Why we don't put all our potatoes in one bed.

We dug more potatoes last week with very mixed results. The bed that we cleared was alongside the roadway.

The first couple of rows dug on Monday were Orla and Nadine. As I have described in previous posts, up until now most of the potatoes have had no damage at all other than a few wireworm drillings in an earlier lifted row of Orla.

With respect to the potatoes dug from this bed things were to change dramatically.

21 August

There were four rows of potatoes growing alongside one another. Of the two varieties dug on Monday, the crop of Orla had about 50% of the tubers with slug and wireworm damage and Nadine had similar problems but not as many of the tubers were affected.

On Friday the remaining two rows in this bed were lifted. This time the varieties were Vivaldi and Winston. Vivaldi showed a similar amount of damage to Nadine but the row of Winston were a complete disaster. Every tuber was riddled with slug and wireworm damage on top of which the tubers were probably the scabbiest that I have ever seem. In the past Winston has proved to be a slug favourite but never to this extent. More Winston are planted in another part of the allotment so it will be interesting to see how these compare. From this performance it looks as though Winston is off next year's list.

Winston

I think this demonstrates our reason for growing a range of varieties and not planting all the potatoes in the same part of the plot. 

Our trial potatoes varieties were lifted. We planted four tubers of six different varieties. The yield was variable. More detail will be posted at a later date. Some varieties may make our main list next year and some definitely will not. Each variety still has to pass the taste test.

Trial potatoes 25 August

Another disappointment this week was our first Rolet squash. It was rock hard and had very little flesh so it seemed hardly worth struggling to prepare it for cooking, consequently it went the way of Winston. 

 Between plot visits we have been harvesting from the garden greenhouse.

Our first sweet pepper, first aubergine and the bunch of basil shown above went into a pasta sauce and the Gardeners' Delight tomatoes and watercress below went into our lunchtime sandwich.

The Shirley tomatoes below were also destined for lunchtime sandwiches.

We picked some Mini Munch cucumbers which are just the right size for the two of us to eat in one sitting. No shop bought cucumber can compete with the crispness and juiciness of one picked fresh from the garden.

The highlight of the week, however, has to be the harvesting of the nectarines.

From outside in the garden we picked some cooking apples - Peasgood Nonsuch and Bramley - and a handful of Brown Turkey figs. The apples were combined with the blackberries picked from the plot.

On Friday I was disappointed to find that mildew has struck and had claimed the pea plants that we were harvesting. I did manage to pick some pods but many were covered in the stuff. I washed the pods to remove the white powdery mildew before shelling the peas which were fine. It's a shame as there are lots of pods still swelling. I'm not sure how many more pods I will be able to rescue or whether the last lot of peas planted, and have yet to crop, will avoid being affected.

.25 August

The Loch Ness blackberry is now at its best producing lots of large juicy berries. The first lot of berries were rather hard so maybe the recent rain has improved matters.

I wasn't expecting much from the All Gold autumn raspberries as these were tidied, split and replanted earlier in the year. 

Surprisingly they seem to have responded well to this rough treatment and are full of flowers which are being attended to by busy bees. The Joan J raspberries that I gave the same treatment the previous year still haven't recovered and are only producing a tiny amount of fruit.

A few alpine strawberries added colour to our fruit salads.

We are still harvesting Victoria plums and we are now beginning to harvest plums from the Marjorie's Seedling. This tree is the last of our plums to have ripe fruit. The two varieties look very similar. So far still no wasp activity.

The Sungold tomatoes, outdoors and in both the plot and garden greenhouses are now ripening quickly. The ones below were picked from our outdoor plants which have had some fairly rough conditions to put up with. These are plants that were left over once the greenhouses had been planted up and are more or less left to their own devices.

We have now also moved into apple picking time.

I think some of the trees will breathe a sigh of relief when they have been relieved of their heavy burden. Our Egremont Russet tree has keeled over completely. Hopefully once the apples are removed we will be able to coax it back into a more upright position. Martyn posted yesterday about the plight of our over-burdened fruit trees. It's not only this apple that has suffered.

I'm a little concerned that there are the first signs of mildew on our sweet pea plants but so far this isn't impeding their will to produce masses of flowers.

At one point I had eight vases of sweet peas in the house and that was after I had taken one of the bucketfuls above to my sister.

27 August

The pears and Egremont Russet apples above had either fallen from the tree or were casualties from broken branches.

In case you are wondering why there is a carton of eggs in the last photo - we haven't started keeping hens - the eggs are from our plot neighbours hens. It's not often that you have a multi coloured box of eggs and it is an allotment harvest of sorts.

Our total harvest for August so far is listed here

As usual I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

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