Monday, September 14

Who's been nibbling my ears

It was fine most of last week, although we did have one day when we managed to get fairly wet picking raspberries, so we put in quite a few hours at the allotment. Most of the activity involved clearing and tidying which doesn't make for interesting photos.

Our local garden centre had some onion sets for planting in autumn and some garlic so we clicked and collected some. We still haven't steeled ourselves to actually going into a shop, orders are collected from outside. We bought the same varieties of onions as we did last year - Radar and Senshyu. The varieties did well for us last year. 

There was only one type of garlic available which was White Casablanca. We don't seem to have much success at growing garlic and I had decided not to bother growing it again  but you know how it is. We gardeners don't like to admit defeat. We always have the, "We'll just try one more time" mentality.

We decided to plant the sets in one of the beds that had housed potatoes this year. It had already been dig over so we laid some appropriately cut weed control fabric which we decided to hold down using boards. We have used wood chippings in the past but wondered whether they had caused a problem on one of our onion beds last year. The channels were sprinkled with 6X fertiliser and the sets pushed in.

When we transplanted the shooting sets they seems to suffer a setback and took a while to recover. This way they may be slower to get started but they seem to settle into the environment on the plot better.

The garlic was planted in the same bed, although the cloves were set deeper into the soil.
Martyn, potted up some lettuce plants - Winter Density, Brighton, Navara and Valian. These will grow on in the garden greenhouse and hopefully give us some late salad ingredients.
7 September -apples, pears. runner beans, climbing French beans, raspberries, courgettes, blackberries, onions
The onions above had been laid out to dry at the allotment but with the almost constant threat of drizzly rain we decided to bring them home and finish drying them in our now empty cold frames. Once dried off the onions will be stored in the summerhouse during winter along with the apples.
We didn't think that our Invincible pear tree had set much fruit this year and so were pleasantly surprised by the number of pears hiding in the foliage.

Some of the French beans, courgettes and carrots were used in one of last weeks veggie meals - Vegetable Paella. I added a few red kidney beams to the recipe.

Last week we had two major harvests. 
8 September - potatoes, dahlias. courgettes, raspberries, kohlrabi, carrots

The first was to dig the remaining potatoes. The first bed to be cleared housed two of our maincrop varieties, Nadine and Rudolph.
We also had a large bed of mixed varieties which was made up of leftover seed potatoes. Depending on the size of the seeds we usually have a varying number of tubers that we can't fit into the beds of specific varieties and these share a bed. These are usually the last potatoes to be planted and consequently lifted. Unlike last year our potatoes have produced a good harvest this year.
10 September - potatoes, raspberries
The All Gold raspberries just keep on ripening meaning we have fresh raspberries to pick on every plot visit

11 September -sweet corn, tomatoes, carrots, raspberries, coUrgettes, runner beans

Our other main harvest was of our second lot of sweet corn. This time the variety was Swift. We had planted 30 plants from which we harvested 53 cobs. Some of the cobs were very small and some hadn't pollinated well despite the windy conditions. Maybe the wind was too strong and blew the pollen away from the waiting female flowers. The main problem , however was that a large number of cobs had been attacked by some unknown creature. I'm guessing a rat was the culprit. One of our plot neighbours had all of his sweet corn ruined in the same way. The first bed of sweet corn in a completely different part of our plot was untouched. I guess the creature first ate all our neighbours' crop and then moved on to the the next nearest supply. 
Despite all the problems we ended up with the same amount of bagged kernels as the Earlibird variety harvested earlier.

Sunday was a lovely bright and sunny day, we intended to pay just a short visit to the allotment to pick any remaining apples and pears. In the event we stayed for most of the afternoon as there was more to harvest than we had anticipated.
13 September - carrots, runner beans, peas, pears, apples. courgettes, raspberries, tomatoes

We picked two varieties of apples - Egremont Russet and Queen Cox. Our Delsanne pear tree has hardly yielded any fruits since we first planted it, but this year it has managed to produce a few. The shape of the pears mean that they look more like apples and as the skin is just like that of Egremont Russet we will have to be careful not to mix them up.
Ruby loves fruit so we have to keep a close eye on her when fruit is around. She has just discovered that she likes raspberries and tried to help herself as she passed the raspberry bed. We can't blame her for the sweet corn damage though.

