Piccies of new plot!

Finally! After reinstalling the camera drivers I've managed to get the piccies taken today from the camera!

This is a view from the bottom of the plot, looking towards the fence at the back! As you can see, its a bit overgrown, but the shed and greenhouse are in good nick, and the paths are in good condition, although do need to be weeded and have some more wood chippings put down, a job to be done after we've dug the beds and got them planted up!

Luckily we are going to find it much easier to stay on top of this plot than our original additional half plot, as that doesnt have proper paths, so tends to get very tall weeds inbetween the beds, just a shame we had spent so much time digging it over before this one came up!

A view of the new shed we've inherited! The grapevine is fairly visible in the piccy, lets hope we get some grapes from it this year!

Behind the plywood to the right (as you look at it) of the shed is one of the 3 compos bins, this one of which is full of very well rotted pony poo, its been there for 2 years that we know of, so should be really good stuff!

This is a view from the middle of our first plot, giving the perspective of just where the new plot is in relation to our existing plot, we now have everything this side of the trees to the back, aswell as another bed behind where I am standing to take the piccy!

And last one for today, a piccy of the 7 beds that Mr D has managed to dig over since we took over the plot last Thursday!

The front 2 beds have now had the cardboard 'fitted' properly, and planting holes have been cut, through which we've planted 10 courgettes, along with watering funnels (cut off bottles planted next to the plants roots!)

The 4th bed from the front has also been planted up, with 15 assorted squash and pumpkins, using the same cardboard mulching system. Its our hopes that we'll reduce the needs for watering and weeding with using the cardboard mulching system and hopefully also reduce the amount of digging thats involved with GYOing!

Gorgeous day on the plot and a darn good sort out!

Today we were at the plot for 10am, and got back at about 8pm, a lovely hot, sunny day with a light refreshing breeze that kept us both from overheating, glorious! (Tho Mr D says I look like a Rock Lobster now, eek!)

The new plot has a homemade (very well made from marine plywood and well put together I must say) shed, which is roofed with clear corrugated plastic, and is about 16' by 5'. One half of it is the shed, about 8' wide with the door to the right front, and at the side of this is a 4' covered seating area (now being used for hardening off seedlings on the shelving unit, and next to this is a 5' by 5' glazed area, currently full of nettles, but which we are going to use for growing melons and cucumbers in! Along the front of the shed is a decked area about 3' wide running the length of the shed part, which also has a metal shelving unit on it, and growing up from the back corner and across the roof / front of the shed is a grapevine, which must span about 10'! Aswell as the shed there is also an 8' by 6' greenhouse, and 17 edged beds, along with a couple of fruit trees, several goosegogs and 3 blueberries. Theres 3 compost bins, lots of new netting and supports, lots of new fleece and black plastic, 2 chairs, a table and lots of pots too! There's also a couple of damaged wire netting cages to protect seedlings and some UPVC piping which is great for supporting mesh or fleece to protect cabbages etc from insects! Feels like we struck really lucky getting this plot!

Mr D continued digging over the beds on our new plot, whilst I sorted out the inside of the shed and had a darn good tidy up! It is now possible to see exactly what we've got and where it is, so should make it a bit easier to find things!

After this I hoed the onion and garlic bed, then set up the watering head on the hosepipe and turned it on to give everything a really good water, and also fed and watered inside the greenhouse after hoeing the weed seedlings in there!

Next I dismantled the 'heath robinson' coldframe on our other half plot (the one we will be giving up after harvesting the spuds) and brought all the bits back to the new plot to store away for future use, then pruned the grapevine thats growing across the front of the shed, I cant wait to see if we get any grapes from it this year! After doing this Mr D had manage to reach the halfway mark (the largest 7 beds are now dug over!) with the digging over of the beds on the new plot, so he stopped digging and came to help me!

Next we trimmed and fitted the cardboard bike boxes I recycled from work to fit the first 2 beds on the new plot, and transplanted the 10 courgettes that we'd planted on the half plot 2 weeks ago into here, using the cardboard as a mulch to supress weeds by cutting holes for the planting and sinking bottles into the soil next to the squashes and courgettes for watering. After that we fitted cardboard to one of the larger beds on the new plot and then transplanted the 15 assorted squash and pumpkins (that were planted out 2 weeks ago) from the half plot!

I did take some piccies of the new plot first thing this morning, but the 'puter had to be reset a few weeks ago, and its not now recognising the camera or the bluetooth link from my phone, so atm I am unable to download them, sorry!

