Allotment progress

In August we were finally blessed with some crops on our small allotment. Our tomatoes which were supposed to be in the hanging baskets fruited so much we are absolutely shocked. Already 1.75kg collected and it looks like we have another 3-4 kg to pick up.

Green Peas, despite initial problems with wood pigeons, after covering them with netting seems to have picked up and should give us nice crop.

Sweetcorn is a little disappointing and it looks like there won't be more than one or two cob per plant but we have 12 plants growing and it looks like they all will fruit.

Second crop of radishes looks allot more healthy than first one. June crop was plagued by too much moisture and radishes were all split and a bit crooked. This second lot looks promising and we have seeded them in weekly stages so there should be fresh radishes for next month or so.

Last year we have had some free sunflower seeds from our veg and fruit supplier, they turned out to be a real hit and sunflower plants are well on the way to provide big rich crop.

Nasturtium plant was initially attacked by aphids and we were considering getting rid of it after ants established real farming ground on it. However as they say patience is a virtue, Nasturtium is huge and now provides 30-50 edible flowers every week. They are sharp, peppery and great with humus on bread, on mushroom vegan pizza or in salads .

With our allotment we have inherited an apple tree, I was going to get rid of it but Dona convinced me to keep it for a year to see what kind of fruit it produce. We have not tried it yet but fruits are getting bigger every day and should be ready any day now, patience, patience...

Echinacea plant was with us for 3 years now, it has suffered attacks from slugs for most of its life, finally after moving it to the allotment it received another chance. In addition to looking very pretty it attracted many butterflies and bees to our plot so they deserve a special mention.

Visit to Lavender Fields

Very educational and perhaps useful trip, we have learnt a great deal about growing lavender plants and distillation of lavender oil using simple still with Liebig condenser and clever oil separator. I am really excited about possibility of building small home still for distillation of essential oils, perhaps is a project for next winter.

First thing first, I have to build shed on our allotment. This is quite a big project and I am not very confident about it. Original plan was to build it entirely from old shipping pallets, unfortunately I have rather stupidly dismantled about 4 pallets when we just got the allotment and now I do not have enough of them for walls. Anyway I will try to put together floor and what I can it terms of walls and try to resource more pallets this week.

Big Cherry Tree

I have finally got around to cutting down old bugger with only hand saw. It was a long and painful process for us both, I started with branches at the bottom working my way up to the top of the tree. After stripping him from canopy I proceeded to reducing trunk to short stump. Word of advice for anyone attempting to cut down a tree that about 15 inches in diameter using hand saw - don't do it. It took me about half an hour, 20 breaks, a litre of water and in the end help from my wife to bring him on the ground. We both are actually surprised how much more sun our plot has now. 


All branches are piled up against residential fence and I will have to come up with solution what do with them. Options are burning them or hiring wood chipper and then slowly composting over the next few years. 


Now I have plenty of space to start building shed,  plan is to join 4 bottom pallets together tomorrow, level up the surface and position pallets in permanent spot. We are still gathering materials from Freecycle, Gumtree and Ebay but it looks like I will have to make a trip to B&Q and buy some new items.

Apples of hope

After couple of months fighting with ants they finally given up and moved their aphid farm from our apple tree somewhere else. I haven't seen one aphid on leaves for about a week now. Hopefully free from aphids this wild tree will produce big sweet apples, there is only about 10 fruits left on the tree so we keep our fingers crossed for our own apples this year.