Friday, August 2nd, 2002

So much for high summer - warm it may be, but the rain!   Adds the minor inconveniences of trying to dry some shallots spread over a bedroom floor in desperation, and the garlic over another bedroom floor.

Otherwise, it's freezing the broad beans and the peas, and making rhubarb jam.   Favourite broad bean - definitely Green Windsor!   I don't remember why I chose it, but it gives good long pods filled with sweet-flavoured beans; better tasting than the White Windsor I also tried this year.

Had the first Romanesco yesterday - two months earlier than in past years! Beautiful - but no sign of the cauliflowers at all.   Daftest idea of all, I deliberately planted all the brassica mixter-maxter, cabbages, brussels, romanesco, caulis and calabrese.   The idea was that the closer spaced brassicas (all summer crops) would come out and leave space for the larger ones to grow on in autumn and winter.   Apart from the pleasure of continually finding well-hidden little surprises in the bed, it's not a good idea, as I haven't a clue what's coming up where!

Here's hoping the weather improves a bit!

Sunday, August 4th, 2002

Still no let up in the rain - it's thick, soft, and warm, so not unpleasant to walk in or work in for a short time.   But even so, this is supposed to be summer!

Spent most of the day waiting for the sky to clear long enough to let me walk up to the plot and get a little work done - so I've got more spinach sown; the snowball, goldenball, and purple top milan turnips; and more radishes - including the minowase radish I'm trying this year.   But I had no more than 40 minutes, before I'd to retreat to the shed!

And there's so much to do - which will become major clearing tasks if they aren't done VERY soon.

Thursday, August 8th, 2002

At last a couple of summer's days - the sun still exists!   I took the kids out a cycle ride yesterday, but today we've been up in the allotment all day.

Tamanna's cleared all her Hurst Greenshaft peas - a good hefty crop, but a little bit past their best because of the wet weather; no pest damage to speak of, only the odd thrip-twisted pod.

My last picking of the Alderman had quite a lot of thrips on the peas from the earlier sowing, and today the whole row was showing a lot of dusty mildew.   Had to pull them all up, and we had a small bonfire in the afternoon to get rid of them.   Mental note for next year - I do like the Alderman, but they may be much more prone to pest and disease, so grow both varieties.

Some of the salad potatoes were showing first signs of blight, so we cut their foliage and added that to the fire.   Probably a LOT more blight to come, I'd guess!

We've missed the gooseberries - they're rotting on the plants.   And SLUGS - big and fat, all around.   Once the kids are back with their mum, I'll set out some bran, so they feed till they POP.

But it's not a tale of woe today - not at all!   Picked the first picking of brambles, just at the moment the biggest, juiciest, sweetest berries were at their early season best.   Bramble sponge tonight, the first of the year, to follow the Romanesco for diiner.   Delicious buttery flavour, and they're a couple of months earlier than I've had them before.   And some calabrese, and a fine cabbage.

The Lobjoits Cos lettuce is superb - strange how the Little Gem we've grown so much of over the last couple of years tastes quite bitter beside the Lobjoits.   And despite losing so many of our squash-type plants to the miserable weather, two of the butternut squash plants are positively thriving.   We might even - fingers and ewverything else available crossed - have a crop of carrots this year; the late sowing seems to be thriving.

Halla's flowers are a picture - especially now the sunflowers are starting to bloom; she has a particularly fine dark bronze variety this year.

Couldn't get the children out of the allotment before 7.30 this evening.   A long day, and then we were all seated round the sitting room floor podding peas, and cleaning redcurrants, all for the freezer.   So I have Christmas pudding planned again - summer pudding!   Well why not, if we're to have November weather in August!

Friday, August 9th, 2002

Yesterday's crack about November obviously offended the rain-goddess - it has not stopped all day, with an occasional very cold blast of wind.

Imagine - we've had a great day, cooped up in the house ----- as I've been helping my duaghters make bread!   What kind of a summer's afternoon activity is that!

Sunday, August 25th, 2002

No, I haven't forgotten about my diary - it's just that other things have been happening.   And in between times, we've been lifting some beautiful onions, beetroot, romanesco, cabbages, lettuce, peas, etc etc etc.   And I'm picking rhubarb and brambles for jams and jellies.   But nothing sown in that cold wet spell has come through successfully, bar a couple of spring onions and a couple of lettuce - so much for summer!

Spent much of this afternoon digging Tamanna's potatoes - and despite cutting down the haulms as soon as I saw signs of blight, some of her potatoes are ... blighted!   Having said that, they've been trampled by vandals, eaten by slugs and wireworm, they've had wasps' nests - and her potatoes are STILL bigger and better and more than mine!   Next year, she can have the allotment, and I'll have her little plot!

And this year's brassica bed has club-root - I had no idea until I lifted the last of the calabrese a couple of days ago, and the roots showed all the signs.   It hasn't been disastrous in that we've had a very good crop of romanesco, calabrese and cabbages so far.   No cauliflower - only a couple showed heads, and by the time I came back a few days later, these had blown.

Guess it's going to be a season where we look a bit harder than usual for the good news!

Tuesday 27th August, 2002

More harvesting - beetroot to pickle and freeze, and onions - more and more of them!   I have to learn - fast - how to string them, because my daughters simply do not have enough redundant pairs of tights!

I cleared (again) the spot at the very back of our first plot - it's been wasted space, occasionally covered by a slow compost heap - so of course this summer, it is thick with every seed that passed through the compost heap untouched!   And mouse nests - I didn't manage to find the nests themselves, as the spade sliced through and turned over a couple of blind, hairless baby mice, who immediately scrabbled off looking for their mother; but mother was far off by now!

Anyway, I managed to finish clearing a quarter of our land - I'm trying very hard to get in front of myself, so that I have time to double dig the plots where the potatoes have been this year; the soil is so thin that it needs deepening for the brassicas next year.   And I want to clear a patch for new rhubarb, and for raspberry canes.   Rather than let the new stuff take priority over the maintenance of existing beds, I'm trying to get all the existing beds in good order for the autumn and winter - and then do the new stuff!   If I've made one mistake this year, it was letting the new bits "take over".   I've never had so much land "unused" - or at least sown/planted, where the crop has failed!

Wednesday 28th August, 2002

Amazing how just a few weeks neglect leaves you with a jungle to clear - my fruit bushes were over-run with bramble suckers.   And I've found more of the ground elder - it's got in to the depths of at least one redcurrant bush.   Thought I'd got rid of it - deletive expleted LOUDLY.

Once the bush has lost its leaves, I'll try to prune it back to look more like a tree, a standard, I think its called - and blitz the ground elder with weed killer in the spring.

A memory of childhood garden - the ground elder taking over, and my parents eventually dowsing the whole garden in sodium chlorate.   I do NOT want it get that far.

Spent the rest of the day imposing a bit of order - half the front beds and all the back beds are now cleared and ready for my green manure to be sown.

It is obviously a very good week to be doing this.   The slugs are hiding in the couch grass which has overgrown the bed edges from my paths - so going along the edges first with the shears catches most of them!   And then I edged the paths with the spade - and turned up several patches of slug eggs - they won't be hatching now!

And the couch grass itself has put out roots fast in the last couple of weeks - from the dried up paths, deep into the still damp soil of the beds.   With the weather so dry, it's a simple matter to remove these roots - before they're well established in October/November when I usually do my digging.   Sow my clovers and alfalfa, and all the rest --- and just possibly I won't have to do any winter digging?

Found a corner to slip in some Japanese onion sets - never tried them before, so we'll see what happens next spring.