Fruity!

Wow, it's been a great year for blackberries. We've picked box after box and still more to come. So far we've had a tasty crumble, smoothies, topping for muesli, cake (thanks Phil!) and a large batch of blackberry syrup. Now, I got a bit distracted when making the syrup and it's more like jelly...oops. It does just about pour out of the bottle though (if you don't mind holding the bottle upside down for about 5 minutes). I left it on the hob for way too long and it thickened too much (my tip is do NOT watch a film whilst making this he hee!)

Another 3 tubs in the fridge today too. I think I might try making bramble jelly tomorrow....

Lots of other goodies coming from the plot - courgettes, chard, potatoes, beans, custards marrows (look like flying saucers), cucumbers....lots of tomatoes at home in the lean-to and sweet peppers on their way.

It was really windy here Friday and my bean wigwam at home started toppling over (my fault for letting it get top-heavy)....but we saved the runner beans by weighing it down with concrete slabs attached to the poles by old shoe laces. Not pretty but at least I didn't lose all me beans like last year!

I still have yet to put most of my leeks out as have to dig up the rest of the potatoes first. But hopefully this means I'll have missed the leek moth - apparently the second lot of eggs hatch around the end of July....we'll see!
Lou (with fingers crossed)

Yesterday's harvest

Ah yes, summer is definitely here now. The first of the dwarf and purple climbing french beans. Still lacking in rain round these parts though.

Recent times....

Sage in flower

Lovely sunset

Amorosa potatoes. Very tasty and no scab

Perfect peas

Broad bean soup...

..was enjoyed by us for tea tonight and nearly all the ingredients were home grown, yey! I got a recipe out of Andi Clevely's "From Welly to Belly' and adapted it a bit to fit what we had. So the home grown element was Onions (had to use 4 of my teeny onions to get a decent amount though), garlic, and loads of beans. We also put in a couple of potatoes to thicken it up a bit (could have used our own but still had a few from the organic stall on the market left) and a swirl of yoghurt. Very tasty. A handy tip from the recipe was to put in two (cleaned) bean pods for extra flavour (but remove before whizzing). it also suggested sieving the soup before serving but that was too faffy for me, so it had bits 'n all.

We've been very busy on the plot, making the most of the nice evenings (bit too hot recently during the day at the weekends) . JB has been doing a grand job of keeping the paths cut and weeding where needed.

I've taken up all the garlic as it had rust and a bit of leek moth damage and I wanted to use the space for a squash. The garlic has done better than I thought. The large cloves planted in the autumn had bulbed up nicely and the smaller ones planted in late winter (bought from the organic veg stall on the market) had grown into one giant clove each. They're all drying out in the lean-to and I'll probably save the giant cloves to plant again next year, which should then bulb up properly (this method produced the best bulbs for me this year).

We've also started to eat the very delicious peas. Mmmm so sweet. Best eaten straight off the plant. Just pop 'em in your mouth. The ones on the back garden are all swelling up first followed by some on the allotment (the ones at home seem to do better though, not sure why but could be that they don't get nibbled by the pea and bean weevil at home), Have got another two lots at different stages of growth (some only just germinated in loo rolls) to try and have a longer supply than the usual 'Yey peas!...aw now they're gone'.

The strawberry plants which survived the winter (probably only about half in total) have been producing VERY tasty berries. A really intense flavour, probably because I don't really water them that much so the flavour doesn't get diluted. Also in the garden have a few wild strawberry plants spreading themselves around, which produce small, but incredibly flavoured fruits.

Red currants are nearly all ripe. Will have to start harvesting soon, though I remember last year they kept pretty well on the bush for quite a while. The black currants are just starting to ripen, as are the raspberries. Excitingly we have one apple growing on our 'new' tree (the tree we've had for over a year but only managed to plant out this winter). I've let it keep the one apple on, as it had a good root system so hopefully it won't be too much of a strain on the tree in this first proper year (You're meant to remove all fruit in the first year to help it establish). However, the tree down the other end, planted two winters ago hasn't got any fruit on - I think it's too far away from the other tree for pollination, so we'll need we need to get another apple tree between the two, to act as a stepping stone for the insects.

A lot more going on, but will save that for another time....and will take the camera to the plot too. A picture says a thousand words, as they say, and my typing seems to be getting worse so anything to help is great!

Investigating...

...been doing a bit of online research into the leek moth / onion fly problem and found this really good blog. www.growsonyou.com/Sid/blog/2316-leek-moth-and-allium-leaf-mining-fly-the-sequel

I've definitely found the cocoons of the leek moth but I do suspect we have onion fly too. Interesting to learn via the blog (with posts starting in 2008, running through to this year) that the leek moth first only affected the south of England and has been moving north. I know a lot of Norwich plots which had it bad last year....

My squishing / removing of affected leaves seems to be working ok, though it's only been a few days. There are supposedly several generations per season of onion fly!

Onion fly / leek moth remnants

The salvaged autumn onions and a couple of garlics (and big pile trimmings/squished larvae!)

Brilliant*

*....please note, huge amount of sarcasm intended.
Not brilliant at all. We've been quite busy recently and haven't had much time to spend on the plot but I popped down on Monday eve before it got dark....to discover....those flaming leek moth or onion flies had decimated the autumn onions. Argh!

