MY WEEK : 29 ( W/E 22ND JULY )

Welcome to this week's update of my allotments here in Stourbridge. As you can see from the photograph the plots are looking quite productive at the moment and I managed to capture one of the few moments that it actually looked something like Summer. My heart goes out to those of you who have suffered as a result of the dreadful flooding that we have been experiencing this year, I hope that you can salvage something and that you will try again next year as it must be thoroughly depressing at this moment in time.

The top-left picture is of my crop of Roscoff Rose Onions whose seed were kindly sent to me by one of my website visitors earlier in the year, as you can see they are doing very well and despite my fears of them rotting at their base with all the rain this has not occurred. My Sweetcorn pictured top-right have surprised me in that they have grown very well and as you can see have started to produce the first signs of their cobs but they have stopped getting any taller, I don't remember the variety name which is why I should have saved the seed packet, I will have to wait and see how they do.

I'm glad that many of you enjoyed my Slideshow of the Dhalias that had come into bloom last week, as I mentioned there were a couple of others that flowered this week and I have pictured them above. My friend and neighbouring plot holder Brian is delighted with the Dhalia tubers that I gave him last year when I divided my stock, they have started to bloom for him this year giving him some excellent large blooms for use as cut flowers.

The bed at the front of my allotments pictured top-left is where I grow my Courgettes, Ridge Cucumbers and Butternut Squashes, the Courgettes are flowering well and I have begun to harvest them they are losing their flowers a bit prematurely resulting in smaller sized fruit than usual the reason for this I'm not sure of at the moment and is something I will ask a more experienced plot holder about. Both the Cucumbers and Butternut Squashes are just starting to grow now after a couple of weeks when they appeared to do nothing, probably forming a good root system first. The young Apple trees which I planted last Spring are still ok, the one that my son Daniel planted was the Cox's Orange Pippin pictured top-right and this just happens to be the one that has the most fruit on it which he takes great pleasure in reminding me of.

You may remember me sharing my concerns with you over the fact that my crop of Broad Beans were being affected by Rust which you can see on them in the top-left picture as a result of all the damp and warm conditions we have had, although this looks pretty bad the beans themselves are fine as the top-right picture shows and we will be enjoying the first of them this weekend with our roast dinner.

My crop of Peas that I am growing inside the large cage this year to protect them from the birds and the Pea Moth have grown much taller than they should have, this is because of the amount of rain we have had and has caused them to outgrow their support which meant that when the torrential rain arrived on Friday they have become too top heavy and have flopped over as shown in the top-left picture. To remedy this I will have to add some further support to the row which I shall be doing in the next day or two. The Peas themselves are starting to fill out now as shown in the top-right picture and are about the size of Petit Pois, they taste delicious eaten straight from the pod and are lovely and sweet.

The Runner Beans continue to do well, the torrential rain on Friday has knocked off quite a few of their flowers but as the picture top-left shows they have reached the top of their support sticks and still have a profusion of flowers which are setting. When I went to check on my plots this morning to check if everything was ok after the rain I was pleased to find a handful of Beans ready for harvesting these will join the Broad Beans for dinner, can't wait.

The Summer Cabbages are ready for harvesting now as the top-right picture shows, their heads are nice and solid which can be checked by gently squeezing them to see if there is any give or not. The Florence Fennel pictured top-right will be ready for harvesting next week as they have put on such a great deal of growth over the last week I'm sure that they will be just the right size, these are delicious as a braised vegetable or grated raw into a salad.

Finally for this week my Leeks pictured top-left are doing well with their stems thickening up well, although they were planted later than I usually do I'm satisfied that I will have a good enough crop come the latter part of the Autumn. The Gladioli pictured top-right are starting to bloom well know and in fact we are struggling at home for vases to put all the flowers in, my house looks like a florists at the moment as well as there being enough blooms left on the plots for it to look nice which is a good tonic when the weather is so depressing. This week at the allotments the Judges from the Council have been around to judge the plots they feel may gain a certificate in the Councils Annual Allotments Competition, I was pleased to see that they did judge mine so hopefully I may gain another one, fingers crossed anyway. Well as I have said before I hope that you are managing to harvest something from your plots and as we said after the heat and drought last year "We will try again next year!!" I think the same applies this year for totally different reasons, take care all and speak to you again next week, regards Steve.