Rooting out roots

Using the azada and right-angled fork from www.get-digging.co.uk, we've been digging and weeding this weekend. The fork is proving itself excellent for grubbing up couch grass. I've been following Somebeans as he digs, pulling out the roots. Slowly, neatness is being produced...

Below is some of the produce we gathered on Saturday: a couple of tiny heads of calabrese, lots of lettuce leaves, runners, borlotti beans, french beans, my first tomato of the year (Orange Banana), courgette, carrots, radishes and two types of potato. Good stuff!

SomeBeans has been very busy and produced this wonderful structure on number 99 - a stonking new compost bin. It's been built to allow for expanson, too - Somebeans says that putting extra bays on will be easy enough. It has been completely filled with the piles of vegetation he's scythed down over the past few weeks.

Brilliant stuff! And soon, it'll be the time of year when the weeds will stop growing - won't it?!?

Preserving

I've been making use of some of our harvest this weekend. It's been raining pretty much non-stop all weekend, so I've kept myself busy indoors. I made 1lb of bramble jam from blackberries I picked on the allotment site. I also made some red onion marmalade with some of the 'Red Baron' onions grown from sets this year. It's delicious and very simple to make.

We did get down to the plot but pretty much only to harvest some bits and pieces. Harvested: 'Bonnie' potatoes, 'Pink Fir Apple' potatoes (tiny but will taste nice and won't grow any bigger as I had to cut the haulms off due to blight), courgette '8 ball' (we're having stuffed courgette later in the week), Chantenay carrots, the first of the runner beans (only 2 or 3 though), ditto Borlotti beans. Tasty!

We went down to the plot last night. Somebeans finished 'phase 1' on plot 99: he's scythed down all of the long vegetation.

We discovered a small toad on the plot, but didn't have a camera to take a photo. Unfortunately, it didn't look big enough yet to ravage slugs, but given time and a lot of friends, it might reduce mollusc populations a bit.

Harvest:

The gladioli are looking good - we've had 3 harvests so far. Next year I'll have to plant successionally to extend the season.

I also picked some more blackberries- they are looking so good at the moment. Time to surf for some more blackberry recipes.

Food for free

The blackbirds have stopped singing, the nights are drawing in and now blackberries are ripe - a sure sign of the coming autumn.

I made a delicious use of free blackberries (overgrown allotment plots are useful for something, at least): blackberry crumble cake. A basic sponge base (made with plain flour) dolloped into a 2lb loaf tin, around 200g of whole blackberries thrown on top, and then a generous amount of crumble mix on top of that. Bake and enjoy!

The recipe can be found on the link below, but it has the wrong temperature for baking, and some of the ingredient weights are a little bizarre - I followed the amounts for crumble from a cookery book rather than the weights stated here which seemed to have far too much butter for the amount of flour. Note to self: make again next year, and would also be excellent with raspberries instead.

Original recipe: http://uktv.co.uk/food/recipe/aid/516128

Elephant garlic

We don't use an awful lot of garlic in cooking, but I though I'd try growing elephant garlic. I planted the cloves in October (the first crop to go into the allotment, pretty much) and it's now ready for harvesting.

I harvested the first head on Friday and it does look impressive! It's supposed to be more closely related to the leek than normal garlic and so has a less pungent flavour. I roassted the whole bulb at a lowish heat for 1.5 hours and I've squeezed some of the flesh onto potatoes before roasting - very nice. I've now found a recipe for roasted pork loin with elephant garlic and spice rub, which sounds rather nice!

http://hannaford.adplexonline.com/(S(2d4wuy550watx355kpcva145))/viewrecipe.aspx?recipeid=3990&AspxAutoDetectCookieSupport=1

Playing 'catch up'

What with holidays and rain, it's taken a few weeks to catch up with weeding on 97A. Now that's nearly done, and it's starting to get to the stage where harvesting will come to the fore.

SomeBeans continues his toil on 99, and we've put down some weed suppressant membrane to try and reduce regrowth where he has hacked down the undergrowth. We will continue to dig this.

Blight having struck the potatoes, I have cut down the infected haulms to ground level, in the hope that it won't have had a chance to travel down to the spuds. The potatoes I dug up on Friday looked good. I've ordered some sacks so that I can dig up the remains of the potatoes ASAP, to reduce the risk of attack by slugs whilst underground.

Photo of potato beds with foliage removed

Our first courgette was harvested - very nice lightly fried in butter. I also harvested and roasted a bulb of elephant garlic. This has proved to be a hit, with some of the flesh squished into potatoes during roasting to give a mild garlic flavour. We haven't had to buy potatoes since May, which is hardly self sufficiency but still is exciting to me!

In the garden, the Californian poppies have been ruthlessly uprooted as I decided they were too untidy. This has luckily given me lots of space - to plant more plants! :) I bought a variety of plants from Penlan nurseries - most of the plants have now been put into the ground. The plants arrived promptly and were a good price - a recommended supplier. The front garden will have some of the love-in-a-mist removed, and hardy geraniums put in, to tidy it up a bit.

