End of Year Report - Plot A (misc.)

Plot A was legumes last year, & so should have been brassicas over winter, then the short season miscellaneous crops this summer.

In reality, the only brassicas that we had over winter were some curly kale plants. I love curly kale (we’ve grown a flat-leaved kale this year, but I’ve found that I prefer the curly kale) & the few plants of a dwarf variety were not nearly enough.

We had 7 varieties of tomato, & interplanted with five squash varieties. Overall, the tomatoes were not great – although they were better looking plants than last year’s (which were planted out late & leggy), I didn’t keep a good enough eye on them with regards to side shooting & staking. In retrospect, being rather more ruthless about only allowing a limited number of trusses to set would have been a good move too.

The blight did for them in the end, but we did have some ripe tomatoes which was an improvement on last year! Of the varieties grown, the heritage broad ripple yellow currant cherry tomato was prolific & tasty; the alicante & harbinger good looking but not over tasty & the paul robeson black beef tomato was juicy & good, but in general the beef tomatoes were disappointing.

The squash were much more successful! I discovered that there are many different varieties of squash, & we grew winter squash – pumpkins & similar, whose skins cure & harden & keep well – & they are proving very tasty too.

One of the plants had to be ditched as it had a mosaic virus, but the rest thrived – the most prolific in terms of growth & number of squash was the pomme d’or which must have yielded over 50 tennis ball sized fruit which are creamy when cooked.

The red kuri is another rambling squash which had about 4 orange 8-10” round fruit on each which are fleshy & sweet & make brilliant soup. The buttercup & redmolo squash are more compact bush varieties, which means that they are a lot less unruly than the ramblers, however, they have had fewer fruit.

Next year, I’ll make sure that we have a courgette plant or two – I’m not entirely sure why we didn’t get round to these this year – & we must also try a cucumber or two, these two crops can take some of the room that the tomatoes took this year – I’ll try growing tomatoes at home in an effort to finally thwart the blight...

End of year report!

Well doesn’t time fly! Mid November marked the end of our second year at the Hill, so it’s high time that I did the Annual Report…

As last year, we have some overall winners, losers & conclusions:

• It is still fabulous fun – we’ve met more allotment holders on site, & no longer feel like absolute new girls. This said, I would think that we will retain ‘new girl’ status for many years to come in the eyes of the old hands, but there’s no harm in that.


• Most prolific crop: parsnip – we’ve grown fewer this year – hopefully not too few!
• Most disappointing crop 1: for the second year running – carrots – can’t seem to get these right at all, with early, mid season & late sowings still all getting decimated by the carrot fly. Either diligent covering of the carrots, or growing in high sided containers is the way forward here.
• Most disappointing crop 2: again, for the second year running – tomatoes – although we did better than last year, blight still curtailed the crop. Perhaps growing half a dozen plants in pots at home is the answer.
• Most delicious crop: here’s one thing I have learned – each crop is utterly delicious as it is eaten properly in it’s season. I can think back now to how wonderful the first peas, or runner beans were, the taste of the sweetcorn straight from the plant & also how much I’m looking forward to the first of the leeks.


• The weather’s been ok overall – a bit of a lack of prolonged summer, but that’s meant that we’ve not had to water too much, & the potatoes have been marvelous.


• The Show was terrific fun – it’s very much easier to enter classes that you can plan ahead for (e.g. cakes, pickles, potatoes, onions, rhubarb) than those for which the crops have to be ready for at peak of perfection on the day (e.g. beans, peas, tomatoes, radish, most other things), but I did better than I expected – although it was quite stressful!


• I’m delighted with the compost bins – we now have two, & have turned out our first batch of compost on to the plot. Very satisfying.


• Now the bed positions are pretty settled, we aim to make the beds rather more permanent – we’ll use pegs and boards (I think) & wood chippings for the paths


• Another area to look at is that of the fruit from the plot. The gooseberries were completely rubbish this year, & the plants are full of terrible thorns - they will be lucky to survive the coming year! We do have strawberries in situ & covered with the cage, so hopefully we’ll benefit from those this year; & we still have to make a decision about the raspberries – i.e. whether we keep the suckers that keep popping up, or buy new ones & sort out posts & wires accordingly.


