Lots of vegetables to choose from.

At this time of year, as allotment beds become empty we try and fill them with somethings else that is either quick to maturity of will stand the weather conditions during autumn or through winter.

We have planted some Safari dwarf French beans in the bed vacated by our early brassica plants. The beans had been sown in pots and planted out as young plants. Last year was the first year that we tried this and it worked well, We picked the beans whilst they were still very small and they produced a good crop.

Another bed that was vacant had housed our early peas. This bed will become home to our late brassicas. We have made a start by planting some Autumn Giant cauliflowers which had also been raised in pots. These will be joined by more brassicas plants that are on order.

A few weeks ago we planted up some leeks that we had grown from seed. Martyn wasn't convinced that they would make good plants and so he ordered some plug plants which arrived last week and were planted out the same day. The leeks that we planted originally don't look too bad now so we could end up with a plentiful supply. Better too many than not enough though.

Our second brassica bed is now producing a harvest and last week we harvested cabbages, calabrese/broccoli and cauliflowers so this week's menus have been changed accordingly. It's getting round to the time when we are overwhelmed with choice of vegetables and need to resort to freezing for the leaner harvesting periods.

Below is just a representative sample of the tomatoes and mini cucumbers that were harvested through the week.

The cherry tomatoes are picked from our Sweet and Neat miniature plants. We have several in the garden greenhouse They take a small amount of space - the photo below shows three plants growing together in a square tub. As you can see they are prolific producers for their size.

Lettuces are being harvested from the salad bed at the allotment as required. I'm guessing that the kohlrabi is nearly ready to harvest. At what size would you recommend cutting?

I pricked out some basil seedling to grow on as I like to have plenty of leaves to freeze.

Some of the potatoes are obviously not going to do any more growing so we harvested  a couple of varieties. We filmed the reveal and it is posted here.

3 August

We were pleased with our haul with both varieties producing similar amounts.

International Kidney

 The potatoes were clean and free of disease or bug damage.

Casablanca

For a few years, Casablanca has been a firm favourite in terms of production and flavour. International Kidney has yet to be subjected to the taste test.

The courgettes have now got going , although the yellow variety is producing very slim fruits, but I think that this is a trait of the variety - Orelia.

As well as continuing to harvest plums from our Oullins Gage tree, we are now picking Victoria plums although we are finding that these seem to have been badly affected by plum moth larvae. It's always a good idea to cut fruits  in half rather than just biting into them.

To add to the plums we also picked a few Mannings greengages.

8 August

The dahlias are producing lots of flowers. The bees especially like the single flowered Bishop's Children.

Not all crops attract the bust bees. The sweetcorn have now produced both male and female flowers.

The pollen from the male flowers is now ripe and the idea is that the wind will waft the pollen onto the lower female flowers. Of course we now are having a relatively still period. I don't rely totally on the wind to co-operate as nature intended so I brush through the plants with a cane to try and help things along.

On the subject of pollination, can I pose a question? Several of our blackberries look as above, Some of the drupelets in the cluster that forms the blackberry haven't ripened at the same rate as others. The paler coloured drupelets often shrivel rather than ripen, leaving hard dry patches on the berries. I'm guessing that poor pollination has caused this. Any other ideas?

Stay safe and healthy

This week I am linking to harvest Monday hosted on 

Dave's blog Our Happy Acres

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. 

PS: It's not just our gardens that suffer from blight. Martyn and I are currently suffering from an influx of blog blight. It seems that it is the season of the spammer. One in particular is persistently targeting our and what appears to be lots of other people's blogs. Most are sent to the spam or moderation folders as we moderate comments on posts over five days old. These spam comments are deleted and never see the light of day but unfortunately some do sneak through. I apologise for any that sneak through and end up being emailed to those who subscribe to comments, Please do not click on any links in spam comments which gives these nuisances satisfaction and encouragement. They can track where click throughs originate from and will target a blog even more if they think that this is causing more people to visit their site.

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