I'm back at work tomorrow, but Mr D is off, so he's going to try and sort out the greenhouse (and the lean to glazed part on the shed) on the new plot tomorrow, before continuing with the digging ready for me to move the sweetcorn and squash bed, plus the 2 beds of onion sets from the half plot at the weekend!

Yay, yet another plot!

Well, the plot next to our first plot wasnt worked much last year, and hasnt been touched this year, so we spoke to the council liason telling her we'd like to go on the waiting list for that plot (Plot 1) if it were to become free, and today the plotholder came on and told us he was giving up and handed his keys over to the secretary, so we've now got it!!

Its a full 10 rod plot, with beds that are bordered with timber and has paths that are barked up (tho need weeding and redoing), and is adjacent to our first plot! It comes complete with some apple / pear trees, goosgogs, blueberries, a grape vine, an 8'x6' greenhouse and a very well made shed (approx 5' by 10') which has a glazed end, an outdoor seating area and a lockable storage bit too! There's also 2 compost heaps, one of which is full of 3 yr old pony poo, 2 complete rolls of fleece (about 6' long), lots of blue pipe for supporting the netting, some netting, lots of black plastic and some reinforced clear plastic too!

So, we'll be giving up our 2nd plot (the 1/2 plot over the other side) once the spuds are out, and will be busy clearing and planting this new plot (gonna take some of the veg we planted on our 2nd plot and move it into the new plot next week, before they get too established!)

As soon as I get the Bluetooth dongle thing working I'll post up some piccies!

Getting up to date (again)

Well, a week on holiday from work and it feels as though we are catching up to where we want to be on the plots at this time of year! The broad beans are flowering, the blackcurrants, rasps and goosegogs look ready to flower, the strawbs are beginnning to flower, the rhubarb is already being harvested (loverly it is too), the spring cabbages are beginning to heart up, the first of our lettuces is almost ready to eat, the 1st early and 2nd early spuds are now showing, the tadpoles in the pond are growing apace and the plots are definitely coming to life!

This week we have so far -

Dug over another 2 beds (5' by 15') on plot 2 and planted out our chitted maincrop spuds (rooster and cara)

Dug over and planted out a bed (5' by 15') on plot 2 of 12 courgettes (3 varieties), along with catchrops of beetroot (bolthardy) and radishes (french breakfast III), then built a protective surround from plastic and covered with fleece - to protect from wabbits and frost!

Planted out another 12 assorted brassica seedlings into the brassica bed on plot 1 (total now of 30+ brassicas planted out)

Dug over and errected 4 pea / bean supports on plot 1, and planted up with more Mange Tout, 2 types of pea and 2 types of runner bean!

Dug over and planted up with dwarf french beans 2 beds on plot 1!

Turned over, fed and planted the greenhouse on plot 1 with 9 tomato plants, 8 chillies, 2 cucumbers, 2 aubergines and 6 catchrop lettuces.

Taken delivery of a trailer load (7' by 10' by 4' deep) of lovely sweet horse manure, and moved it into te composters on plots 1 and 2!

Hoed between all of the overwintering and spring planted onion sets!

Mr D has also made a darn good start at turning over the middle bed on plot 1 (last years brassica bed) that has gotten a bit weed infested over the winter, a nasty job, especially as it was well compacted for the brassicas last year! Our hopes are to use this bed for root veg this year!

Removed and given away to Mr D's parents (in Hull) 9 raspberry canes that had started to grow in amongst the strawberry bed!

Fed everything with Chicken poo pellets and blood fish and bone!

Checked and fed the 200+ strawbs and 84 raspberry canes we moved into their new beds / fedge last year, all of which look to be doing really well!

Planted up more seeds in the greenhouse at home, so we've now got sweetcorn, squashes, pumpkins, brassicas, more toms, more beans, more aubergines, more chillies and a few more bits n bobs growing away nicely in there, along with the now hardened off seedlings outside (leeks, 2 types of onion from seed, herbs, celery and carrots in 2 large tubs in tha beack yard)!

So, its shaping up to be a reasonable growing year so far, we both feel as though we are a long way behind where we were at this point last year, but after checking our notes, it doesnt look as tho we are behind at all! Hopefully the next few weeks will see us fully up to date, with all the beds planted up, follow on crops ready to go in behind the onions and spuds when they come out, and the first of our harvests ready to eat!

