I must admit I have not done any real work on plot for a couple of weeks now. When I pop down there at the moment it is more to pick things rather than pull the weeds up. As a result, plot 2 is back to looking a bit scruffy again, but all is growing fine so I am not that worried. Once the desire to impress the allotment judges has gone, you are left with the enjoyment of just growing for your own pleasure, and weeds do not spoil that for me. As long as the vine weed is not strangling anything, I can walk past them without flinching now.
The strawberries on plot one are still going! Everytime I pop down there I come home with plenty of them to cover at least two days worth of desserts. The same with the raspberries (I tend to mix the fruits up and serve together). The gooseberries are looking fantastic and the red tinge is coming on some of them (presumably the first stage of them turning completely red) I didn’t get to see any of this last year as the bushes were too young to fruit well. I picked a half punnet of white currants and have been mixing them with the other soft fruit or sprinkling them on icecream. Yum Yum.
Plenty of New Potatoes to harvest still, the ‘Charlotte’ have reached a good size, some of them huge in fact. I don’t even want to mention the peas! Last year I didn’t grow enough and was disappointed with my yield. This year I have gone overboard and have so many that I cannot keep up with the picking and have had to ask one of my plot neighbours to help himself and pick what he wants! I never thought I would see the day when I was sick of eating fresh peas in the pod. I shelled some the other week and cooked them for dinner which made a change.
This week I pulled up all the remaining spring onions and the early carrots which were started in the cold frames. I have got the carrots outside in a bag and what I do Is I bring in a bundle at a time, wash them up and either slice them up to cook for diner or make a carrot soup out of them like I did yesterday. They are small enough not to peel so a quick scrub up and in the pot they go! I like things to be easy like that. The spring onions go in a sandwhich, on salads or sliced up for stir fry’s. I bought home my first few Iceberg Lettuce. I took all the outer leaves off for the chickens which left us with two good size lettuce for the fridge.
The first round of white flowered runner beans are flowering and the sweet peas are out in full force. I picked a bunch and they have filled the front room with their wonderful smell. Are they my favourite flower? Quite possibly, but I can’t say for certain as there are so many flowers that I love, all for different reasons.
I had a bit of a sad moment on plot one this week when I had to pull up the hollyhocks that I had grown from seed last year, they are just about ready to flower too. But they looked awful with their leaves all brown and covered with some sort of rust fungus. Luckily the plants on plot two have not been affected so I will still get to enjoy them. I scattered Cornflower and mixed varieties of pot marigold on some rough ground at the back of plot 2 this spring and that looks nice now, but I forgot to photograph it, so will do so next time.
At home we had the excitement of picking our first small handful of ripe Blueberries. They were big juicy ones and tasted fab. I haven’t managed to keep up with the golden sweet mangetout even though they are right outside on the patio and some of them have gotten to big to eat now, but there are still some smaller ones left which I should pick today and put in the fridge. The chilli’s and pepper plants are doing very well. I have moved the two big windowsill chilli plants outside now as they were just getting too big for the windowsills (more like small chilli trees than bushes!)
The Herb Garden is big and bushy, the curry plant is flowering and the mint smells wonderful everytime you brush past it. I think Mint has to be my favourite herb as it is so easy to grow and there is always so much of it. I want to try to make some of my mum’s mints sauce that she used to make when I was little. She would finely chop the mint and mix it up with normal brown vinegar and a white sugar. It was rather basic but I loved it’s sweet and sour taste. Much nicer than the acidic mint sauce you buy from the supermarket.
samsallotment 