Yesterday, for the first time in a long while, I joined hubby on his trip to the allotment as he wanted my opinion on the various bits of brassicas that have over-wintered. The purple-sprouting broccoli had both run to seed and been nibbled by birds, but the cabbages are standing well, and if they aren't very large, at least there's a lot of them. I brought three of them home to clear ground ready for potatoes; at a guess the one on the right is about grapefruit sized!



The fruit trees seem full of bud, particularly this  pear (left) and cherry (below), and another week or so should see them full of blossom.























 Blossom of another sort lined the road to the allotment - council-planted ornamental cherries which always look so beautiful at this time of year, and I just had to grab a few pics out of the car window.

Allotment surprise find

 Down at the allotment today I was surprised to find this. I'd assumed it was a clump of tall grass - but grass doesn't have purple daisy-like flowers!

Back home I got out the wild flower reference book, expecting it to be something grown from undigested bird seed  - but it turns out to be salsify; a vegetable with carrot-shaped roots. Something that pretty deserves a place in my decorative veg patch at home, so I'm tempted to try growing some another year.






 And another surprise - cherries on both cooking and dessert trees. All I have to do with those is keep the birds away....

This week - 8th February 2015

Some warmer days this week - often frosty in the morning but lovely and sunny by lunch time.

 We managed to get down to the allotment for the first time in quite a while -  there's not a lot  going on there, mainly dug beds turning slowly to mud but in the poly greenhouse there are seedlings growing..... cabbages (left) and radishes

 This rhubarb plant has tried its best to grow all winter, so hopefully it will put a real spurt on now with some warmer weather






I even found some bits and pieces to pick - my winter salad stand-bys spinach and american land cress

 kale

 and some opened brussel sprouts.They haven't done well at all this year going from tiny buttons to wide open without making proper sized sprouts.

Allotment in flower

 Sunny weather at the end of the week meant we were able to get to the allotment and start getting the 'new' double greenhouse glazed.












It's not all practical stuff at the allotment though - I've moved self set flowers around to give a border up one side of the plot

 and planted aquilegia and lavender in among the fruit trees

 there's even a tiny buttercup meadow

 Oh, and Dylan the dog insisted on helping....

Allotment helper

We're often joined at the allotment by a robin - presumably the same one each time. He sits and sings almost within arm's reach but generally flies off when I get the camera out.

Here he is at last though - not brilliant photos as they're taken on my phone.

New greenhouse

 Another sunny day meant there was time for me to go to the allotment and see our new greenhouse. Well, when I say new what I really mean is extra. It belonged to another allotmenteer and like our first allotment greenhouse was damaged by the gales before Christmas - so much so that the owner has had enough and  is swapping to a poly-greenhouse, and giving this one away. Lots of the glass is broken but by joining the two together we're hoping to save on glass in the linking 'wall'. For now there's no glass in either - ours was damaged too and we decided to 'de-glaze' it till Spring. I don't imagine we'll be growing more tomatoes, peppers, aubergines etc just able to grow them all inside. Now all we need is some lovely Spring weather.

Meanwhile this is the state of the brussels sprouts - they've completely sprouted so I'm just using them as small spring greens.

Checking up on the allotment

There's a rather neglected feel to the allotments at the moment. We went down on a sunny day at the end of last week and found them empty!
It's quite muddy but out plots are fortunately at the higher end of the allotments so not as water-logged as some. 

The poly-greenhouse roof needed a bit of repair, in the form of sticky tape - all work supervised as always by Dylan the Dog.
The glass greenhouse on the left has had the glass removed after the storms before more got broken. We won't bother fixing it till Spring is here.

 I noticed a lot of other allotments had little growing on them but ours is still being kept busy and even in January I can pick dinner from it - these are the self-set spinach plants that have done so well trying to crowd out a small cabbage.

A rather straggly row of kale - I find it a bit dull to eat but it's a change from frozen runner beans.

The autumn broccoli which is cropping so well - I should have taken the photo BEFORE I picked the row clean!

there are several rows of brussels sprouts - some doing better than others. The main snag, oddly, is the mild weather which is causing the sprouts to burst while still quite small.

Last year's grown-from-seed rhubarb is already starting to shoot. I'm hoping there'll be quite a lot to pick this year.

 A double row of leeks given to us by an allotment neighbour - they're a little short and stumpy but standing well.

A short row of swedes- though we haven't eaten all the turnips grown in summer, so may not need these.

Tightly packed brassicas - brussels, on the left, and savoy cabbages.

 Two rows of radishes - both sown during September, one row from packeted seed, the other home grown seed and throwing up all sizes and colours of radish.














 A short row of broad beans which had originally self-set by last year's plants. We moved them to a better location and now one of them is even in flower.

A green sort of day at the allotment

 

Had a busy day at the allotment today with lots of digging - but the sun shone, the robin and frogs hopped about and I picked a handful of land cress for lunch.

 

 

 

 Assisted as always by our dog - maybe he's measuring the length of the row?

It wasn't very kind to my green fingernails though :)

Picked this week 27th January 2013

On our brief trip to the allotment I managed - in between clearing snow from brassicas - to pick a bit of kale untouched by pigeons and get hubby to lift some leeks.

 If we were solely eating our produce, dinners would be a constant round of leek and potato soup with kale floating in it :(

Allotment in the snow

We decided yesterday to have a trip to the allotment - the first since the snow began.
We didn't take the car though somebody had tried to from the tyre marks.

 Everything was pretty much ok apart from the kale which hadn't been covered by netting. Before the snow it being ignored but with the bad weather the birds (pigeons mainly) are searching for every scrap of food - unfortunately they liked the look of my dinner.

 With more snow forecast for this weekend (it's falling as I blog) we thought it best to clear the polytunnel roof and the tops of the coldframe. Surprisingly, the lettuce in there seems ok.

 The netted brassicas were protected from both birds and the weight of the snow but I decided to clear them as best I could before the poles collapsed.

Maybe this weekend will see the end of this cold snap and we'll be back to proper gardening.