MY WEEK 36 : ( 18TH SEPTEMBER )

Hello all once again, another busy week at my allotments to share with you.

It has also been a busy week at home in the kitchen cooking and preserving some of my produce for us to eat over the coming months and also to give as presents at Christmas, i hope the family aren't reading this. We have had to make more room in the freezers for the produce that we have still been harvesting to fit in, so this is also another reason to preserve what you can. As you can see from the photograph I have made some Rhubarb Jam, Stewed Rhubarb which is great for a delicious crumble and Blackberry & Apple Jam. Next in the production line is the Pickled Beetroot and Pickled Shallots.

The Runner Beans are starting to slow down now, as you can see from the photo the flowers have almost finished however there are still plenty of beans on the plants, quite a few plotholders have said to me in the last week about how their Runner Beans have done much better in the the last month since the cooler and wetter weather has arrived and the same can definitely said about mine.


What I am going to do now that the plants have stopped producing new flowers is to leave the remaining Beans on the plants as long as the weather permits to produce my seed for next year's crop. The best way to do this is for them to dry on the plants which means leaving them until the pods go brown and their skins go crisp, however this is not always possible if we either have early frosts or the weather is really wet over the coming weeks. If either of these prevent you from drying out the pods on your plants then you can harvest them and place them on some newspaper in the greenhouse to dry out that way. This does mean sacrificing some of your best beans as I have shown with mine in the photograph but you will be rewarded with a better crop next year if you select seed from your best beans, some of the seed companies I'm afraid mix the best seed with inferior seed where as we have the option of only sowing the best seed, also saving money is what most of us allotmenters strive to do.

Most Western areas of the UK experienced some rather wet and windy weather this week with the remnants of Hurricane Gordon sweeping up the country, as you can see from this photograph I took some precautionary measures to prevent the Runner Beans from being a victim of the gales, I also double checked that things like the fruit trees were staked and tied firmly to help prevent any wind rock damage to them which can result in their roots becoming loose in the soil resulting in stress to the plants and possible harm with lack of water and nutrients being able to get to them.

Last week I mentioned that I would be staking my Brussel Sprouts and Purple Sprouting plants to help with wind damage/rock as they like to be in very firm ground, fortunately I managed to do this before the gales . The photograph shows my Brussel Sprout plants after I had removed some of the lower leaves which will reduce the area the Whitefly are able to attack and provide a healthier growing enviroment for them.



Unfortunately with some of my Brussel Sprout plants I have either left this staking and securing too late or not watered them enough during the drought and heatwave we had this Summer as their Buttons are starting to open as you can see in this photograph. So next year I will follow some advice given to me this week which is insert your stakes before you plant out your plants so that you do not damage any of their roots, firm the ground, plant out and then tie them in as they grow which should reduce this problem.



Despite this problem the Brassicas have still been by far the best I have ever grown and infact other more experienced plotholders have asked me to get them some of the netting that I have used to cover my frame as the consensus is that the netting has provided a useful amount of shade from the severity of the Sun's rays this Summer and also the only pest has been the Whitefly which the Insecticidal Soap that I got from The Organic Catalogue has proved very effective in controling.

The seed heads on the Leek plants are now ready for harvesting, you may just be able to see in this photograph that some of the seed pods are opening ready to shed their seed so what I have done is cut the heads off and placed them upside down into brown paper bags and placed them on the staging in my greenhouse tp finish drying off, they will then shed their seed into the brown paper bags and I will then be able to store them for use next year.


Another way to tell that they are ready for this to be done is to pick a couple of the tiny seed pods and open them, as you can see in this photograph the seeds when ripe should be a nice black colour.




Elsewhere around my plots I have continued to clear away the plant debris and any weeds, this will then allow me to carry out any repairs that may be required to my raised beds and also allow me to prepare the soil with either compost or manure addition before the onset of the Winter ready for next years crops.




This photograph shows one of my compost bins, all the plant debris from around my plots with the addition of grass cuttings and some manure go towards making my compost, I find that the best way to do this is by making layers of the different matters and adding water and a good handful of Sulphate of Ammonia to each layer, the Sulphate of Ammonia is very cheap and is a very high source of Nitrogen which helps activate the composting process and also during the composting process Nitrogen is lost so you are replacing this and your resulting compost will have a much better nutritional value for your following crops.

This week I have started work on the last major construction job on my allotments and that is the clearing of this piece of ground ready for the errection of a second tunnel frame, I have laft this until the end as it was the most daunting task to be done on my plots, I know that there is alot of inherited rubbish buried underneath, although by covering the area with plastic sheeting has killed off most of the weeds there will be a few struggles ahead to get it ready for crop production.

This photograph depicts the worst of the problems I face in clearing the ground and that is the dreaded carpets, I don't know about you and your allotments but there seems to have been a craze of using carpet to cover the ground, this if used in the very short term is ok however when left too long the weed roots matt themselves into all the fibres and backing material and then if left even longer to the point of the carpet fibres starting to breakdown into your soil quickly becomes a nightmare for you to clear.

Well that is it for another week here at my allotments, I must say a big thankyou once again to you all for following and appreciating my efforts here at my allotments, your messages encourage and inspire me to better things and providing you with as much information as I can, thanks once again regards Steve.