Sunday 11 July 2010

Journeys, fruit and the first potatoes

The last few weeks have been very hectic; we have spent 2 weekends away visiting friends and family, I have been training for and then running in several races and then the rest of the time I have been flopped from the heat! Luckily I have managed to fit in a few morning visits to the allotment to keep things ticking along.

This year there has been a bumper crop of berries, first with the strawberries and now with the raspberries. Today I picked the first of the gooseberries, hopefully the rest will be ready soon, and also a glut of blackcurrants from just from 1 shrub. Strangely I have some raspberries growing under the apple tree and about 4 metres away from the actual raspberry bed, I have no idea how they got there but they seem happy enough and are fruiting already; I just wish I had cut the nettles back before I started picking the fruits!

The potatoes are flowering which is a relief after the poor chitting and then the late frosts, we enjoyed a few of the Charlottes last night but they were a little small. The peas were delicious but a little sparse and are already nearing their end; I grew Karina with were very early and then 2nd Early which did lengthen the picking season a little but from reading your blogs it seems this just wasn't the year of the pea.

I have followed Toby Buckland's advice regarding sweetcorn and them into modules a month apart, sadly the 2nd batch were planted out just as the weather started to get really hot but also when there was a very cold wind so they decided to give up the ghost. The first batch are now about a foot tall and look very sturdy, and I actually have quite a few plants anyway because Toby also said that sweetcorn is quite happy growing close together so you can sow 2 seeds to a module, I hope he's right.

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