MY WEEK : 33 ( W/E 19TH AUGUST )

Welcome to this week's update from my allotments. It has been a busy week of harvesting and hand weeding to get them back into shape after my two weeks away and in readiness for another week away next week at my caravan in Snowdonia before Daniel starts Secondary School, where do the years go?

At the end of the week a few of us went to visit an allotment site in Perry Barr, Birmingham called Walsall Road Allotments which were featured by Monty Don in his Gardener's World Special on Allotments a couple of years ago. It was great to see the site and meet some of the members on their Open Day, the weather unfortunately was not very good however we still really enjoyed the visit. The photograph shows the Clubhouse that they have on site with a Pergola on the front along with tables and chairs, inside there is a small kitchen where we could get a warm cuppa from along with a homemade cake, very nice to. The building is also used for things such as committee meetings and other activities and is something that we are looking to gain funding for on our Allotment Site as we think that it would be a real asset to the site and help promote a real community spirit. The site also benefited from a proper tarmac road around the plots and also toilets which we are also hoping to attain for our site, thank you very much for your hospitality it was lovely to meet you all.

As already mentioned above one of my main priorities this week was to give the plots a good hand weed as using a hoe in damp weather only dislodges the weeds rather than get rid of them root and all, as you can see from the pictures above compared with some of those from last week I have made quite an impact on my one plot, my second plot still needs more time spent on it as I have only done about a 1/3rd of it so far.

Unfortunately I missed most of the Gladioli blooms whilst away as they had nearly all gone over, so I have removed all the dead flower spikes this week and given them a good hand weed so that they have the best chance of feeding their corms ready for next years flowers. In the top-right picture of Daniel's little patch you can see that this has also been weeded well by his Dad and also that his Pumpkins are coming along well.

In the raised bed at the front of my plots as many others have found I had an abundance of Courgettes that had grown into small Marrows, I removed these straight away and by the end of the week the plants had already started to produce the next batch of small Courgettes. Also in this bed I grow my Butternut Squashes which as you can see from the top-right picture have started to produce the first of their fruits, when they have about 4 fruits on each plant I will take out the growing tip of them so that all the plants energy will go into increasing the size of it's fruits rather than producing more, this will help to ensure a good sized fruit yield along with them ripening before Winter.

One of the remaining areas to be weeded is my Brassica Cage as you can see from the above pictures, my Summer Cabbages have come to an end now and need to be removed and placed on the compost heap along with the Pea haulms. I have also sown Turnips and Swedes in here and they have germinated well and now need thinning out to allow them to grow to a decent size, removing the weeds will benefit the various Brassicas as well and I shall also stake my Brussels Sprout plants to try to avoid blown buttons like the ones I experienced last year.

This year for the first time I have tried to grow a few Celeriac plants as people have said how nice they are so I am looking forward to tasting them when they reach maturity I think from the top-left picture you can see that they are not far off from being that. Also my Spray Chrysanthemums are growing nicely as you can see in the top-right picture they are showing signs of their first buds so it shouldn't be too long before they start to bloom.

A couple of weeks ago now I stopped harvesting the flowers from my Sweet Peas to allow them to start to produce seed for next years show and in the top-left picture you can see that they have done what I wanted them to do. The Climbing French Beans shown in the top-right picture have started producing a good yield of tender pods now just as my Dwarf French Beans are coming to an end so I was lucky with the timing, they make a nice change from the Runner Beans and also are great in a salad.

Well that is just about it for this week, as mentioned I have a bit more weeding to do this coming week and hopefully I will be shooting my August Video of my plots to show you all next week. I will leave you with another slideshow of my Dhalias and views of my plots which I hope you enjoy, I will speak to you all next weekend as usual before I set off on another holiday in Snowdonia, thanks for continuing to follow my progress, regards Steve.