So instead of clearing the last of the spring greens in readiness for a courgette/bean wigwam combo I lifted all the autumn onions (which had bulbed up a bit but not much, so only teeny onions), and started going through their stems, squishing all the larvae. Then thought, oooh better check the rest of the aliumy things, to find they had also made a good start on the main onions and garlic too. My main onions had been looking super-healthy before but on closer inspection you could see the tell-tale signs of see-through patches of nibblings coming from within the stems, and on the worst affected, sort of onion 'dust', which is presumably the larvae poo. Sob! To attempt to salvage some of these I went through and broke off the affected stems and squished the larvae, in the hope that the remaining stems might be able to help the onions bulb up at least a bit before I take them all out. However, I've got a feeling that the oniony smell from the broken stems will just attract more flies or moths and will shortly be left with nothing. *BIG SIGH*

DEFINITELY getting some fleece/mesh before planting out the leeks.

A week of firsts...

OK, only two days rather than a week, and only two firsts, but hey who's counting!

Number 1: first broad beans picked and steamed yesterday. yum yum yum. Only five pods so far but so tasty. These were from beans I sowed in toilet roll tubes in an unheated greenhouse last autumn, which I ignored for too long and they got really leggy and so I was going to just compost them. Decided at the last minute to plant them out in the back garden and hooray, they've started cropping.

Number 2: A bad one this time....I noticed a couple of the garlic plants were looking a bit yellow and manky today, which on closer inspection revealed the larvae of either the onion fly or leek moth munching their way through the plants. Nooooo! I hastily squished all the larvae and had a good look at the other plants to check they weren't affected. So far so good but I'll need to read-up on the little blighters to see what can be done. I did the squishing over at the compost heap as didn't want the garlic smell to attract more flies/moths to the various onion and garlic patches (in an attempt to avoid the pests this year I've planted smaller blocks of onions and garlic in different beds, and left some weeds to grow up and confuse the flies/moths - the idea being they are less likely to land on a plant they're looking for and will move on, and if they do find them, not all the plants get got because they're not all in one place. Hopefully it might work a bit anyway.)

I will definitely be investing in some protective netting when the time comes to plant put the leeks though....

Mr Frosty...

....no, not the flavoured ice-crush-making machine from the 80s, but Jack Frost who has been paying us a visit.

I spent yesterday evening earthing up the potatoes and covering the strawberries (well the ones that are in flower, anyway) with old straw. There wasn't enough soil to earth up all the spuds as I hadn't left as much room between the rows of the earlies as I had for the main crops. Luckily I remembered my mum had given us some old net curtains so I covered up the remainder with them.

THEN I realised I shouldn't have put the curtains straight onto the potatoes as this wouldn't protect them so much, so took it all off again, bent some chickenwire over the rows and put the curtains back on, weighing them down with bits of wood. Phew!

After all that we didn't get frost in Norwich! But other parts of Norfolk did and some of my workmates said their potatoes had been damaged.

The next couple of nights are supposed to be frosty again, so I decided to leave the plants protected for a while longer. Hope it works! And I hope none of the other plants I've got outside are susceptible to frost. Potatoes and strawberries were all I could think of. All other tender plants are still in the lean-to, though I do need to start hardening them off, so they toughen up a bit before planting out. Exciting!

Weathering the weather

Today really won't make it's mind up. Rain, sun, hail, rain, sun, hail (repeat til fade...).
Cool clouds though, moving real quickly It's pretty cold too, in between the sunny spells, as we're near the North Sea and that's where our weather today is coming from.

So far have decided against a trip to the plot 'cause we haven't got any proper shelter (sitting under the buddleia, under an umbrella doesn't really count) but according the the forecast the rain may stop soon. Hurrah!

In-between the showers I've been sorting out the spot for the bean wigwam in the back garden (we have a couple of little raised veg beds for growing salads etc). So, I dug out a pit and filled it with cardboard and newspaper plus some weeds (dandelion leaves, alkanet (member of borage family with lovely blue flowers and itchy, furry leaves which grows all over the garden) and other bits and bobs, plus some 'spent' compost (from last years tomato plant-pots, which had also just finished with a follow-on of salad leaves and coriander). The soil in our back garden is very shallow, only just over a spade deep, because there used to be terraced houses here, (which I think got bombed) and the foundations were never removed. I've been gradually improving the soil over the last couple of years and it's not too bad now, plus making the beds raised has helped.

As beans are particularly hungry, I might add some chicken manure pellets (we were given a massive tub last year) and will probably dig in a bit of home made compost when planting out the beans (sown yesterday in toilet roll tubes). The wigwam is made of hazel poles coppiced from a friend in the countryside a few years back. I think they're almost past-it though, but hope they last this year. Last year the wigwam fell over because I was being greedy and let the growth become really top heavy, rather than pinching out the tops of the plants. Most the of plants were ripped out of the ground having just been about to start producing. Sigh! The year before they grew up into our little laburnum tree and I was hoping they would do the same but I shouldn't have risked it. Nevermind. Try again this year.

I might also do my courgette/bean combination in the back garden. This worked really well on the allotment last year (courgette plant grown in the middle of the wigwam, which shades out the weeds). The back garden is quite shady though, even though it's south facing, due to the large Holm Oak in the alley behind. Well, it's worth a go anyway.

Wow, I think it hasn't rained for about 15 minutes now. Time for a trip out I think. Actually the only reason i put on the computer was to look up rocket pesto recipes (had to clear away a load of rocket to make way for the wigwam). The rocket was sown last year and had come through the winter quite well, but as the leaves had gotten a bit tough I reckon they'll be best made into a pesto rather than just have in sandwiches. There was also some lettuce which had survived the winter, being protected by the rocket and some self sown chick weed. So we had the lettuce in veggie sausage sandwiches, with home made (well, machine-made) bread and last years marrow & ginger chutney. Not bad eh!