• The little greenhouse has been a real asset at home for seedlings but it could have been used for a couple of chili plants too, I think.


• We’ve started putting more flowers at the front of the plot – I must sow our own seeds for next year, tho’ – the bedding plants were our greatest expense this year.


• We’ve grown more unusual & heritage varieties this year – particularly beans & peas which are not only good dried for the winter, but have easy-to-save seeds which I’ve been offering to other allotment holders at the Hill, & to on-line gardeners too. On the seed front, we have an embarrassingly high number of seed packets e.g. half a dozen varieties of carrots, when we can hardly grow one decent one. I’ve made a New Year’s resolution to have a good sort out, & to only have new packets from the Heritage Seed Library. Ha!


• I’ve made a valiant effort with pickles (surprisingly good), preserves (er… needs further work) & wine making (pretty fab, actually!), & this is certainly an area to concentrate on next year…

What strikes me is that I thought we’d done a lot last year, & looking back on this year, so much more – fantastic! All in all, a very successful, tasty & enjoyable year – I shall raise a glass of parsnip wine to gardeners the world over – may your fingers be forever green!

Indoor Allotmenteering too...

It’s been pretty darn cold the last couple of weeks, & even a sprinkling of snow one evening last week. I know that it’s supposed to be winter, but there’s not an awful lot that I want to be doing at the Hill if it’s only a few degrees over freezing, hat or no hat.

However, last Saturday I wanted to go & lift the beetroot in order to make chutney. The recipe calls for apple along with the beetroot, & onion, but I read that you can use Jerusalem artichokes in their stead, & as we have oodles of them, & no bramleys, that’s what I thought that I’d use.

Whilst I was lifting the beetroot, Jane & E arrived, & I stood around being cold & grumpy whilst they did some weeding. Actually, we did lift a row of the CARROTS (flyaway) which I optimistically took home, but once washed found them to be more carrot fly than carrot. We also took a portion of KALE (Sutherland) home each which I am enjoying very much indeed.

Back home, once thawed out, I made the chutney. There is rather a lot of it, actually – all these jars from two 4’ rows of beetroot!

Sorting out the seed box is another indoor activity – I had a merry time labelling up the jars for the pea & bean seeds, & making up some seed packages to send out in the post to other gardeners from the GYO grapevine forum. Eyeing the seed box (or rather ‘boxes’!) it looks like I will need a very good sort out before the temptation of more seed overwhelms me – at the very least, the Heritage Seed Library catalogue will be dropping on the mat before too long…

Order...order...!

On Tuesday night it was the Hill AGM!

I couldn’t make the meeting last year, so I was very much looking forward to going along & seeing what went on, as well as meeting up with a whole host of allotment holders all at the same time. I remembered to take a bottle of the redcurrant wine along for Julie, who’d kindly let me help myself to her redcurrants earlier in the year – it really needs another couple of months to mature before drinking, but it’s a fantastic colour, & I have high hopes of it!

Chairman Ken opened the meeting with a silence to remember those who are no longer with us, & then the ‘apologies’ from those who couldn’t attend. Actually, it was a very good job indeed that not everyone did attend – the meeting was not held in the social club big bar, but in the little back-meeting room, & it really was rather snug in there, as well as increasingly warm as the evening progressed.

I must say that secretary Haydn kept the meeting trotting along in a tidy fashion – & we covered matters including a report on the Show back in August by Scottish George (in which he unexpectedly & very kindly gave me a flattering mention), the accounts, maintenance of the site as a whole, & fund-raising donations of honey by Dr Bob, & dahlia bulbs by Reg-next-plot.

Astonishingly, I totally forgot to offer up any of the millions of bean seeds that I have saved for this very purpose, but have since put that right, taking the first batch of seeds up to put in the communal seed swap box at the weekend.

