Sunday, June 03, 2007

Saturday 2nd & Sunday 3rd June 2007 - Weather: Hot!

Saturday
Two visits over the weekend, get me! Saturday was baking hot, so after we had finished all the chores for the day, I popped up to see what effect the rain earlier in the week had made on the plot. Well I will tell you what effect it had. It made the weeds grow! It also filled out the strawberries nicely and I was able to pick a punnet full, filled the salad bowl lettuce out, so one of those came home, and started fattening up the Japanese onions, so half a dozen of the largest came home.

I needed to get in some calabrase and sprouts, but until the onions all come up, I only had room for the calabrase. It did make me weed around the red onions though and they are starting to come on nicely. It also meant I had to dig up my garlic, all of which was rotten. Blasted white rot really got to the garlic early this time. I am definately growing it in troughs this winter. Some of the garlic is useable, so I will crush it all and freeze it in icecube trays for use throughout the year. The elephant garlic looks great though, but of course, this is a leek rather than a garlic, so in theory, shouldn't be affected by the white rot. Out of all the Japanese onions, only 7 that I could find had started rotting. Am really hoping the rest will be okay, but they will all be cleared soon enough as I do so need to the space now.

Some of the tomatoes I planted last visit have caught a chill and died, but that isn't the end of the world as I still have lots at home. I must try to be more organised next year as I really did let them get a little to tall before getting them in the ground. And I should have wrapped fleece around them all for a few weeks like I did last year, but I forgot.

Still only 1 parsnip!

Sunday


I got up bright and early today, 6.45am the alarm went off and I was on the plot just after 7am. It is a lovely time to get up there but the birds do make a racket! Quite a misty start to the day, bodes well for the afternoon. Replaced any iffy tomatoes and planted the rest. I do still have 7 seedlings at home which I will grow in the greenhouse for a later crop. I also planted another batch of squashes, but I still have loads at home. Last year I had more toms that I could cope with, this year it looks like the turn of the squashes! Picked another 2 courgettes though. I am thinking....sly old fox me, that I will leave one of the courgettes just to get huge. Why I hear you cry? Well, in September there is the village show, and one of the competitions is for the heaviest marrow. The same chap, from our site, has one the cup for the last 4 years, and he is very quick to brag about it. Well, he has just put his marrow plant in and is waiting for it to settle down and start to flower. I already have a couple of immature fruits on the courgette plant. What do you think? Shall I sacrifice having any more courgettes just to try and grow a heavy marrow? I do have lots of other courgette plants in the ground, so I won't go short. I shall have to ponder this one.

Weeded, weeded and weeded some more. The plots do look great after a good weeding. The paths could do with a cut, but I don't have an old petrol mower to do this. I will have to look in the local rag and see if I can pick one up cheaply. I really can't afford to buy a new one.

Sowed some more carrots, MORE parsnips, more salad, more turnips and more sunflowers. Once all the onions come up and I have planted the other sweetcorn that are in the greenhouse at the moment, I will have room to sow more things. I did have to dust the turnips, radish and rocket with a little Derris because the flea beetles are turning them into net curtains and making them look very poorly.

Shortly before I left Laurette, the site secretay came by. Apparently the deer have started becoming a big pest in her garden and she asked if I had lost anything which seemed odd. I have noticed some of my french beans seem to have been grazed, and some of the salad, but I assumed it was slugs. She is convinced it is the deer, so maybe a touch more netting will be in order. Especially after I checked my pea plants before leaving, and some of those not covered by net had been grazed!

Later on we popped to a local nursery and I get some new netting, a tumbling tomato for my basket at home, a beefsteak tom and 2 honeydew melon plants. Fingers crossed I will be back on the allotment on Tuesday afternoon and will start to gather up all the larger onions and get that bed ready for the sweetcorn.

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