Nutty Harvest

8 September

A regular plot task at the moment is to pick cobnuts. I have two methods, first I pick any clusters which easily part from the bush but this leaves some clusters that are too high to reach and so I shake the branches and collect any clusters that fall to the ground. The harvest is then spread out to dry wherever I can find space and the nuts drop out of the dried husks. We haven't tried any yet so I am hoping that they taste good.

The autumn raspberries and alpine strawberries keep coming. In the past we have picked alpine strawberries into November until the frosts blacken the centres of the flowers.

10 September

After each plot visit, which last week amounted to every other day, we come away with handfuls, (or at times bucketfuls), of sweet peas. Last year I bought a collection of named varieties selected for scent. Although many have long stems, one variety in particular has very short stems and small flowers so next year I may choose a collection of varieties selected for cutting on the grounds that if most have good scent, we are hardly likely to notice if one or two varieties are less perfumed.

12 September

A complete list of our September harvests can be found here.

Once again I am linking to Harvest Monday over at Daphne's Dandelions.

PS: Forgot to mention, and added after some had already visited my last post, that I have written a guest post for the Sarah Raven blog about our annual flower bed which is  published here if you are interested

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

September in the Garden Greenhouse

Since your last peep inside out garden greenhouse things have changed quite a lot.

Let's start with a quick look from the doorway. Firstly to the right ...

.. and then the left.

You may remember that just inside the door to the left was a shelf full of cyclamen grown from seed. Now it looks like this.

The cyclamen coum and a few if what I call indoor cyclamen have been potted up. More about the rest in a moment. The lily will hopefully survive winter and flower again next.  I think I'll pop it into a bigger pot. The jacaranda has developed a list due to outgrowing the height of the shelf it was on. Hopefully it will straighten but anyone know what I need to do with it over winter.

Now looking down the left hand side we have ...

... mainly pots of aubergines. The variety - Jackpot - don't make large plants - which suits us - but after what seemed a slow start, are now producing lots of fruit. You may just spot one sweet pepper nestling amongst the aubergines.

The untidy trailing plant is a cucamelon. This is in the dock at the moment and the jury is out waiting for a character witness to support its bid to avoid being composted.

Looking down to the floor level ...

... the only way to deal with all the cyclamen that I ended up with was to pop them in large tub. A couple have gone into the porch and the ones in pots on the shelf will become house plants. These are not all the plants as I took a tray to my sisters. In the photo above the tub on the left are grown from seed collected from my own plants. At the moment these are much better than the newly bought Latinia seed raised plants on the left.

Next we come to the apricot and nectarine trees that have been moved into the greenhouse to try and avoid peach leaf curl. They will soon be joined by the peach tree.

The ipomoea still hasn't flowered! On the shelf are some of the remaining autumn onions that have kept us well supplied and will some make way for the summer ones that are drying in the plot greenhouse.

On the potting bench at the far end are our sweet peppers.

The varieties are King of the North, Orange Bell and an unknown variety gifted by a friend. These have produced out best crop of peppers ever. The onions are more autumn grown ones.

Now to the right of the greenhouse we have the tomatoes.

These have produced a steady supply unlike the plot greenhouse ones which this year, in an about turn, have been rubbish. Even Sioux which was a total failure in this greenhouse last year has produced a crop.

Back in the corner towards the door.

The younger of the two figs has shot up and is just about as big as its older cousin but has long fingered leaves. I'm not sure that this will produce any fruit as it was grown from by a friend from seed taken from a shop bought fig!

Then looking up we have the grapevine.

I'm guessing next month things will look far less productive.

PS: Forgot to mention I wrote a guest post for the Sarah Raven blog about our annual flower bed which is here if you are interested

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

Roger Brook's Boundary Cottage Garden

You can see lots more photographs of Roger's garden in our Zenfolio portfolio here

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