It’s nice to ‘give a bit back’ – & I also have plenty of seeds all ready to package up to send out to online gardeners too…

There's gold in them thar ... compost bins!

We’ve had fabulous fun at the Hill today – it’s been really mild today, although drizzly a bit later on, but surely that is why hats were invented.

I arrived at the Hill at much the same time as novice neighbour Jody – & I chatted to him whilst I barrowed some good strawy horse manure onto the other half of next year’s potato patch. He was only there for an hour or so, yet seemed to get more done that I do if I’ve been there for the whole day – how does that happen?

Reg-next-plot arrived soon after as I was pulling up some errant raspberry suckers – I was trying to work my way through to the first of the compost bins, curious as to how it was faring. This first bin has been full & covered for about 4 months, & I can see that it has reduced in volume by about a half.

Jane arrived & we tackled the bin together – removing one pallet side by cutting the wires attaching one to another, & having a poke around with a fork. I think that I was expecting the contents to look similar to when we put them in, but what a fabulous surprise!

The contents had become transformed from a whole heap of weeds, cuttings & green waste into the gardening equivalent of gold! I know that you read all the books & that is actually supposed to happen, but when you see it in action it really is quite amazing. Honestly, I could have wallowed in it, it was so fine!

I’m not altogether sure that Jane & E (who joined us for a spot of compost moving a spreading) shared my enthusiasm – which I found a bit odd, frankly – but I didn’t care! Proper allotment holders make compost, & we have made compost! Actually, as Jane did point out, all we had done was ignore it for four months, but I’m still taking some credit.

After all the excitement of spreading our very own compost around, we put the bin back together, & started the whole thing off all over again with a little off the top of the second overfull bin, which we covered up & waved our magic wand over, ready to uncover the booty in another few months.

We took a big bag of veg home each too – JERUSALEM ARTICHOKES, KALE (Sutherland), a portion of CALABRESE (waltham) & even a PARSNIP (tender & true) which had started to bolt.

All of these were fab – as I hope the Jerusalem artichoke wine will be which I’ve started off this evening…

Carrot Catastrophe!

In the shops, one of the cheapest veg is carrots, which would imply that Mr Farmer has no difficulty whatsoever in growing fields & fields of them. For some reason, Mr Farmer – who has fields & fields of carrots – does not have any carrot fly.

Why not?

Because he has damn well sent all them all round to me to ruin any hopes that I may have of a decent crop. I sowed a whole packet of ‘Flyaway’ in August – which should have avoided carrot fly anyway – & after I planted out the wallflowers yesterday, I thought that I would dig some up for my tea.

No chance – finger sized only, & still eaten by the bloody carrot fly.

I love carrots – they are one of the nicest veg. Boo.

So it's back to the drawing board for next year...

What wallflowers?

Wrapping up warm was certainly the order of the day when I went to the Hill yesterday – it might have been bright, but it was very cold indeed. No matter – all that I’d got planned was planting out the wallflowers.

Besides Alison the teacher’s sister working hard further up on her half plot, there were few people around – although cheery Brian & Pauline made a flying visit to drop off some geraniums to over winter, & David-other-half stopped by too – cutting some of his gorgeous dark red chrysanthemums before the frost gets them, & he kindly cut me an enormous bunch too.

There’s nothing like a spot of digging to get the blood flowing, so I set too on plot d (beans as was) where Jane had taken down all the bean poles (tidied away in the back of the car to put in the garage over winter). There is something very therapeutic about digging – & the plot looked much better when I finished.

I found that weeding the front of the plot wasn’t so easy – I couldn’t just go whacking in with the fork to get all the summer bedding & weeds out or I’d dig up the bulbs planted there already for the Spring display, but I eventually got it all prepared for the wallflowers. By this time, however, I was feeling bloody cold again – feet & hands in particular, so I decided to call it a day.

I cleared up & cut half a dozen CAULIFLOWER (all the year round) to take home to make a big batch of cauli cheese, & picked enough CALABRESE (Waltham) sprouts for a couple of meals – all that was missing from day was planting out the wallflowers – which was the one job I actually went to the Hill to do…