occurs every year. It is only a problem when the weevils munch faster than the plant grow.
There are plenty of ornamental flowers putting on a display too. The forget-me-nots have been strutting their stuff for weeks but others are just coming into their own.
Under the plum trees are a couple of large clumps of bluebells. Unfortunately they are Spanish and so lack the gorgeous scent but they provide a pretty display and as there are no nearby English bluebells to cross pollinate we are happy to have them.
Martyn managed to till more beds. It was hard going but he persevered so that we had some areas ready to plant up.
I sowed a half a bed of hardy annuals. The other half will be sown a little later for succession. The area at the far end of this bed is where I planted the overwintered hardy annuals. You may remember that I had to sow these in modules last year rather than direct. The conditions meant that they were very late to be planted out and were consequently weedy looking plantlets. I'm afraid little has improved. Actually considering the weather we had I'm not sure a direct sowing would have fared any better.
We were really pleased to have managed to plant the last of our seed potatoes.
The earliest planted potatoes are well through which is a happy and a worrying event in equal measures. As I mentioned before frosts are forecasts for some nights later in the week.
The first lot of peas are also growing well and will soon need staking with hazel twigs. It's probably time to get a second lot in. The recent sunny, dry weather has meant that lots and lots of watering is required.
The onion and shallots are growing really well. I am convinced that had we started the sets in modules they would have done no better at this stage and it certainly freed up greenhouse space.
Some beds have required some adaptation. The bed below has been divided into two. We needed to walk on the beds to harvest and tended to always trudge along the same route creating a hard pan so a path will now be created down the centre. The bed below will have climbing beans at either side of the path.
We have 'ancient' lavender hedges around some of our fruit beds. These have become infiltrated with grass and are also very straggly looking. My plan was to dig them up and replant them deep in the soil. This has proved to be impossible - the plants just will not come out of the ground without damaging the closely planted quince and blackcurrant bushes so plan B has been put into action. This is to remove as much grass as possible and prune the bushes back as hard as I dare. Any spaces left between the remaining plants will be filled by what I hope will be plants grown from rooted cuttings.
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| Before and After |
Despite the dry weather the grass is growing quickly and so some time each week is spent strimming to keep it and the many dandelions that try to colonise the grass in check.
Dandelions have a fascinating habit. The closer the grass is cut the shorter the flower stems grow until the flowers are virtually stemless.
Of course we are still pulling rhubarb, although rhubarb isn't a fan of the type of weather we have been experiencing. If the clumps start to flag we may need to think of pulling some to stew and freeze.
At the moment the sticks are things of beauty, unlike the flaccid anaemic looking specimens being sold at the greengrocers.
Over time these hedges had become overgrown with weeds and despite being cut back every year were rather straggly.
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