I love to read Allan Jenkins’ Sunday column in the Observer about his allotment. This week, in one of the comments, someone talks about this time of year and the garden’s descent into chaos. While the plot isn’t actually in chaos, just yet, July and August are busy times. If May is the ‘plant all the things’ month, July and August are the months where often you have to choose between watering, harvesting and weeding and come to the conclusion that there is no time for all of it. We are almost at that stage on the plot and have the added task of keeping Joe’s quarter plot tidy (the rest of his plot is behind some loganberries and it feels intrusive to weed there, but we have permission for the other bit!)
When I first got the plot, I knew that I was going to garden in beds and I knew that I wasn’t going to dig the entire plot over every year. I’m not fit enough and even if I was I don’t have the time. So I accidently became no dig, Joe is an old fashioned gardener who digs his plot over every year which works for him but the weeds are immense compared to our plot. That’s not to say we don’t have weeds, but we have them mostly in the paths.
Some annual weeds come up in the beds but they are easily dealt with and the only real problem we’ve had has been with the old raspberries, which have been sprouting up everywhere, paths and beds. However, we’ve been diligently pulling them up and for the moment, they’ve stopped although I don’t think we’ve seen the last of them. We do have a bit of a patchwork situation with regards to the weed fabric the wood chip covers up, I wouldn’t do it again but under the wood chip paths, we have some biodegradable weed fabric, some plastic weed fabric and some bare earth. Which means we have different types of weeds on the paths depending what’s underneath them. Over the black plastic the wood chip breaks down into a great growing medium, so we get lots of annual weeds and the occasional self-seeded squash (yes I am going to leave it and see what it does!). In the other areas as the woodchip layer decomposes, we have both annual weeds that are harder to remove and the perennial nasties like bindweed.
Our method for both types is the same. Pull them out put more wood chip down. Fortunately, there had been two wood chip deliveries in the past couple of weeks and a downpour on Friday. So first job on Friday night was to clear Joe’s space, which includes the courgette corridor. There is a big area of unplanted soil which we cleared of weeds so I’m going to ask Joe if I can plant the bunch (40) of cabbages, calabrese and cauliflowers that came with my kale, I don’t have room for them and don’t like seeing empty space, it also gives me reason for keeping up with the weeds at that end under control and Joe likes cabbages and cauliflowers so it’s a win/win.
On Saturday we did a lot of work on our plot. Harvesting, obvs.
Out total courgette count is at 36, (since the 3rd July) and one crookneck but this does include the pick I did while watering on Tuesday. The yellow ones are currently doing better than the green ones and some of the fruits developing aren’t germinating or are and then dying off, which on absolutely no evidence, I’m blaming the bitey ants…
We only have a couple of more weeks of beetroot yet and we’re not going to get around to a second sowing this year because there’s no room! There is currently lots of lettuce but again I need to sow some more because in the mini heat wave we’re having this week, I think it’s going to bolt!
Although they aren’t nearly ready, we have tomatoes, which makes me so happy!
We also have calendula flowering
We’re a couple of weeks away from french beans, the autumn raspberries are beginning to set fruit and I took the first plums yesterday, I forgot to put a grease band around the tree in spring (again) and we’re in an off year for the tree but there are certainly enough for plum gin. 
The squashes are all doing well, the butternuts are way behind and just starting to flower but the Georgia candy roaster, the ukichi kuri and the burgess butternut have all set some fruit and by some I mean we have about 20 squash, so it’s all good. We’ve hit the time of year where spring and early summer veg has slowed down but we’re a bit away from all the late summer harvests, which is fine.
Then we weeded and woodchipped most of the plot. We didn’t get to all of it, I went back on Sunday morning and did a bit more but still didn’t get it all done but I did get all the fruit beds (raspberries, blackcurrant and boysenberry) and reserved some for the gooseberries too. If there is more there at the weekend, I’ll finish it off.
Other than weeding, I got all the kale planted out. We have 10 cavolo nero, plants and 5 curly kale plants (the only ones that survived my neglect in the spring!) 
While I was doing that Ma sowed the borlotti beans in the three sisters bed, yes it’s late but that does seem to be the theme of my years.