Hopefully there'll be some piccies of how the plots are looking in the very near future, keep checking back for updates!

Another Growing Year begins!

And so we start once more!



Although we did fairly well last year, harvesting over £800 worth of fruit and veg from our plot and a half, this year we are determined to do better, especially in terms of catch cropping, successional planting and better planning - to utilise the growing space more efficiently and to get 2 crops from each bed where possible, so much planning and thought has gone into our planning schedule for the year!



Our seed spuds have been chitting for the past 8 weeks (in the loft room, cool, bright and frost free) and we've a total of 120 tubers now ready for planting, 4 varities of First Earlies, 2 varieties of Second Early, 2 varieties of Early Mains and 2 varities of Late Maincrops, we're determined to do better with spuds than last year when we lost our later main crops to blight (much reduced harvests), so have dedicated 2 beds on plot 2 (5' by 14' each) to First Earlies, 2 beds to Second Earlies, 1 bed to Early Mains and 2 beds to Late Maincrops, and are going to keep a much sharper eye on them this year (we will deffo try and treat any blight as soon as it appears rather than leave it to chance like we did last year), and our choices of variety are mainly those that are blight and/or pest resistant, so fingers crossed we do a bit better than last year here!



The early spuds are due to be followed with frost sensitive crops, such as the 3 beds of sweetcorn that we've got planned, 3 diff varieties, which hopefully should give us some decent crops, and 1 bed will be for cucurbits, probably 3 plants each of 3 varieties of courgette! As with last year we'll be companion planting the sweetcorn with sunflowers to help keep the birds and squirrels off the sweetcorn, and also planting those beds with some squashes and pumpkins, to provide good ground cover (reduced weeding) and to double the harvest from the beds! We will however be planting them a little more spaciously than last year!



The 2 beds of second earlies and the one bed of first maincrop spuds will be used for planting out the leeks once they've had the spuds harvested, we did this last year and the 300 plus leeks we planted out are still going strong, with still over 150 left for us to harvest!



The beds that still currently are occupied by leeks will be the ones we are going to put the maincrop spuds in, any leeks that are still in the ground will be removed and 'heeled in' in a clamp for eating in the next few months! These maincrop spud beds will then be planted up with spring cabbages once they are cleared later in the year!



The 2 beds that last year had maincrop spuds in them have today been dug over and planted with spring sown onion sets, 200 in each 5' by 15' bed, a total of 400 more onion sets (half red barron, half snowball) to join the 150 stuttgarter white onion sets that have been overwintering on plot 1 (along with the 100 garlics (50 electrik from last years crops and 50 we bought from the GC - cant remember the variety off hand), all of which are looking good - not as far on as they were this time last year, but thats due to the colder and wetter autumn we've had this past year). We've also a couple of trays of ailsa craig onions that we're growing from seed, which will be planted out a bit later in the year! I dont mind if the onions from seed arent as large as the ones from sets, as they'll all be used, and will probably provide us with pickling onions as they did last year (we're still munching them now, rather tasty they are too!)



Mr D is going to dig over the 2 beds for First Early spuds tomorrow, and hopefully we'll get them planted out this week, then we'll move onto preparing the beds for the second early spuds for planting out sometime in the next 2 weeks!



Mr D has already got some early cabbages and caulis planted out on plot 1 (under a netting frame to keep the wabbits off them), and we've some more of each sprouting in the greenhouse at home. We've also started the first batch of toms and chillies, which seem to be doing ok, and the first batch of broad beans are planted out with the second batch just showing in the modules in the greenhouse, both of which are looking great!



Still lots more to sow and plant, but unlike last year we are going to try not to plant too early and end up with leggy and vulnerable plants, so we're not yet worried about being behind, that'll come in a couple more months! lol!

Hope your growing year is off to as good a start, and good luck for bumper harvests!

Update for 8th October 2007!

Well, its been a while since I last had time to post, and we've a few piccies to pop up here too, but they will have to wait until lower down the post I'm afraid, but although its been a bad summer weather wise we've still done ok with the crops from our plot this year!

The balance sheet looks something like this.........

