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
We are also at the stage of the year where it seems to take as long to wash and sort the produce as it does to pick it! Especially as I made pesto out of the carrot tops (much to the disapproval of some of my facebook friends!).
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 do seem to have a lot of stuff self-seeding, the aramanth is rampant and we seem to have two types. 
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.
- Weeding. The edges of the plot, the tops under the plum tree and the courgettes, which are going to need lots of attention.
- Tidy the shed. Ma is itching to do this so we’ll get it done
- Paint the shed
- Sow dill in the cucumber bed
- Sow beetroot and fennel
- Sow chard
- If kale arrives plant it out.
- Plant out the last lavender
- Find a place for the ammi visnaga and plant it there
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!).
When I saw this flat I knew would be the right flat. Ma said that it was me as soon as she saw it, it has changed a bit, ten years in, I still haven’t got a decent wardrobe solution sorted out and it took me as many years to sort out decent kitchen chairs! I’m settled, I’m glad I’m here…
It wasn’t as bad as I had feared. There was weeding and harvesting to do. The only thing that really hadn’t survived was the cucumbers. I sowed some more seeds, but if they don’t take, we’ll just plant something else there!
The uchiki kuri in the box obviously love their sheltered position and have gone mad and there is even a tiny squash ready to be fertilized, the other squash are growing but slowly.
The tomatoes are all still alive, but not flowering yet, we also have some voluntary nasturtiums next to one of the tomato beds. In fact I’m loving the amount of self seeded plants that are popping up in unlikely places. Aramanth, borage, coriander, rocket, the california poppies that didn’t ever seem to go away this year, there are also a couple of lemon balm and oregano seedings growing up at the edge of the plot near the courgettes. Next year I hope that we’ll add calendula to the mix too. We need to plant out the basil in those beds next week.
The summer raspberries probably had their time last week, and the autumn ones had a flush too but are also growing canes so I’ll expect them again in the next few months. The blueberries are all still alive and some are coming ripe. Five this week. This week’s soft fruit stars are the gooseberries, we picked nearly three kilos and there is more to come. They are eating gooseberries and so good, assuming I don’t eat them all straight from the bowl, I’m planning on at least one pot of jam and maybe some compote, some of them have already joined the raspberries in a granita.
The peas are all picked (nearly a kilo of them once Ma had podded them) and that bed is clear for a second sowing of beetroot, because we love beetroot. We picked 10 from the beetroot bed for eating and we’ll also use the greens as we would chard, which will keep us in greens until the chard starts again (we’ll sow that next week). The carrot bed is doing really well too, it’s the first year that I feel we done well with carrots, the ones in the enviromesh cloche have really done well, I think that they must be slightly warmer under it. That also gave us our first batch of pesto for the year, 8 pots and 2 jars.
The salad is doing well (I cannot say the same of the spinach!) and on the carrot and the salad bed, the row of sweet peas were looking lovely. We seem to have more ladybirds on the plot (I brought one home on my face!) and that so far seems to have seen off the greenfly. The other bed of sweet peas is also blooming and the celery in that bed seems to be doing well too. The french beans are still little but alive so I’m calling that good.
The potatoes had suffered a bit with the heat and me not being great at toping them up, so we decided to harvest four of them, we had loads (6 lbs) and the compost when straight into the empty bed near the shed, which will be full in a couple of weeks, when we harvest the remaining three bags.
The three sisters bed has sweetcorn and squash plants but there are a couple of gaps (foxes!) so we’ll see how it goes, in a couple of weeks, I’ll sow the borlotti beans and we’ll just hope for the best. There was a lot of weeding and feeding to do but I’m really loving the flowers (the day lily and carnations are both out, as well as the verbena and lavender) and the allotment looking productive again. We have six beds currently empty but have plans to fill them with leeks, fruit, chard, kale, beetroot, fennel and pak choi.
We have lots of weeding, sowing, picking, trimming and work to do next week but I’m feeling much happier about it. Amazing what a bit of sun will do!
