Real rain

We had some 'real' rain last week for which we and the plants were very grateful. It's amazing how a bout of rain triggers plants into growth when our feeble attempts with a watering can fail to satisfy them. Of course, all plants put on a growth spirt after a good bout of rain and that unfortunately includes the weeds.

Not to put a dampener, no pun intended, on things the warm humid conditions that followed the rain, were just the sort of conditions that can trigger an attack of blight. Fingers crossed that we avoid that scourge.

As I have done in most of my posts. I'll start with an update on Nostell's family of swans. This week the whole family was feeding and preening together. Martyn put together a short video of them here.

The flower meadows were also growing well.

I tried to capture a shot from, Ruby's eye view.

On the allotment we had a little more planting to do. Martyn planted up another brassica bed. He planted cabbage - Cabbice and two lots of cauliflower - Autumn Giant and Zaragoza.

Whilst he was planting brassicas, I planted a first sowing of dwarf French beans - Safari. These went into a mixed bed in which was already planted some dwarf sunflowers, courgettes and climbing beans.

9 July 2021 - Cauliflower - Seoul, Cabbage - Regency, Courgettes - Ambassador, Black Forest and Boldenice, Purple Raspberries - Glencoe and Mixed Raspberries

Boldenice produces spherical fruits.

10 July 2021 Cauliflowers - Seoul, Broad Beans - de Monica, Onions - Senshyu, Strawberries - Sweetheart and Elsanta, Gooseberries - unknown and Mixed Sweet Peas

The sweet peas were our first picking. From now on, I will need to keep cutting the flowers so that they don't have a chance to form seed pods and stop producing new flowers.

It was a bumper week for cauliflowers. One drawback of F1 varieties is that they tend to come to maturity at the same time. This meant that a few heads were frozen for use later.

Any soft fruit that we manage to pick this year will be a bonus as we are suffering from a plague of wood pigeons. A plot neighbour counted sixteen sitting on the wires overlooking the site and he had several times scared them off our plot.

Not only are they stealing the fruit but they are breaking branches and canes so that any remaining fruit dries up.  Unripe fruit is also knocked off the plants.

There was only a sprinkling of ripe jostaberries but I picked them before the pigeons stole them.

11 July 2021 Cauliflower - Seoul, Red Currants, Purple Raspberries - Glencoe and a tiny number of jostaberries.

In earlier years we have been content to share some fruit with blackbirds but we are now going to have to build cages over some fruit. Before long the whole allotment will need to be covered. We do see sparrowhawks and buzzards flying above the site but they don't seem to effectively cull the pigeons.

My blog usually focuses on our gardening activities on the allotment but we also have work to do in our garden.

This year we have been concentrating on two beds, One bed was past its best so we dug out all the plants and split some and replanted. The trellis behind was also renewed. This is now bulking up

We also dug out an overgrown shrub border which we have filled with perennials. They were quite small when we bought them but are now filling out,

Another bed that was planted up a few years ago just needs a little weeding and dead heading. Some of the larger plants need a little bit of controlling to stop them dominating the smaller plants.

Impatiens were planted to fill the space left by miniature daffodils,

Once the ferns have been cut back in early spring the fern bed more or less looks after itself.

Another border is on the list for a major renovation later so we are not short of things to fill our time!

Finally, let's go back to vegetables and a couple of meals that incorporated our harvest.

On Monday, calabrese picked on the day before was used in a pasta bake. 

On Friday I made a chicken and cauliflower curry.  I added some courgette to my version.

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