Total costs for this year to date £465 (£995 if you add on the new fridge freezer)

Total harvested crops approx values (as organic fresh veg from major supermarket type prices!) so far this year:-

Rhubarb (at £2 for 3 stalks as currently priced in Tescos) £ 75

Radish / lettuces / cnca salad leaf £ 40

Cucumbers £ 25

Herbs £ 15Strawbs £ 50+

Raspberries £ 30

Garlic £ 25

Maincrop Onions £ 20

Pickling Onions £10

Mange Tout £ 25

Tomatoes £ 50+

New potatoes £ 10

Maincrop Potatoes £ 25

Carrots / Parsnips £ 15

Brassicas £ 15

Broad Beans £ 25

French Beans £ 10

Peas £ 10

Courgettes £ 30

Peppers £ 20

Chillies £ 40

Aubergines £ 15

Cooking Apples £ 15

Eating Apples £ 5

Gherkins £ 3

Pumpkins / Squashes £ 40

Turnips £ 5

Swedes £ 5

Sweetcorn £ 40

Blackcurrants £ 5

Cherries £ 5

Total value of approx £ 703 so far, plus still lots more to harvest -

More Toms

More aubergines

More Peppers

More Cucumbers

About 330 leeks

About 85 Parsnips

2 Beds of Jerusalem Fartichokes

14 Sprout Plants

20 Cabbages

Still more Broccolli to harvest

Still a full bed of carrots

Still 20 celery plants growing nicely

I have a feeling we've still over £ 150 worth of crops to harvest yet!

Not a bad total for a first year, and next year we'll do even better, plus the costs are going to be a lot less, we currently recon about £50 for compost, seeds and spuds and rent total for the 2 plots of £60, so if we get a similar amount of produce next year we should be saving a lot! (and if we get a bumper year, then a lot more indeed!)

Shame we've not done as well as we'd hoped with the outdoor toms, the maincrop spuds and the sweetcorn (only about half of what we expected), but hopefully we'll do better with them next year!

We've struggled with all the weeds this year, the wet summer has proven to be a boon for weed germination, so its been a constant battle to try and keep on top of them, and at times we've been on the losing side, but overall I'd say we are happy with our results so far! There's 7 large jars full of jam, 2 large jars full of pickled onions, the freezers are full, and we've planty of tatties, garlic and onions still to eat, plus about 17 pumpkins for Halloween (and for eating) left yet! And as it says above still lots of things to harvest for the winter, so overall I'd say we were happy with our efforts, but roll on next year, as I know we are going to do much better!

Anyhow here's a few piccies of some of our produce, we entered some of these into the Grapevine / GYO Virtual Veg Show, and managed a Runner-Up position each, me for the Onions and Lee for the houseplant categories, which has both amazed and delighted us both! :D

3 Red Onions, Runner up for Mrs D!

Our Indoor Orange Tree, runner up in houseplants for Mr D!

Some of our Pumpkins, there's another 7 or 8 we couldnt fit in and 3 that we'd already eaten, Mr D has found the most wonderful Pumpkin Pie recipe that means none of these will go to waste!

Our Banana Shallots, we managed to harvest about 40 to 50 of them, about a dozen or so were this size and the rest smaller, but very tasty, Many thanks to Dave (Pigletwillie) from the GYO Grapevine for the seeds!

2 of the outdoor cucumbers, they've not done fantastically well, but the Marketmore we had planted inside the greenhouse produced 30+ large, succulent and very tasty cucumbers, the biggest of which was 21" long!

A piccy of Mr D with our best Marketmore Cucumber! Just a shame he gave away the other we had almost as big before we got a piccy of the 2 of them, otherwise we may well have won the 2 cucumbers category in the GYO Virtual Veg Show! Ah well, there's always next year! :D

3 of the many, many peppers we''ve enjoyed from the 6 plants in the greenhouse this summer!

3 of the smaller aubergines we've had. We've had about 17 aubergines from 4 plants inside the greenhouse, very tasty, especially in home made Moussaka!

5 toms from the greenhouse, we didnt do as well as we'd hoped with toms, all the outdoor ones having succumbed to blight, but we have had a good harvest of cherry toms, so we've not had to buy any this summer and also have lots of frozen passatta in the freezer for the coming winter!

3 Parsnips!

Lots more of these on plot 1 still growing, so should be ok for the winter this year!

Well, thats all for the moment, I'll try and get some more piccies up as soon as I am able, but thanks for reading, and I hope your growing year has been as good (if not better) than ours!

First peas and french bean harvest - 22nd July 2007

Got to the plot to find glorious sunshine, which hung around until about 430pmish, when the heavens opened for a couple of hours, unfortunately just before I was ready to take some more piccies, ah well, will try and get some on wednesday!

