MY WEEK 24 : ( 12TH JUNE )

Well what another glorious week we have had again, however we could now do with some rain as I'm sure my arms have grown a couple of inches due to all the watering cans that I have had to carry this week.

I could not avoid this subject any longer, THE WORLD CUP, don't we make it hard for ourselves. Daniel as you can see has really got the football fever and has watched nearly all the matches so far, well those that have been shown out of school hours that is.







The plots are almost full now, everything is planted except the Leeks which are not quite big enough yet to transplant, they need to get to the thickness of a pencil before I can plant them out. You can see that I have started fitting collars to my Celery plants, I make these using shed felt cut into 12" wide strips and then roll them and hold the ends in place with paper clips, this encourages the stalks to grow up towards the light which makes them longer, it also blanches the stalks to keep them yellow and more tender/less stringy.


I was finaly able to finish planting out the last of the brassicas this week, I planted out my Calabrese and Early Purple Sprouting. The other crops in my brassica cage are doing really well and have started to put on a good deal of growth, they do not seem to be suffering from being grown under this material and infact I'm sure that it is helping to keep the strongest of the sun's rays from scorching the plants in these high temperatures.



The Broad Beans are starting to produce their pods now, earlier in the week I noticed the first signs of blackfly and so I removed the soft growing tips from the plants as I described in last weeks post. There seems to be a problem around our site at the moment with the blackfly attacking the usual types of crops and also the types of crops that I have not seen them on before such as Parsnips, Spinach and Beetroot. This could be down to the weather and also because the ants seem to be around in large numbers this year, the ants will farm or look after the blackfly as they thrive on their waste products.




Both the French Beans and the Runner Beans are starting to climb up their supports, if this hot weather continues I will have to water them regularly to try to prevent them shedding their flowers as this will result in a poorer yield, hopefuly because I prepared the ground well earlier in the Spring and trenched them with compost and manure this will help.




The thundery showers that we had at the start of the week did give a much needed boost to the Peas and Beetroot, the Peas have started to produce their first pods and the Beetroot has almost doubled in size. With the Peas it is important that they get water at this stage in order for the pods to fill out, with the Beetroot they need the water to stop them from bolting and running to seed, I sowed the popular variety Boltardy to help reduce the risk of this happening.



The Florrence Fennel and the Sweetcorn have also put on a good amount of growth this week and the bulb of the Fennel has started to swell up especially. The feathery leaves of the Fennel can be used as a substitute for the herb and the bulb can be grated raw into a salad or braised as a vegetable and also added to stews.




DANIEL " CAGED ANIMAL " & DANIEL'S PLOT




CHRYSANTH'S & CUCUMBERS, COURGETTES, BUTTERNUT SQUASHES



STRAWBERRY & SWEET PEAS


Well that's it for another week at the allotments, the warm weather seems set to continue for most of us and not much rain is expected so I will probably have even longer arms next week, thanks for following my progress on my allotments and thanks also for al the wonderful feedback and comments about them, see you all next week Steve.