MY WEEK : 39 ( W/E 30TH SEPTEMBER )

Hello all and welcome to this week's update from my allotments.


I have had quite a busy week up at my plots tidying, adding to the compost heap, watering!!, picking my Runner Bean pods that I had left for next year's seeds and then taking down the plants and putting away their support sticks ready for next year.

The first packets of my Sweet Pea seeds have been dispatched which will hopefully produce a wonderful display of beautiful scented blooms next year for all of you who have kindly ordered them, thank you for your custom.


I have also been busy trying to sort out the problems that I have been having with my Blogger website which has meant that on more than a couple of occasions in the past year or so I have not been able to update my website as I would have wished to do, I think that I will have to design a new website using the same web address myallotments.com myself so that I am not relying on a third party to do this for me which I hope will make everything run smoother. I will of course let you know when I intend to launch this, hopefully it will be over the Winter in readiness for next years growing season and it will contain all my previous website contents and archives, well that is the plan. Anyway time for a closer look at my plots and what I have been up to......





As I mentioned a week or two ago during the Winter months I will need to carry out some maintenance of my raised beds, some of which have been in place for about 5 years, fortunately I have a friend who builds and erects the large advertising boards that can be seen in many towns and cities throughout the country, the ones that he takes down are just scrapped which is such a shame as quite a lot of the timber is still usable so after a quick phone call he has kindly dropped me a load of it off at my plots this week. If I have any surplus then I usually have no trouble in passing it on to other plot holders to use, otherwise it will go towards our site's first Bonfire night at the beginning of November which will hopefully add to our fundraising pot.





At the front of my allotments I have cleared the bed that I grew all my Courgettes, Ridge Cucumbers and Squashes in this year, the Squashes had already started to ripen so I have picked them and placed them on my greenhouse staging at home to finish off, although they are smaller than last years they were still delicious when we had them with tea yesterday. In the other bed pictured is one of my patches of Rhubarb whose leaves had already started to turn a browny/yellow colour which is quite normal for this time of year and is in fact a sign of them getting ready to overwinter so I removed them before they had time to rot on top of the Rhubarb Crowns which may have encouraged disease to set in.







As I mentioned at the start of my update I have taken down the first double row of my Runner Beans that I had left to produce my seeds for next year and put their support sticks away for the Winter, when I removed the plants I cut them off at ground level leaving their roots in the soil, the reason for this is that with crops such as Beans and Peas their roots have tiny nodules on them that fix Nitrogen taken from the air back into the soil which when I dig this bed over will incorporate this useful fertiliser back into the soil in readiness for the next crop to be grown in this bed. The top-right picture shows where I have placed some of the 6"x3" timber that my friend delivered this week, I will be using this to make another couple of 30ft x 3ft beds across my second plot which will help me keep things more organised.







This week I have continued to harvest my Cauliflower and Calabrese, they are once again a bit on the small side but are ideal for the three of us. The Calabrese plants have already started to produce smaller side spears which is an added bonus, last year they continued doing this into the New Year. Other crops that I have harvested include Carrots, Potatoes, Turnips, Runner Beans and French Beans which I am pleased about considering we are nearly in October.








Finally for this week a look at some of my Spray Chrysanthemums which are already adorning several rooms at home, I feared that on Tuesday morning I may have found them worse for wear after a near frost in our part of the Country but thank goodness they were fine as it would have been such a shame for them to have come to an abrupt finish. I think that next year I will have to try and get them to bloom nearer the end of August rather than in September.




Well that is it for this week I'm afraid, next week looks like I will be continuing with much of the same basically tidying and getting things ready for next year and also thinking about any changes that I would like to make to where I grow crops such as my Runner Beans, Raspberries, Strawberries and also my Sweet Peas, the first of which I will be sowing in a couple of weeks time, thanks for looking in on my progress which I hope you continue to enjoy, speak to you all next week, regards Steve.