Baking hot spuds

The spuds are making cracking progress on the allotment now so today was spent earthing them up as per the recipe book.



These are the early crop and there's another bed of later ones which are not quite so well developed but should keep me in mash, chips, and other spuddy delights later on in the year.

The onions that went in at the bag end of last year have now done their stuff and half of them turned into leeks which makes me thinks they may not have been onions in the first place. The red onions are left out on the bed drying out so they will keep better, and the leeks will be cooked up with a bit of butter for my tea.


The second lot of seeds planted in the coldframe and protected by swathes of slug pellets have come good, and another few snails went to meet their maker. Top left are dwarf beans, top right are courgettes, and left middle are beetroots. Bottom left are sliverskin onions which are taking a bit longer but are just poking their heads above the soil, and the tray on the right is leeks, again a bit slower to start.



The rasberry canes that went in last year and promptly died also seem to be making a good recovery and should give me enough for a mr kipling style individual fruit pie.



The salsify has finally flowered and matches the pictures on the web so I'll have a go at harvesting it shortly. With a root that is 3ft long it may take some doing though!!!



After all that hard work, I retired home for a well earned greasy spoon.

The rain in spain falls mainly on my allotment

The rain has set in for the day but rather bizarrely I had to wander up to water the plants (the ones in the cold frame not getting the benefit of all this water). I had replanted all of the things that got nicked out of there previously and sprinkled a goodly proportion of slug pellets all over the area. This appears to have caught the culprits which were loads of snails who came back for seconds and didn't make it home.

I dug all the small leeks out of the plot as they didn't get any bigger and processed them into leek/potato and ham soup which was scrummy.

All of the plots are now weeded so it's custard creams all the way to the finish line now :)

A day without rain

A bank holiday and the sun is out. The weather really has gone screwy!!!

Another load of weeding today and more seeds in the ground.

The onion patch was supplemented by two rows of spring onions from Louise's mega seed collection, varieties to be confirmed when I don't leave the seed packets up in the shed.

The broccoli/cabbage patch produced a grand total of no cabbages and no broccoli (it went to seed) so all that came out and a row of petit pois was slipped in.

The peas and beans in my cold frame have not fared too well.


The module tray at the top did contain peas and beans, but as you can see something came in and nicked the lot. As the cold frame was sealed I suspect mice have somehow tunneled in and nabbed the lot. I'll have to plant another batch in the spare room and get them to grow on a bit to defeat the little blighters.

A bed of parsnips and carrots also went in next to the cold frame once an enormous number of weeds was removed from the bed.

The beds with stuff in them are still growing well.



Despite this being a bit overgrown, the bits on the left that look like spring onions are garlic. The bits in the middle that have long flat leaves are salsify (or weeds... one of the two). And the purple thing on the right is Kale which has gone to seed. D'oh.



And this is another bed full of different types of garlic, and a few weeds which I'll get to in time.

The last thing that is still doing OK is the spinach bed which I keep cutting back but it carries on growing like mad.


Later this week more weeding, and an investigation of the cold frame to find and block up charlie tunnel.