MY WEEKS : 43 & 44 (W/E 28TH OCTOBER & 4TH NOVEMBER)

Welcome to my latest update of the last two weeks at my allotments.

Last night we held our first Bonfire & BBQ night at the allotment site which was a huge success with about 60 people attending all of whom really enjoyed the evening. As well as raising more funds for our future site improvements we had asked plot holders to sort out all their old and scrap wood from their plots which we then collected and used for the Bonfire and judging by the size of the wood pile we have helped to dispose of a large quantity of this from the allotment site. Bbq's were also held to provide everyone with hot foods, soups and cakes with a few liquid refreshments to help wash it all down, then with donations of fireworks we had an excellent display which has left my ears ringing after dashing around lighting them but everyone said that they looked fantastic from a distance, we also had a raffle and name the Chick (A big fluffy chick) which I when I opened my ticket to reveal the name 'GORDON' I knew that I was not going to be the winner, however the winning name was Ringo so maybe I wasn't doomed from the start, I would just like to say a huge thanks to all of you who helped in organising and hosting the event, you know who you are, well done.





During the last fortnight the first sharp frosts arrived which finally put an end to my late Runner Beans & Dhalias, as you can see from the pictures above the foliage has been blackened and scorched so it is now time for these to be dealt with. The Runner Bean plants were removed from their sticks and placed onto my compost heap and with the Dhalias I removed all of their top growth down to about 4"/6" above the tops of their tubers as you can see in the picture below.












Looking around the plots at the moment, the foliage on my Blueberry bush has turned a lovely colour as you can see in the top-left picture and it really stands out especially when the Sun shines on it. The Spray Chrysanthemums are still flowering well, although we have had some frosts the green debris netting used to cover them has definitely helped to keep them going.




The foliage has turned yellow on the Asparagus Ferns which means that it is time for them to be cut down to about 2" above ground level. They are then left until early Spring when the soil is drawn up in a ridge about 2" high over the tops of the row and they are given a surface dressing of Growmore all round fertiliser and kept weed free. My crowns will be 2yrs old by then and this is still too early to harvest any spears I will have to be patient and wait until Spring 2009 for my first main harvest but they should then continue for 10 to 20 years so it will be worth waiting.




As it has been so mild of late I decided to delay the sowings of Broad Bean Aquadulce, Pea Meteor and my Sweet Peas until this coming week as I did not want them to put on too much growth before the Winter. I have already heard of instances where people are getting flowers on their Peas which will suffer when the cold weather comes our way which the forecasters are predicting later this week, you don't want them to flower until the Spring ideally but we will see.

Well that is about it I'm afraid for the moment, as I have mentioned before I will be doing fortnightly updates throughout the Winter as I have a great deal to be doing with transfering my website contents and different other projects for people over the coming months. I hope that you are all doing well and enjoying planning for next season's harvests, speak to you again in a couple of weeks, regards Steve.