Weeded the broad beans, peas and mange tout beds, then harvested more mange tout, another cabbage, another 5 toms, another lettuce, about another lb of rasps, another lb of blackcurrants, 4 more courgettes (2 of which where cannon ball sized!), about 1/2lb each of 2 types of french beans (first harvest from these this year!), about a lb of blackberries, 2 heads of broccolli and about 1/2 lb of victorain purple podded peas! (first pea harvest of the year!)

Came home and made tea, chops with mange tout, new tatties, french beans, peas and broccolli! Scrummy, only thing that wasnt from the plot was the chops!

The carrots are doomed, doomed I tell Ye!

Got to spend about 4 productive hours or so on the plot yesterday (dodging rain after doing other more mundane things that needed to be done first), and managed to get another bumper harvest!

The greenhouse gave us another 20 ripe cherry toms (with loads more growing), another cucumber and 8 more green peppers (most of which have now been processed and frozen), and from outside we got another 9 courgettes from the 6 plants, about another 1lb of rasps (the earlies are about done now, but lots of late rasps growing, so hopefully it wont be long before they are producing) and 2lb of blackcurrants (still loads left on the bushes to get a bit bigger before we harvest them), another 6lb of rhubarb, more spring onions and radishes, another 3lb of broad beans (still lots we've left to get bigger yet) and another 3 1/2lb of mange tout (still more of that coming on too!)

Had a good look at the sweetcorn, which is now producing cobs, and the squashes and pumpkins, which have a few fruits set, and placed some wood underneath the forming fruits to keep them off the ground as they grow! Two of our batches of peas are also now coming good, the rondo are beginning to pod and the purple podded victorian peas we got from a fellow 'grape' have loads of pods and more flowers, so I think we'll be ok for peas this year!) Our carlin peas are also now flowering, and the broccolli is going great guns, as are the cabbages! Looks like there's another 4 almost ready to harvest and the ones we planted that got munched by wabbits (that are now protected inside Fort Tesco do seem to be making a decent recovery!)

We also pulled a few carrots and a single enormous parsnip for tea, only to find that theyd been tunnelled by carrot fly, (tho we did manage to get some edible bits from them, about half of the 12" long parsnip was ok) so it looks like most of the first sowing of carrots (which were companion planted with the overwintering onions - doesnt look like that worked for us this year) and the parsnips (planted alongside some very nice and very smelly mint, in the hopes the mint would mask their smell) we've had growing for a while may be useless, but we'll leave them where they are and see what happens!

Because of the carrot fly we're going to build a second 'Fort Tesco's' on a couple of beds on plot 2 and plant them with carrots and parsnips in the hopes that the 4' high perspex walls will protect them from the attentions of the carrot fly (and the attentions of the wabbits that have been a munching the foliage) and perhaps give us some crops, even if their size is reduced by being planted late!

Thanks for reading, and I hope your carrots are fairing a bit better than ours have!

Plot 1 Update for 15th July 2007!

Once again some more piccies of our Pumpkin Patch!

Well, despite (or is it because) of all the rain we've plenty of stuff growing away nicely! Our pumpkins in the first bed seem to be going mad, standing almost 2' tall and spreading like nothing I've ever seen, we've even got some fruit setting on them, so looks like we may be ok for halloween this year!

The minipop corn in the same bed is doing ok, but not as well as the sweetcorn in the top ned next to the fartichokes, which now has cobs showing (tho they've a long way to go to reach an edible size yet!)
So, the fartichoke / corn / leek bed mentioned above! The fartichokes are now at almost 8' tall, the corn is up to 4' tall and the leeks are doing ok, but unfortunately, so are all the weeds!

Methinks we desperately need some dry weather to be able to do some hoeing! With all the wet of late all the weed seeds are germinating, and its not easy to try and hoe in damp earth, so we've been having to remove them by hand, hard work and time consuming, not to mention heartbreaking when within 2 weeks it doesnt look like its ever been weeded! Ah well, at least its a good way to keep fit, or so I keep telling myself! lol!
The outdoor cucumbers we planted to grow up our 'cucumber ramp' have finally started to grow with a bit of vigour, as you can see they are beginning to climb and one even has its first set fruit! The lettuces inside the 'ramp' are also doing well, and with the netting they do seem safe from the attention of the local wabbits that have become a problem on many of our neighbours plots! (Touching wood here, we've had some carrots and brassicas nibbled, but otherwise we've not been hit too badly, yet!)
One of the upshots of all the wabbits is after planting 50+ brassicas out we came back the following day to find that many of them had been nibbled, so we errected 'Fort Tesco's' to protect them! Lee recycled a load of perspex (from the roofs of the trolley park thingies) from his work, and we used it to build the Fort, with a huge nod to Messers Heath and Robinson! Mind you, since its been up it does seem to be protecting the brassicas, and most of the seedlings seem to have recovered well, so fingers crossed that we'll have lots of cabbages and caulis later in the year!

