Prolific Peas
Drainage ! Drainage! Drainage! Plans are afoot to put a channel through the centre of the site; so may be able to abandon my flippers.
Planted:
Onion sets (Japanese)
Red onion sets (Electric)
Garlic (French Thermidome)
Broad beans, outside and in the greenhouse (Bunyards exhibition)
Rosemary (two cuttings)
Harvested:
Courgettes
Peas
Dwarf beans
Kale
Spinach
Lettuce
radish
Carrots
Poor result with the sweet corn: knobbly cobs (!). This was because only some of the individual kernels matured. Learned from a visitor that each kernel on a cob has to be fertilised by pollen which travels up one of the threads that hang out of the tip of a cob (looks like a horses tail). The feather like flower on the top of the plant shakes its pollen down on to the cobs below. Advice is to grow them in a square of at least 14 plants to increase the chances of pollination. Too much detail?
The perils of organic gardening continue! Picked a pristine looking head of broccoli only to discover a sight like something out of the film, Alien - it was heaving with tiny green caterpillars the very same colour as the broccoli. Advised to soak in salt water to remove.
Hold the manure!
Carrots grown with too much farmyard manure grow into comic shapes - excess magnesium is the cause.
Wild Life
Saw a heartwarming sight on the allotment: some beautiful goldfinches with pretty red faces and yellow flashes on their wings chattering on a wire; this, I understand is called a charm of goldfinches.
BBQ
Great BBQ down the allotments earlier this summer. The alloteers are such a friendly bunch.
We have had an Indian summer these past few days, and the site is an idyllic place in the morning dew - off to walk my dog round and look for blue fly on the tops of my precious sprout plants!
