Diary 2015

Starting mistletoe

Managed to shuftie round my day off so I could de-stress a bit on the allotment today. Nothing beats being outside, messing about with plants and with the sun on my back, though an Aperol spritz or 3 comes close on occasion. I drove over to my favourite garden centre […]

Fantasia Blackberry

Lots and lots of chillies are now pricked out at home and the sunny windowsill is getting full. The Big Jim seeds and Orange Manzano still haven’t germinated, same for the elderly chillies bar the Serranos. Yesterday morning I helped mark out 5 of the other newly vacant plots on […]

And we’re off!

I’m back from Amsterdam and can now fire up the propagator. Sown today: 4 Tsygansky Baron pepper, 4 Lipstick peppers, 12 Padron peppers, 4 Big Jim (didn’t germinate last year, fingers crossed!), 4 Hot Fish, 5 Royal Black, 4 Joe’s Long, 4 Lemon Drop, 5 Aji Fantasy, 5 Piquante/Pepperdew, 4 […]

Bonanza!

What an ab-so-lutely glorious day! Full-on sun and it felt (however fleeting it might be) that Spring is just around the corner. The sun flushed everyone out onto their plots for repairs & prep. It was nice to see people and have a brief chat. The bees were all out […]

Choices, choices

This week was Committee meeting. Lots of interesting stuff. Including that we have a larger number of vacant plots than normal, so I’ve got to the point of having a chance at a second plot. That’s 3 years’ wait this time rather than my initial 5+ years. I’m not going to attempt […]

Squash review – rouge vif d’etamps

The whopper was roasted last night, though annoyingly I forgot to take pictures of any of the process. They are much thinner-fleshed (relative to their size) than any of the others so far, with a huge cavity in the middle, which was a little disappointing. Will try to remember to […]

Moving mature gooseberries

My Mum’s back garden has always been a treasure trove for berries. I gave her at least one of the bushes as a twig when I was little and they are all still going strong over 30 years later. She just doesn’t want most of them anymore. It’s been much […]

Oca harvest

The oca is all up now. So, notes for this year: The tubers were all small to begin with which I think makes the harvest pretty amazing. They were part […]