We've had one or two comments about our 'Fort' tho, including one asking how much for admission to the pool! After all the rain we've been having we have foudn once or twice that the water had lain in pools inside the fort, especially as the ground has been copmpacted for growing brassicas in it!

Once again another piccy of our courgette plants, just so you can marvel (as do we every time we visit the plot) at how big they are getting!

Not only have we been harvesting courgettes for a few weeks now, but we had our first marrow from it yesterday, thats now stuffed and in the oven cooking ready for Lee's tea when he gets home from work!

Another panoramic view, this time looking down the mange tout netting, past the peas to the broad beans and greenhouse!

The mange tout has been really good so far, not only have we been having it with almost every meal, but we also froze about 3lb of it yesterday too! And its still flowering like mad and producing enough pods to make harvesting it a couple or 3 times a week a definite must! Heartily recommend this veg, and we will deffo be growing it again next year!

And last one for today, a quick piccy of about 2/3rds of our overwintering red onions, harvested yesterday in the rain by Lee! In total about 250 of them, ranging from about 1 1/2" size up to 5" diameter!

Unfortunately with the weather this year we had about half of them start to go to seed, so once we got them home we had to sort them out, those that hadnt started to run to seed (about 140 or so) were put out to dry on the racking in the back bedroom (only place we have thats dry enough atm, tho I have to say the smell does clear your nose when you go in there!), and the other 110 or so were peeled, sliced and frozen in the chest freezer upstairs, as we know onions that have run to seed dont store well, so rather than wasting them we thought we'd freeze them and use them after the stored onions are finished!

Anyhows, hope you liked the piccies, and thanks for looking!

Plot 2 Update for 16th July 2007!

Well, the rain stopped for long enough yesterday for me to take a few piccies of our plots, hence the updates!

First piccy is the normal panorama of plot2 from the road end, as can be seen all this rain is germinating far too many weeds and causing our paths to grow like mad! Mind you, it has saved us from needing to water daily, and has allowed the sweetcorn, pumpkins and peas on plot 2 to grow on well, all we ned now is a bit of sunshine to help everything along!

One negative from all the rain tho is the maincrop spuds, the foliage has completely died back and gone brown, methinks its blight! We're off to the plot tomorrow, so will be digging up both of the maincrop beds and seeing whether we can salvage anything from them!

The brassicas we planted out down here have been badly munched by the bunnies, tho as yet (touching wood as I write) our leeks dont appear to have been too badly mauled (some of the other plot holders have had all their eaten!)
As you can see here our purple podded peas are going great guns, think we'll be eating them by the weekend, and still loads of flowers on them too! Strangely enough tho, we've got flowers on the french beans, but still no beans yet!

The 3 sisters beds are doing ok, the pumpkins and squashes seem to be thricing in the wet weather and the corn is doing ok, but not as tall as I'd have thougth by now, mind you we do have some small cobs showing, so perhaps we will get a harvest afterall!

This view is from about 2/3rds of the way down the plot, looking back towards the road end, in the foreground can be seem the blighted tattie haulms, not good! Beyond that are our leeks, all 290 of them (yep, we do like leeks!) and then the 3 sisters bed and peas / beans bed!

Well, thats all the piccies for plot2! Thanks for looking!

This years harvests (so far!)

