Another hot one

Last week was another week where it was too hot to do much on the allotment or in the garden

Ruby even had to forego her weekly visit to Nostell and her walks were restricted to the evening when the sun went in and the temperature dropped. She was not impressed!

Monday, we went to the allotment to do a bit of necessary harvesting and we decided to lift the overwintering onions. Lots of them had sent up flower stems and won't keep but, the whole point of planting onions in autumn is to provide an earlier crop to last us until the main onion harvest is ready and they should do just that.

Onions - Senshyu Yellow and radar

We noticed the first signs of blight on our Casablanca potatoes so decided to start lifting them. The Charlotte potatoes also seemed to be dying back. In this case blight wasn't the culprit rather a lack of water. We don't water our potatoes which means that they can suffer when the conditions are dry.

Left - Casablanca and right - Charlotte

The Charlotte potatoes were very small but are fine for using as salad potatoes. Martyn posted a video here. There's another video of Ruby 'helping' us empty the tubs of potatoes here.

19 July - Potatoes - Casablanca and Charlotte, Onions - Senshyu Yellow and Radar, Blueberries, Blackcurrants, Raspberries, Courgettes - Boldenice, Ambassador and Black Forest and sweet peas.

The Black Forest courgettes are supposed to climb but they seem to prefer to sprawl like the squash plants.

Wednesday evening we made a quick visit to water the greenhouse and pick more sweet peas as we don't want them to set seed.

Friday was cooler, so we paid another visit to the plot to do some more harvesting. The spring planted garlic never really seemed to get going, and the leaves were turning yellow, so I decided to lift it. I wasn't expecting much of a crop and was surprised when I needed to use a border fork to uproot the bulbs. What a surprise! Every plant had produced a good sized bulb which was nicely split into cloves with no sign of rot. Regular readers will have read that I was pleased with the harvest from the autumn planted garlic but this was even better. These are a softneck variety - Solent Wight, so will keep better than the hard necked bulbs harvested earlier.

Another job that couldn't wait was to remove the enviromesh from the second sowing of peas - it is actually the third sowing as the first lot never germinated.  Some swede, beetroot and mooli were also being protected under the mesh and so these needed some protection from the ever vigilant wood pigeons.

A chicken wire tunnel was placed over them and the peas were provided with some supports.

July 23 - Garlic - Solent Wight, Courgettes - Boldenice, Ambassador and Black Firest, Potatoes - Charlotte and Casablanca, Broad beans - de Monica, Gooseberries - Pax, Raspberries, Blueberries, Cabbage - Mozart, Sweet Peas and Dahlias,

We cut the first Mozart cabbage which had a really solid head. We now just need to hope that all the cabbages hang on and don't split before we can use them.

Martyn lifted more potatoes. The Charlottes were still very small but we have enjoyed them as salad potatoes.

Saturday, we harvested a few more things.

24 July - Calabrese - Calbrini, Courgettes - Ambassador, Carrots -  Romance and Blackcurrants

I also took a first picking from our second batch of broad beans. These were Masterpiece Green Longpod. I podded these at the plot whilst, Martyn was busy strimming and generally tidying.  On returning home they were frozen.

I also sowed more mooli. I hope that we like them, that is if they grow. A plot neighbour was intrigued by them, so I gave him the remaining seeds so that he could try them too. What's betting his grow better than ours?

Back in the garden, on Sunday, I sowed some lettuce, radishes, spring onions and spinach in some crates that we had grown early potatoes in. These are the types of crops that it is handy to have closer to hand at home.

As well as harvesting from the allotment, we also harvested one or two things from the garden and garden greenhouse.

We harvested our first ripe tomato - Tumbling Tom but didn't take a photo, as the first I knew about it was when Martyn popped half of it on my plate for lunch.

We also picked a couple of cucumbers - Pepinex from the garden greenhouse.

A pot of basil was about to flower so I cut it back and have frozen the leaves for use later. I did the same thing with the coriander that is also growing in a trough.

A third herb, growing in a large pot, is garden mint. This is picked regularly whenever we need a sprig but, last week, I picked a small bunch to add to a batch of courgette, pea and mint soup.

I made enough for the two of us to have four helpings. This has been frozen. It can be eaten as a cold soup but we prefer our soups warm.

The recipe was a mixture of ideas from these two recipes. Courgette and mint soup and Pea, courgette and mint soup. I didn't add any creme fraiche as this wouldn't freeze well. It could be added when the soup is warmed up but, having had a taste, I don't think it needs this addition.

Broccoli and some of our frozen green beans went into a stir fry loosely based on this recipe. As I didn't have any snow peas so I used frozen garden peas instead.

As you can imagine courgettes featured in last week's meals. Firstly I made a pasta dish with a vegetable ragu which was based on this recipe.

Another meal was chicken and courgette curry loosely based on this recipe. I used tikka masala paste, tinned tomato and chicken stock rather than the korma sauce. I also added lime juice and zest to the curry and not to the rice which was just cooked in chicken stock.

By the way, do you remember the battered sweet corn that we very nearly pulled up? Well here it is now.

Who would have guessed that a few weeks ago it looked dead? It is now starting to produce male and female flowers.

I had a, much overdue, hospital appointment at the eye clinic last week. Despite, the so called, Freedom Day they still had all the Covid protocols in place and I was glad about that!

As always wherever you are keep safe and well.

This week I   am once again joining in with Dave’s Harvest Monday collection of posts over at Our Happy Acres.

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