I also picked some flowers which made me really happy, although I think the time for sweet peas to come up has come, there were bugs all over them, some greenfly and some pollen beetles. I love sweetpeas but I’m pretty ruthless about them, we took one set down already and it’s time to take down the others. 
Ma also sowed some dill in amongst the baby cukes (this is dill that we allowed to go to seed last year – one of the few places I managed to save seed!).
So to future planning.
The big task for next week is the shed, which has become Mum’s domain and is very messy and not my fault, I’m not allowed in there! We’re at that stage when everything has to be taken out, it has to be cleaned and then we need to put things back in so we can reach them. Some friends are gifting me a set of shelves they don’t want and I’m going to pick them up before the weekend, which I’m hopeful will help.
I need to find homes for the leeks, the ammi visnaga, the brassicas which I’m hoping we can put in on Joe’s empty space. I also need to take out the sweet peas and pull out the spinach that hasn’t grown enough to harvest any. I want to sow some fennel there and see if it does any better. I also need to get to sowing the chard (really, really need to do it now). I’d like to finish with the wood chip if we can.
Tasks not for this week but in the next month are finding a spot for autumn/winter lettuces that can sit under a cloche when it gets cold. And thinking about any other autumn/winter planting. We were very lucky that we had some extra space from Joe this year as we have too much we, ok I, wanted to grow, even though we had extra space, so I’ll have to give that due consideration for planning over winter!
It wasn’t just actual books although she did and I still have them but she taught me the value of reading. Like most kids I don’t remember the bedtime stories, I do remember that when we did the school library trip, I was the only kid that already had a library membership and was familiar with the children’s library at Fulham library.I was given books for Christmas and birthdays and they all had a message from Ma. This was huge for me as I also had Ma’s books from her mother (and others) which for me were a link to people that I would never meet and to Ma’s childhood. It’s one thing to know that your mum spent time convalescing in Broadstairs when she was a child, it’s another thing entirely to see the message that the grandmother that you never met wrote for your mum at the time. Also please note that in the same year when she was 9 and just 10 Ma was given Good Wives and Great Expectations!
So actual books are one thing, my love of Jane Austen, the Chalet School and Georgette Heyer are all because they were things Ma liked to read. What she gave me was more than that. It was the love of reading, the permission to read and lose myself in a story and that it was ok to do that. All of that comes from Mum, who would often say “I was going to hoover/wash up/change the beds but I had a book” because who wouldn’t read instead of doing housework.
I remember Ma removing lamps and lightbulbs from my room to stop me reading at night. And while I know that it was more than awkward to have a kid that had her nose in a book at very given opportunity, she never made me feel that reading and wanting to read was a problem. There were lots of other people in my life who did but in that I always felt Ma got it.
On Tuesday, I was at Jo’s in the afternoon and I didn’t get home until nearly 9pm, so it was melon.
After last week’s excitement, the plot really needed some attention. As ever this time of year, both the weeds and the things you want to grow are all thriving. So we picked: beetroot, carrots, salad, gooseberries, I gave the mint a haircut (because you’re supposed to give it a hard prune when it starts to flower) which Ma took for tea, the last bag of potatoes, the last rhubarb and two courgettes. In the week, I’d picked four courgettes and some sweetpeas. I’m not doing a running tally of everything we harvest (but I am thinking about it for next year!) we are doing it for courgettes and we’re at 15 so far this year
Anyway, after the harvesting it was all about tidying. We decided to take the sweet peas on the edge of the carrot bed out. Ma weeded around the courgettes and the bits of Joe’s plot that he hadn’t got to and for me it really shows that no-dig reduces weeds, I’m not saying we never get them because we do and we need to spend some time on the edges and paths but compared to Joe’s dug over plot, our weeds are so much lighter and that’s a good thing because my weeder is not getting any younger!
I did the watering and feeding, I’m very excited to see the candy roaster and the uchiki kuri start to set fruit!
I also planted some things. The boysenberry went in. There was some space up near the courgettes so I stuck the cucamelon in there. 
I also planted out my new pink next to the other one and repotted the lavenders. So I have to find space for the leeks, some curly kale and the ammi visnaga next week. I’m also waiting on an order of kale and brassicas to arrive. We’ll use the kale but I’m going to ask Joe if he wants the brassicas we can’t use in the space that Ma has just weeded. It’s always better to have something in!