So far we seem to be avoiding a courgette glut. We had an initial burst of fruits which we needed to give away but now the plants are producing at a steady manageable rate with courgettes being used in many dishes.
French beans, onions, tomatoes and some courgettes went into a midweek Vegetable Curry. The website that the recipe came from has disappeared so I can't post a link but aubergine and mushrooms were added to our vegetables.

We have several basil plants growing in the garden greenhouse which I trimmed so that I could freeze some leaves for use over winter.
The tomato plants growing in the garden greenhouse were stripped and made into a basic tomato sauce  which will be used later in pastas, curries, casseroles etc.

NB: The links above are to videos that we have posted on our vlog

As always 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

19 comments:

  1. It all looks good, and I could not agree more about the giving things one more go attitude. I thought it was just me! I thought Ruby was doing rather a good job guarding everything, until I read further along. Hmmm.
    Rats do seem to be an increasing problem everywhere. I wonder if it's lack of food being disposed of on hospitality premises that's driving them out to look for easy pickings elsewhere?

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    1. I just seem not to be able to give up, Deborah. Ruby had to be kept on a tight leash - she recognises the smell of an apple instantly we pick one out to eat and sits patiently awaiting her share. She likes bananas and strawberries too.

      Rats are a significant problem and there are chickens on the site that add to the attraction. We also have squirrels.

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  2. I thought you were growing Rooster potatoes but it turns out to be Rudolph (which homonymous Broccoli I am growing). I have heard of people putting socks over their corn cobs to protect them from animals. It makes quite a sight (and apparently alerts human thieves to the ripening crop).

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    1. We have the Rudolf broccoli too, Mal. I think it’s spelled differently. I don’t think we’d have enough socks. Surely a sock wouldn’t put off a hungry creature.

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  3. I see you have a very good harvest in September, Sue. The pears look delicious. I also love your dahlias and cherry tomatoes. I don't grow garlic the way you do, it doesn't like garden soil.
    Ruby is a cute dog, no wonder she loves raspberries.

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    1. Do you grow your garlic in pots, Nadezda? I’ve tried that and that didn’t work for me either.

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  4. You've been busy! I too have difficulty with garlic. But maybe I'll try again. I've been ordering items from our nursery too, but I long just to wander about there. In New England, our dog used to nibble on the low-hanging raspberries. Last year we had similar damage to our corn and attributed it to raccoons or opossums. Seemed like a lot for a rat to eat. This year we rigged a bird netting cage which kept critters out.

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    1. I’d really like to be able to select my own plants too, Sue. We don’t have raccoons or opossums but another possible culprit is the squirrel.

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  5. That's a fantastic harvest for a single week! How big is your allotment? In my case I found a lot of woodlice eating my sweetcorn and I agree high winds often result in poor pollination : All the best - Steve (seaside allotment on youtube)

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    1. It’s the equivalent of five normal sized allotments Steve. I have visited your YouTube channel - we have one too. I do try and assist pollination by wafting the canes but it doesn’t help if lots of pollen has already been blown away.

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  6. It's funny, my garlic always did much better than onions, which I just never seem to get right! Like you I don't like to admit defeat and I am sowing some scallions for the winter greenhouse. I seem to do better with the smaller ones. Too bad about the sweet corn. Around here it would be raccoons climbing to get the ears.

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    1. I don’t do as well with the snaller ones, Dave. Are scallions what we call spring onions as they don’t seem to want to grow for us.

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  7. My garlic always does better in pots for some strange reason. Your harvests are so inspiring, you are pretty much sustainable! Shame about the corn being nibbled, there is always something chomping on veggies. Good to know you got your onion sets and garlic without having to go inside, we do click and collect whenever we can. Our dogs always steal the fruit too, Buddy checks under the pear tree every day and gets the fruit before we do, we'll have to get a ladder out!Those veggie meals look delicious.xxx

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    1. At least we managed to have a decent amount of sweet corn to freeze, Dina. A friends dog used to harvest broccoli.

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  8. Some more fabulous harvests! Shame about the sweetcorn, but it seems you have plenty and who can blame them for having some fresh sweetcorn! The paella looks delicious

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    1. We did have plenty, Belinda but I’d like to know who the nibbles was/

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  9. As always your garden is amazing! It all looks delicious! I can't find any garlic to plant.

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    1. Thanks, Bonnie. It’s a shame that you can’t het any garlic. What about online?

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  10. I had to smile at your determination to have another crack at garlic Sue! Our pear tree which is still young produced it best ever crop of pears this year - all 67 of them. I'm not really sure what to do with them all 😂

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