Since April (from a plot and a half) we've had :-

About 35lb of rhubarb, still loads more to harvest!
About 10lb of strawberries, the early fruiting ones seem to have about finished now, but the late fruiting are starting to flower and produce fruit!
About 6lb of early fruiting rasps, tho we've only about 8 or so early fruiting canes, the other 60+ canes are all late fruiting, so still lots of time for them to fruit yet!
About 1 1/2lb of cherries from one 4 year old tree
About 3lb of blackcurrants, probably another 3 or 4 lb to harvest yet
About 45 white onions and 250 red onions, still have spring sewn sets (about 45) and onions grown from seed (about 35) plus banana shallots (about 25) to harvest!
About 6lb of new spudsAbout 30lb of first early spuds, still 2 beds (5' by 15') of maincrops to harvest
About 30 ripe toms of various varieties, lots of green toms now appearing on most of our 50 or so tomsato plants
About 80+ radish of 3 varieties, still lots more growing away nicely!
About 45 spring onions, still about 65 approaching harvest and more to sew
About 10 carrots, still about 80 or so that are being left to get a bit bigger!
About 6 parsnips, still about 100 growing away for main harvest later in the year!
About 14 cucumbers from one marketmore in the greenhouse, which has another 6 or 7 at various stages of growth, and a further 5 plants outdoors on the cucumber ramp!
About 23 courgettes from 5 plants, and more appearing all the time!
About 15 green peppers, lots more growing on the 6 plants in the greenhouse!
About 6 portions of sprouting broccolli, more growing on the 6 plants we have growing!
About 6 lettuces, a further 7 little gems are almost ready to harvest!
About 45 bulbs of garlic from the overwintering bed, with another 30 or so spring sown that are still growing nicely!
About 5lb of mange tout, which is still producing lots!
About 8lb of broad beans, still about 70% of the harvest to take from them yet!
About 1/2lb of peas, lots of pods on 2 of the varieties, which we are hopeing to start cropping soon!2 cabbages, with a further 7 white almost ready to harvest and 6 reds not far behind, plus about another 50 cabbages at various stages of growth and some more to plant out!
1 cauli, with a further 5 growing steadily
2 turnips, with another 30 or so growing.

Still to harvest :-French beans (about 90 plants of 3 varieties) flowering but no beans yet!
Chillies, 11 varieties, 11 plants in the grenhouse, 13 in the house, 5 outdoors on the plot and 12 outside in the back yard, lots of fruit from the greenhouse and a few on the indoor ones, others are flowering, but not harvesting until they all get a bit riper!
Jerusalem Fartichokes, 2 beds, one of about 8' by 8' and the other 8' by 3', plants are at between 5' and 8' tall, tubers should be enough for a good harvest later in the year!
Cooking apples - approx 80 ripening for harvest off one 5 year old tree
Eating apples - approx 25 ripening off one 5 year old tree
Pickling onions - about 150 growing but still too small to harvest
Sweetcorn, about 75 plants of 3 varities just starting to show the corn cobs
Minipop Sweetcorn - about 45 plants, but no harvest as yet
Gherkins - 2 plants, just starting to show some fruit
Pumpkins - about 40 plants, flowering and fruit has begun to set
Squashes - about 30 plants, just setting fruits now
Beetroot - about 16 growing away nicely, but not harvested any yet!
Late rasps - 60 or so canes so possibilities for a good harvest!
Gooseberries - not much success with these so far, but they are ripening up, so will probably harvest in the very near future!
Celery - 2 in the greenhouse approaching edible size and a further 23 plants outdoors which seem to be doing ok.

Not too bad a haul so far, well, at least we are fairly happy with it! Just hope the weather improves sufficiently for us all to benefit from bumper harvests this autumn!

Plot1 Update for 29th June 2007!

Ok, last update for plot1 so far as our latest piccies go, weather looks good on here, but since these were taken its done nothing but rain! What a waste of my holidays, not been able to get half as much done as we'd have liked, but at least we arent flooded, and dont have to water!

First piccy shows our 2 sisters bed and behind it the brassica bed, we've caulis, broccolli and cabbages approaching harvestable size a plenty, plus another 54 or so that were planted out the other day!
Piccy 2 shows the onion and carrot bed, with the newly transplanted celery just about visible in the 2 beds either side of the carrots on the right!
A view down the plot, with the newly cleared and planted herb bed at the front with the brassicas behind, as I said, some of the brassicas are getting quite big!

The herb bed was one we werent going to touch this year, but then were given some more brassicas, and had to fins them a home, with plot2 being almost full we decided to dig over our failed asparagus bed (it was one we inherited, but only 3 plants showed above the surface this year, along with a lot of perennial weeds, so we decided to dig it over, see if we could save the asparagus and remove the weeds, then use that 10' by 9' bed for the brassicas! We were fortunate to be able to get the asparagus out and needed somewhere to put it, so the unused herb bed got dug over, the asparagus put in, (between the 2 foxgloves that we transplanted in there in November) and to save any weeds getting hold we planted some perrennial herbs above it, so making best use of space and saving on the weeding!
The top bed of Jerusalem Farticholes, now about 6'6" tall, with some more corn (the overspill from the 2 beds of 3 sisters we've got on plot2) and more leeks!