I also tidied up the tomatoes (they do need attention, there’s no getting around it).
Oh and finally, we’ve had some success with the cucumbers and the seeds have come up. I’ve decided that I’m not going to start them off indoors any more, next year I’ll either plant straight in the ground in May with some plastic over them or I’ll start them in pots but in the cloche because they really don’t seem to like being transplanted from my living room to the plot!
We also have nasturtiums, rocket and coriander doing its thing, mostly on my path. The borage is all over the place, including coming out of a compost bin and in my white flowers (I don’t know if I mentioned it but I bought a load of discounted seed from Wilko a while ago mixed it altogether and threw it in some soil near what it now the french bean bed, and most of the flowers are white, but some of the seeds were wildflowers and the borage looks nice there. 
We also have mystery squash, one growing with the french beans and another on the path. I can only assume it’s from a bird but I’m going to leave them to see what they do They’re only weeds if they’re plants you don’t want!
It’s doing well and it looks pretty good. I can’t believe that we’re in July already and I’m thinking about autumn planting already. Because there is so much to do, we have the return of the list.
So after a late night on Friday, it was allotment on Saturday and food processing on Saturday night. All that food needs to be washed and sorted, this week I also made another batch of pesto.
I was completely uninterested in the cricket, glad England won but I don’t really care about the cricket or the Grand Prix or the tennis. I was delighted to see that the Algerian football team beat Nigeria and will play Senegal in the Cup of Nations final on Friday. I was also delighted by both teams nicknames, the Senegalese are ‘The Lions of Teranga’ and the Algerians are ‘The Warriors of the Desert’ although both names probably sound better in French!
Taking on the plot has had so many benefits, for me one of the unexpected ones has been the community we’re a part of now!
As I harvested the beds, I watered and fed them and then we got on with the work. Ma did some weeding, and I attacked the tarragon and planted the two blackcurrant plants, I’d bought a while ago. So with the boysenberry that’s going in the last of those longer beds. Our soft fruit expansion is done for 2019. I may end up with two more blueberry bushes next year and if we end up with more space, I’m going to have at least three more rhubarbs (we can always use more rhubarb, there is no such thing as a glut!)
Then it was past time to deal with the tomatoes. They needed a trim and tying up onto canes. We did all three beds and planted the basil plants into the cherry tomato bed. The other two beds have calendula coming up so there wasn’t enough room.
That done we had some basil plants left over and 12 plants that hadn’t been given out or planted in the beds. If I was a sensible person I would have thrown them alway. But we had a spare bed, so we planted them up in the bed and in one of the green boxes. Which means that we have 45 tomato plants this year. Given that I didn’t eat raw tomatoes until three years ago and now I’m really looking forward to tomatoes on toast in August, I find this hilarious..
I’m not quite done with tomatoes either. We have a section of Joe’s plot that I’m calling the ‘courgette corridor’ and one of the crooknecks didn’t make it (at the top of this photo). It’s getting a bit weedy so I’m thinking that if the unsold plant sale tomatoes are being given away as they were last year, I’ll clear that section and bung them in there, I really don’t like wasted space. I also watered Joe’s tomatoes and I’m going to give that a weed if he’s not been up during the week.
So on Saturday night we had a cucamelon and some kale that hadn’t been planted out. Then on Sunday, I bought some more plants. I’ve already mentioned the boysenbery, but I also bought some lavenders (I don’t know which type but I’m loving the ones we have on the plot and the more the merrier!), another pink to go with the one that I bought last year.
Finally I bought two ammi visnaga, which I’d never heard of before but they look pretty. So eight plants, which isn’t too bad. 
So I want to do a bit more grinding it out with the housework so that I can rest better. Because August is always a more social month. Already we have family lunch and a trip to Newcastle planned and there are so many other birthdays and anniversaries in August. I’m informed that Ryan is going to be in London and we’ll probably have the boys while Ben and Laura go out and celebrate being married for 12 years (and yes I did just have to check that on Facebook!) for lunch and someone is coming to fix the kitchen ceiling and the lights in the living room (though I’m not at all sure when that’s happening!).
Nic Dempsey 