And, living up to the name of the blog, the Inelegant Gardener has a rather inelegant tanned segment on her back, from weeding in the sun in a tee-shirt which doesn't quite cover her back! Still, cheaper than a tattoo...

Not so bad, really.

As a reminder when I look back on this in 2008, this summer has still yet to start. Having rained most days for the past 6 weeks or so, the garden is green, but I've not been able to do much in it.
In the garden, I've harvested one Pershore Yellow egg plum, but some are rotting on the tree - some more will ripen soon, if they don't rot before then. I had an excellent crop of blackcurrants from the bush in the garden (Ben Sarek). I've used the currants to make blackcurrant sauce.

Recipe: Hot blackcurrant gin sauce:
Harvest and wash blackcurrants, and weigh. Add sugar (around half the weight of the blackcurrants) and some water. Heat for around 15 minutes, until the currants are cooked and soft, and the sugar dissolved. Depending on the amount of water added, the sauce may need to be boiled to get it to a sauce like consistency. Cool slightly and add a generous amount of gin. Goes very well served hot on lemon curd ice-cream.

The allotment has been abandoned for a fortnight due to rain and then holidays. It is very wet - my main concern when taking the plot on was that the sandy soil would mean that I lost plants through drought. Pah! On our return to the allotment this morning, the weeds have taken over, the onion bed is under water and we can't dig on number 99 as it is so sodden. However, we're better off than some on the site. Having asked Henry for his advice, the onions have stayed in the ground. If it's still sodden by the end of the week I think I'll have to harvest them and try and use them quickly as they are not really ready yet. Sweetcorn is growing very well, and weeding on the bed is a doddle as I put down membrane when I planted the corn. Must do that for more beds next year. Harvested potatoes (blight ahoy!), a couple of carrots, some beetroot, the last few mangetout and some peas. The beetroot will be roasted by SomeBeans along with the potatoes for dinner this evening - roast beetroot are a delicious discovery.

No. 99 is looking rather sorry for itself - the pink fir apple potatoes are OK, and we have one or two small round courgettes, and quite a lot of weed regrowth. SomeBeans is doing a stirling job scything down weed growth, having passed the half way mark. It's just too wet to do anything else - I'd have liked it to be half dug by now but it's impossible. We'll get it done over autumn and winter and hopefully be able to get some fruit bushes in over winter, too. SomeBeans is learning from the more experienced allotmenteers and is going to construct a sturdy compost bin on 99, using waste wood we've got at the house.

I'm confident that I can beat the weeds this week, as I have a week off work - if only it stops raining...

Weeds, glorious weeds

"Weeds, glorious weeds,


Horsetails need mowing,


Big docks and bindweed


Take no notice of hoeing"


Torrential rain and warm weather has increased the growth of those lovely perennial weeds. However, we have had the excitement of harvesting 'Lady Christl' potatoes - delicious. We've also had the last of the broad beans. Golden Mangetout continue to crop well, and there's lots of lettuce.


The birds have had a good gnaw (if birds can gnaw) of the strawberries, so I'll have to put nets over them next year.
The sweet peas are producing lots of blooms. It's vital to keep cutting the flowers, so that more buds form - if they go to seed, the flowers will stop.
I planted sweetcord 'Tuxedo' through weed suppressant membrane, and that seems to be working well. The brassicas are looking much healthier and happier now I've put netting over them. I'd not experienced pigeon damage before, and assumed the damage was due to particularly voracious slugs. Next year I'll be ready...

97A: looking good, if full of horsetail

On 99, the potatoes are growing well, including the 'volunteer' potatoes left from previous years cultivation. I've also planted some squashed and courgettes in the vain hope that they will grow rampantly and smother weeds. The rest of the plot is rather overgrown, with the warm weather, but SomeBeans is doing very well with his slow and steady digging, forking and root removal.

Laburnum Arch at Ness Gardens

Progress on plot 99, including smart number made by SomeBeans!

Long time, no post...

Everything's growing so quickly, especially the horsetails down the allotment.

Somebeans has been digging the new plot, but the weeds are growing quicker than he can dig - warm weather and rain have combined to produce something which would shame a rain forest.

In the greenhouse:

• various squashes
• cucumbers 'Marketmore (for outside) and Aurelia F1 (for inside)
• cosmos which need planting out
• Tigerella tomatoes which I'll try outside, as I've already got some inside
• alpine strawberries
• and lots more!

Flowering in the garden:

• Californian poppies
• Alliums
• Rainbow chard (!?!)
• Forget-me-nots
• Heuchera
• Snapdragons which survived over winter
• Lupin (singular)
• French lavender
• Aquilegia
• Roses

And as for harvest from the allotment: broad beans, a few golden mangetout, lettuce (all year round planted in November), and strawberries.

Notes for allotment for next year:

• PUT PIGEON PROTECTION UP!!!!!!
• Not sure about crimson flowered broad beans - look pretty but don't loook as though they'll produce a big harvest
• Plant more mangetout
• plant more strawberries
• Don't leave grass paths in!!