Allotment Update

It's been a few weeks since I did an allotment post and things have been doing a lot of growing in that time.  By the time of the inspection, which was yesterday the plot was completely full with produce.  Some of it needed harvesting, but we didn't want to leave any big gaps, so we held off until after the inspection, as I think 75% of your plot has to be cultivated.

Here are a couple of pictures of each side of the plot:

On this side we have beans, cucumbers, courgettes, one aubergine plant, lettuce, strawberries (our plants were new in this year and hardly produced any fruit unfortunately), peas, sweetcorn and raspberries. We've been harvesting a lot of peas, raspberries and lettuce lately.

On this side of the plot are potatoes, beetroot, tomatoes of various varieties, beans, asparagus, dahlias, gooseberries, blackcurrants and blueberries. The potatoes in the forefront are ready to harvest and I'm sure OH will be excited to do this when he gets back from visiting his parents.

The fruit bushes aren't really producing much fruit this year.  They were very productive last year, but got quite heavily pruned in the autumn, so maybe we'll get more next year. The blueberries are sunk into the ground in their pots, as they like an ericaceous soil and our soil at the plot is a clay soil, which they wouldn't like.

We're really strict about what we grow these days. We only grow crops we actually like to eat. I've grown things in the past that we ended up giving away or were left for the bees, but now we're on a small plot we need to be disciplined and use the space to it's best advantage. Some things we don't grow as they don't grow well on the plot and are cheap to buy, such as carrots and onions. 

Once more space becomes available, OH has more seedlings ready to go, such as celeriac, kohl rabi and more lettuce, so we should be able to keep the plot topped up for the full growing season.

I don't think we'll be winning any prizes this year for the plot, as we (well, OH really) won Best Plot last year, but we still have to be on top of maintaining our plot and keeping the paths tidy. 

Here are some pictures of a couple of the other plots on the site that may be contenders for the big prize this year.  They both have completely different styles of gardening to us, but their plots look very good and I especially like to see flowers growing amongst the crops. I would love to grow more flowers.

That's the beauty of allotments, every one is different and has a charm of it's own. Diversity is a wonderful thing.