The Beauty of Nature

I put these beans in towards the end of April and feared they might not survive in the wind and unrelenting sunshine. I couldn’t get to water them as often as I would have liked.

However, as you can see below, they have survived and are flowering now. Phew!

The onions are doing well and have come on. These were planted early and are still some way from being ready, but look like they will be good.

I took this picture about two weeks ago. It might look sunny and warm, but the wind was terrible.

These are the courgettes finally going in. I had no choice really as they were getting pot-bound and needed putting into the ground.

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As you can see it was a windy day – when has it not been of late? However, at least the rain had come and we were having showers on and off all day. Amazingly the allotment soil seemed still dry on the surface as it was wind-blown dry quite quickly.

I only put two in as courgettes can get quite big and take over a large space. Also unless you are on a diet of courgettes, you will have too many to eat, freeze, give away or just compost. Remember to pick them frequently or they get too large and are not very tasty – though they make good soup.

I then put in the pumpkins. These will need a lot of space, so I have placed them on a spare part of the plot. I will also train then in one direction – if I can.

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As you can see, I have been able to get my hands on some horse manure and I have dug some of this in. This will give lots of nutrients, which courgettes and pumpkins need.

This is the first time I have grown pumpkins so I hope they do well.

Unfortunately this year I was a bit prescient with my planting of courgettes and cucumbers.

You can see in the video below that the are growing rather well indoors.

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Ideally they should be put out now, but the wind burn is so severe out there, that they will not do very well and I will lose the lot.

So on they grow by the patio doors.

On another note, here is a quick look at the sweetcorn (top of video) and chillies (bottom). I will take another video of the chillies outside tomorrow to show you just how bad the weather is out there at the moment.

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These ones here are doing well and growing fine, but if you look at the ones outside they are weak and small.

Hopefully the weather will get back to normal soon or I will be growing everything indoors!

These two pictures really give you a contrast with the recent bit of the plot that was rotavated. It doesn’t seem to have bothered the plants.

Anyway, you can see that I have put collars round the strawberries to stop slugs and also to keep them clean when it rains. Yes, that might not happen for a while if they are right about global warming, but you have to try. This is the first year I have really bothered with strawberries, so we will see how well they turn out.

Below is a better picture of the netting over the cabbage. It’s a good way to keep the birds off your plants. Of course the slugs still make for it, but the netting gives them a headache. I found a few slug trails on the netting and a few dead ones boiled in the sun. They had left trails as though they went round in circles until they gave up the ghost and just died.

You can also see how I improvised the hoops with wire.

Well, as you can see from the rest of my plot, I haven’t given much time to rotavating or getting too fine a tilth of soil. It’s not that I’m lazy, just that it is a lot of work to do with that and my garden at home. Yes, while it would be good to have a good fine soil, it is not always necessary. Also it kills worms down to a good depth and worms are good for the soil.

In an ideal world I would give it a double dig every five years, but the soil is good and I add manure, compost, hops, etc., so I don’t need to. I also leave different areas fallow year on year and follow the rules of crop rotation.

I didn’t rotavate last year and everything was fine. However, as summer has taken over spring and there has been little rain, if I didn’t get some of the soil turned over, it would be nigh on impossible later on.

So, I bribed someone with beer to do it for me.

As you can see, they did a good job. It will really help me to plant things easily as and when I need to.

Today I planted the late potatoes in my new patch of allotment. I had to wait for this area to be cleared of overgrowth and can now see that it is in need of some TLC and nutrients.

However, not enough time to do too much as I wanted to get the potatoes in.

These potatoes have been chitted in the light for a few weeks and have good buds ready to grow. I placed them bud up as you can see.

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Once I placed them in the soil at a good even distance apart (45cm), I then covered them with some nutrients. I’m sure all you beer drinkers out there are jealous of my ‘compost’. And yes, it did smell of beer.

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I then covered the potatoes with soil. You will notice that I didn’t build up the soil too much yet. You only do that as the shoots begin to appear, this forces the potatoes to reach for the sky and gives you a better yield.

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Today I planted some summer cabbage.

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Once I had planted them I netted them to make sure that the birds wouldn’t get them. I also put down some slug pellets to keep away our slimy friends who would like nothing better than to munch away on the tender leaves.

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Having been back to check on them, they are doing fine, though a good day of rain would be nice to save me having to water them

Here you can see that we just placed the cut up spinach in the composter. There is no need to do much more to it, it’s fine as it is.

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In this weather, it will break down quickly. Though I am hoping for a bit of rain soon.

Here we cut up the spinach root we dug up.

The important thing about composting roots is that you cut them up into smaller pieces. This aids the breakdown process and we will soon have some lovely rich compost to bed some more plants with.

Nature is so good to reuse itself and so perpetuate the life-cycle. If only humans were the same.

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