Last but not least, another piccy of the rapidly growing courgettes! We've been harvesting a couple a day for about a week now, from the 6 plants, it'll be interesting to see how many we get when the weather improves a bit! Methinks we'll be giving em away as well as eating them for breakfast, lunch and tea!

Well, thats all for this update, hope you've found it useful and interesting, thanks for reading and more to follow soon!

Update for Plot 2, 29th June 2007

Well, after a weekend away helping a friend tame her plot as a wedding prezzie, (along with a few other 'grapes' from the GYO Grapevine Forum) I've finally got a bit of spare time to post the last piccies we took of our plots from last week!

Unfortunately since these were taken the weather has been awful, rain, rain and yet more rain, so I've not been able to take any more piccies since these!
The first piccy is a panoram of plot2, still relatively tidy, tho the gods alone will know what its going to be like after all this rain!

Second piccy is of the one of the Peas & Beans Beds, with the 3 sisters bed next to it and the bed and a half of leeks next to that!

This panoramic shot shows the 3 sisters bed, the first bed of leeks and behind that the 2 beds of maincrop spuds!

Last piccy shows the leeks, we sowed 2 seed trays of leeks, one of bought musselburgh, the other of saved seeds from the seed heads that were on plot1 when we took it over last year, bot realizing that they would all grow and that we'd have over 300 leek seedlings to plant out!

Fortunately we do have room for them, so they've all been planted and if the pesky wabbits leave them alone, then we should have plenty to eat this winter, even if its only leeks! lol!

Weather looked nice when we got up, so after a quick trip to pick up the piccies of Yo and Bob's wedding we went straight down to the plot! The plan was to finish the weeding on plot1, sort out the herb bed and plant it up with seedlings, dig over the 2 unused beds on plot2 and plants some more swede, turnip, carrot and parsnip!

On arriving we were approached by one of the other plot holders and asked if we'd like some cauli and cabbages that she'd got spare, so of course said yes, then found ourselves with another 40 brassicas to squeeze in! As one of the spare beds on plot 2 had kale in it when we took the plot over we decided instead to try and sort out the asparagus bed (which has done almost nothing this year, apart from 3 ferns of asparagus that are visible), sacrificing the little asparagus we have (if needs be) to plant out the brassicas!

Mr D started to dig it over, its been sadly neglected with a lot of thistle, dandelion, bindweed and couch in it, and did manage to safetly remove the asparagus, also finding another 3 crowns that hadnt grown, so then the problem of where to plant them?

We decided that as there was only the 5 crowns that we'd put them into what was going to be the herb bed, which has been covered over with weed control fabric since we transplanted the 2 foxgloves into it (after double digging) back in November. On removing the weed control fabric it was to find lots of weeds, so I started to dig it over, then as I got half way through it started to pour it down!

So, we finished digging, raking, compacting the soil and planting the brassicas out in the rain! So, a productive day, even if we got nothing that we'd planned done!

The gifted brassicas brings our total brassicas growing to about 140 now, lots of yummy cabbage, cauli and broccoli! Definitely running out of growing space again though!

I did plan on getting some more piccies done today, but when it started to rain I decided to leave it to tomorrow, so hopefully we'll have some more piccies to show you tomorrow!

27th June 07 - more planting and a squeal!

Got up to a grey, rainy and windy morning, so spent some time side shooting, feeding and watering the toms in the plastic greenhouse in the back yard, whilst Mr D did some potting on.

Rain finally stopped for about 11am, so with lunch made and a hot flask of coffee we set off for the plot, and have just this minute got back!

Between us we've dug over the 2 beds that we've harvested early spuds from, dug over another 15' by 4' bed, weeded the 9' by 30' brassica bed, fed and watered inside the greenhouse, and done some planting! A total of 12 sunflowers, 54 assorted brassica seedlings, 29 celery seedlings and 290 leek seedlings were planted out, bringing our total of leeks growing to 330 and our total of growing brassicas to about 100!

I also squealed with absolute delight today, after spotting the first two of our cauli's with edible curds! Bent the leaves over to protect them and weeded round them, one if about 4 mouthfulls big and the other about 2 mouthfulls, but hopefully they will soon be a bit bigger!

Plot1 is once again full of growing crops, and plot 2 is full apart from 2 beds, which (if the rain holds off for a bit) will be planted up this week!