Beans, bees and baby squashes...

A trip to the hospital for a blood test was followed by a far more relaxing (for me anyway) couple of hours up the allotment today. Whilst J ran around like a mad thing strimming, mowing and lifting potatoes I pootled around picking things and taking photos in short bursts before hiding out in the shade of the car.

The beans are bulking up really well now with the Portuguese beans showing lots of glorious red pods as promised by the Heritage Seed Library catalogue way back in the depths of winter . The borlotto, cobra and blue lake beans are doing just as well so the winter stores should be well stocked again.


The Homeguard spuds we picked a few weeks ago were really tasty and as good mashed as they were boiled in their skins so I was chuffed when J dug the next row of them and produced this lot from just 5 plants. We've still got the second earlies and maincrops in the ground so keep your fingers crossed the dreaded blight stays away!

A quick check on the butternut and uchiki kuri squash plants didn't disappoint with about 4 butternuts including this baby one and at least 4 uchikis that I hope ripen over the next month or so to join the beans in autumn and winter stews.

Back to summer veg and our lovely yellow courgette had plenty for us to pick today, including one oversized one that's destined for pie tomorrow. I think I'm glad only one plant made it as it's keeping us well stocked.





And the flowers? Well they are keeping the local buzzies happy as well as providing beautiful bunches for the house. 

Whilst it was really cloudy when we set out by the time we got up there the sun was at full beam and it's promising to get hotter and hotter as the weekend progresses so today's visit was a fairly brief one but with a good haul and a tidy plot to show for it. A bag of beet leaves; several beetroots; onions; potatoes; blackberries; cooking apples, courgettes, rudbeckia and sunflowers all came home with us ready for a long weekend in the kitchen.

Happy weekend all.

  

Sunshine on the sideboard!

Planting out and picking at the plot

Met J at the allotment this afternoon in time to admire all his hard work and deliver the spare battery for the mower and some plants for adding to the bean and root beds. He'd already spent a couple of hours mowing the paths, putting up the bean wigwams and sowing the second batch of our Garden Organic Members' experiment lentils. These join the lentils we'd sown last month and our chickpeas in our legume beds and form part of our new-to-us crops for this year. We now need to get our Climbing beans sown at home ready to plant out once all risk of frost has passed. 

After several weeks hardening off at home we've now planted out the first of our beetroot seedlings and some extra broad beans to fill out the gaps in the rows of earlier plantings. There's a second batch of beetroot seedlings on the window-sills here that will go outside this week to harden off and we'll also direct sow a few later in the month to give us a staggered harvest. I managed a little bit of hoeing, picked a few cornflowers from our small cutting patch and cut a carrier bag full of spinach beet leaves - tidying up the over-wintered and transplanted plants as I went in the hope that we get at least one more picking before they bolt. We're hoping that the new sowings will be ready to plant out before these ones give up on us. The cornflowers were also self-sown from last year's plantings and J transplanted them earlier this year - I'm so glad he did as they are far ahead of anything we've sown this year and there's nothing like picking bunches of homegrown flowers for the house knowing they are completely pesticide free so haven't harmed the wildlife and also haven't been flown half way round the world just to make me smile. Final job of the day was to pick some rhubarb - a batch for us and a batch for some friends. And speaking of friends - it was nice to catch up with a few friendly faces whilst I was up there too.
Here's hoping we get a chance to do some more tomorrow...

Garden Organic Lentils under cover

Filling in gaps with Broad Beans grown in loo roll inners

HSL Beetroot - grown in pots and planted out in clusters

First mini-bunch of cornflowers from the cutting patch

Spinach beet harvested and plants tidied - lovely mown paths too

Citizen Science

There is now a growing movement ( well I've become more aware of it anyway!) towards lots of individuals all across the country observing, watching, trialling or deliberately looking out for things and then feeding that information back to Institutions, Membership Organisations, Universities or even folk like the BBC so that scientists can get a widespread picture of seasons, wildlife, pests and diseases or in our case how well a particular seed type reacts to different growing conditions. Most of you will have heard of things like the RSPB's Big Garden Bird Watch that I wrote about back in January so you know the sort of thing I mean but there are loads of other examples too so if you fancy giving it a go why not have a hunt around and see what's out there.

This year we signed up for 3 different Garden Organic experiments as things were ticking over nicely and we didn't think they would pose too much of a challenge if anything happened with my health. Luckily we have managed to complete two of them already and still have a little time left to kick off the third without skewing the data too much.

The first test was one for J - he had to run various quick and easy tests at the allotment that in theory, help determine what soil type we have. This he duly did one cold day earlier in the year. The odd thing for us is that we have been using our allotment for 10 years or more so we're pretty familiar with the vagaries of it's soil - it's very clearly, very obviously skin chaffing sand!! -  but it was interesting to see how the tests panned out and hopefully our feedback will help the organisers refine things a bit. We look forward to seeing the outcomes when then are published later this year.

The second test was more fun for me - we had to try to germinate 60 pea seeds of the same type using 3 different preparation methods 20 just popped into a compost tray and watered; 20 pre-soaked over-night and then popped into a compost tray and watered and the final  20 "scarified" - hard outer coat sanded and then popped into a compost tray and watered. Over the next 3 weeks we have had to check them each day to see how many germinate of each type - the ultimate aim is to see whether ether of the preparation methods actually make any appreciable difference to the number of seeds that germinate and the speed they germinate. The bonus is we get some really pretty salmon-flowered pea plants to add to the plot. Our new garden shelves came in really handy for this as I could keep an eye on them without having to slip and slide down the garden too often.

19th March 2019

30th March 2019

10th April 2019

The third and final test we have signed up for is a trial of lentil types to see how viable lentils are as a garden food crop - we have two different varieties and we have to sow some in April and some in May and then check them at agreed intervals. Hopefully J will be able to get that one started this weekend providing I keep the dramatics to a minimum...