Autumn

Harvested remaining squash - two annaschwartz (look done) two butternuts (green) two guatemalan banana (stripey green) 3/4 invincible (still greenish).

Leeks have white rot or something, dr H says burn.

went to the allotment

coupla days ago ian obliterated our weeds using the megastrimmer. So it looks beautiful atm.

Today we went - picked 3-4 courgettes, 7 cucumbers, more runners kale french beans a bit of broccoli. Remaining squash looking ok but not ripe - butternut gets bigger and bigger but is resolutely green, guatemalan banana is interesting stripeyness but not the least bit blue, crown prince (actually invincibles) still green, but all ok sizes.

Xmas potatoes looking ok, second sowing of beans flowering, but it's obviously a race against time before they get frostified. Leeks puny still.

Dug up the remainder of the Roosters - some bigger potatoes, but still overall disappointing.

Cut one Anna Schwartz of two on the earliest plant, butternut on windowsill is yellowing somewhat but still a way to go.

Runners still coming, Cherokees too, few courgettes, Raspberries in decent numbers.

Autumn potatoes look ok.

Found some not dead psb plants. But they're pretty tiny.

Harvest

Harvesting runners and cherokees now - the Irish Creek seem to have come to an end, but both the climbing beans are now producing hard and fast. The Zucchinis are still producing decent volume - we cut a load of fairly small ones today in the hope we'll prevent ourselves from getting marrows when we get back from Devon.

Raspberries turning out a few berries most days.

Cut two squash today - one Crown Prince (i think) in order to allow the others on the vine to get more boom, and a butternut because it's reached an enormous size already. Theory says that they'll keep ripening on the windowsill - the butternut squash is green still, but fingers crossed not for long.

Ongoing

Pulled the most egregiously sprawling cucumber plant out of the greenhouse - it turned out to be two, enourmous and totally lacking in fruit, and the extra space seems to have helped things a bit. Tomatos are doing ok - not enourmous looking yields but still alive, despite the tomato moth whose caterpillars were chomping their way through leaf and fruit alike. There's now a single cucumber in the greenhouse, one of the hemaphrodite italian outdoor types, but it now has a healthy number of good looking cucumbers growing on it. The ones outdoors, which snuck onto the squash bed unnoticed, are still doing well - they're small but have delivered a decent number of really tasty decent small cucumbers. There are probably three or four almost ready to harvest atm. Squash are doing very well - something like 10 fruit in total in various levels of growth, but there's the danger of a crappy end to the summer, and even theives, to worry about. One of the plants which didn't really take off turns out to be a guatemalan banana squash, and now has a single fruit forming. I doubt it will make it, but who knows.

Squashtopia

New Potatoes

Lured by some sales shpeil, we have planted some Charlottes with a view to having some October/Late new potatoes, mainly as an effort to offset the poor seeming performance of our main efforts. We dug up one dead plant yesterday and got 4 roosters :(

2010 Chicken hen

Getting the plot back into order. There was a long dry spell and despite a lot of help from all and sundry somethings havn't survived being abandoned for 3+ weeks. We've weeded a fair bit and watered a lot and here is the current status:
Shallots - dead. Didn't like the dry at all.
White Onions - OK, not enourmous but doing ok,
Garlic - harvested a few weeks ago, smallish in size but pretty good cloves and pretty tasty
Parsnips - not a great level of gemination but probably 8-10 decent looking plants atm
Leeks - planted them out - they look a little small, but healthy
Courgettes - delivering atm, the pinstripes in particular are very good - long and thin
Green Beans - Ying Yangs were a non starter, Borlottos have 3-4 plants doing well, 2 plants or so of the cattle gold/irish creek (with pretty good yields) and 1-2 plants of the regular green bean type (tendersomething?), Cherokees 2-3 runners looking pretty good. We planted a second set of the dwarf beans in the hope that they might dleiver a late harvest; they're just germinating.
Runner Beans - maybe half the potential level of plant, but those that have grown are thriving, albeit not all the way up the frame
Broad Beans - smallish yield now done.
PSB - tiny plants, going to hunt for some plugs.
Broccoli - Growing ok, although now have whitefly, and the heads that are appearing look a bit motheaten
Kale - disappointing germination, those that did got slugged, planted some potential replacements
Purple Cabbage - small but still going quite well.
Potatoes - Charlottes probably not the ideal first early, but tasty (apparantly), PFA doing ok, small aboveground growth but solid, Roosters - looking very sorry for themselves, dug a dead looking one up and got 4 potatoes :(
Rhubarb - ok now, looking ok,
Asparagus - new crowns at the allotment grew really well, with some getting ~2 feet high, but now has asparagus beetle. Seed-grown ones at home are ok, but much smaller.
Raspberries - doing well - ate some today for the first time
Beetroot - very good, picked several large beets
Peas - doing pretty well, picked a second helping this afternoon, small and not huge numbers but sweet.
Squash - 4 plants survived - 1 harrier with a decent sized butternut on it and another seemingly growing now, 1 Anna Schwartz, going bananas with three squash on it growing like the clappers, another Anna Schwartz with good length, but only the beginnings of squash on atm, and one other, probably a Crown Prince (type) with one big light gree squash forming and maybe 1 or 2 more potentials.

May

Repotted Squash and Brocolli, courgettes, planted some more squash since germination seems to have been so so. Chillies doing very poorly, aubergines, too, tomatillo and mexican gerkhins germinated

Finished digging over all of the old beds, barring the PSB bed.

PSB producing nicely,

Broad Beans seem ok - took the cloches off them and put over the kale/red cabbage seedlings.

Planted YingYang, Irish River, Cattle Gold, Borlotto, Cherokees, plus one other type of green bean, all directly. Planted some sweetcorn, some asparagus seeds, white onions, beetroot.

Potos

At the allotment

Planted Red Cabbages and Kale at the allotment - fleeced over them, Salad, rocket etc. at home, and put cloches over the top.

Broad beans were eaten, allegedly by a fox, so we ended up getting some dirt cheap plugplants from the market and banging them in, also under cloches.

Digging ongoing, with most of the beds done, and a lot of the new space done. We re-weedkillered the squash beds, although the first dose now does seem to be working.

Chili seeds doing ok but not great, Cucumber, Tomato much more progress, leeks good, forst of the squash up today.

Plantings

Sowed Onions (red), Parsnips (gladiator) at the allotment.
Yesterday sowed Courgettes and Squash in pots at home, plus some Calabrese. 2 trays of Leeks in now.

Tomatoes, Cucumbers starting to come up, Chillis doing ok, as are the Aubergines.

Picking PSB, picked the lone Romanesco. Ate it. Meh.

Apasaragus racing away.

Sowed Leeks

Autumn Giant 2, cat litter tray, sunny windowsill.

Potatoes Plantificatorized

Chillis look like they're germinating now that we moved them upstairs:

The bigger of the Asparagus crowns have got off to an amazing running start:
This was supposed to arrive in October, better late than never, I guess, although it's also about the size od a cricket ball, so work to be done, if you ask me.
Potatoes planted:

More

Went to allotment and planted asparagus crowns.

Garlic looks good, Shallot bed was pretty but not doing much, weed suppressant fabric not obviously suppressing weeds, broad beans a bit of a nothing still. Rhubarb not obviously alive.

Shallots in the ground - 4 types - Pikant, Jermor, Delvad, Yellow Moon. Also some extra Broad Beans plugged into the holes of the autumn sowings (which were pretty crappy germination)




Sowed Chillis - 5 types (Fish, Yellow Hot, Nigel's outdoor, Planet, Armando) and Mini Aubergines indoors.

Watercress?

Plot still very wet, so too early to plant shallots, i think.
One of the PSB doing some unhelpful looking flowering, and in general it all looks pretty unhappy.
Garlic up, Broadbeans a bit spotty, but some there.

Reconfiguration

Romanescos got butchered by the pigeons - pulled up, PSB covered to protect; late run of Spinach was pretty good, Parsnips all dug up in december. Mixed bag - few of the real badgers of the previous month or two, but generally ok.

Broad Beans, Garlic sowed in November?