The end of the asparagus season

Summer solstice marks the end of the asparagus cropping. Now you should let the spears grow into lovely wispy leaf stems to feed the crowns ready for next year's crop. The leaves are really pretty but I am sad that there will be no more asparagus for at least 9 months.

Finally, a break

Work has rather taken over my life for the last couple of weeks so there hasn't been much time to blog, garden or even cook which is a shame. Luckily I have tomorrow off and with the bank holiday that means a 4 day weekend!

I will be sowing like mad, so far I have the tomatoes and salad things going, as well as the peas, hopefully beans, herbs and courgettes will soon follow. I managed to plant half the strawberry runners my Mum kindly potted up for me, I'll get the rest in tomorrow. The leeks are hardened off and I hve made a second sowing of beetroots and lettuce.

The asparagus is going like mad so I popped to the plot on Wednesday night to check for spears and also to water the onions and garlic. I'm still recovering from the shock of the weed growth so I think some serious weeding is also on the cards!

What have you got planned for the weekend?

Planting, planting, planting and a little bit of accosting

Today is supposed to be the bank holiday's only day of sun so I have been fairly busy trying to make the most of it. This morning I planted out the masses of plants we were given by OH's very lovely grandparents, re-potted the strawberry sweetcorn and planted the tomato plants in the final garden veg bed; they are slightly overcrowded and I have 3 more which were never going to fit, so they will be going into a growbag at the bottom of the crappy greenhouse.

This afternoon I ventured down to the allotment to plant out my sweetcorn, unfortunately due to the extreme wind I ended up having to stake them and since I only had 5 canes with me I couldn't finish planting them out. I did manage to plant both courgette plants though. Each of the sweetcorns will have a pea plant next to them, today's lot get the pre-germinated ones and the rest will have to make do with a seed after a few pea disasters along the way.

I also bumped into one of the potential council complainers but after accosting them with my fork it turns out to not be them, this means it was definitely Mr he who got the council to clear him plot and then just sprayed chemicals all over it before planting it up with lots of nice seedlings from the garden centre. Nothing against anyone who chooses not to clear their own plot, or grow their own plants but I really don't think you can then go complaining about people who do!

Things are progressing well on the allotment, all the asparagus crowns now have a spear each so hopefully will gain strength over the summer to produce plenty more next year. The peas which I sowed but the wonky twigs are germinating. The sweat peas are growing well and I even have some carrot seedlings in the fleece tunnel! Not all the carrots have germinated but in the spaces where they have, there are a couple of seedlings so I should have enough to replant into the gaps.

Another successful weekend

This weekend was another scorcher so I hot-footed it down to the allotment where I was greeted by the first potato sprouts, not bad considering they only went into the ground at the end of April, unfortunately the ground was baked solid after all the wonderful weather so it took some time to scrape together enough clods to create mounds. I think the finished result is quite impressive, all things considering...

The Sweat Peas are still alive, and despite the heat, and lack of watering, all are still green and climbing. I took confidence from this and sowed a row of peas, not sure anything will come of them due to mice but there were loads in the pack so worth a try. The real pea area will be with the sweetcorn so they can climb the stems rather than my wonky tree cuttings. Behind the wonky twigs you can see the Sweat Peas and their canes, the raspberries and finally the asparagus. Ignore the wilderness behind that :)

All the raspberry canes are now growing, which is a relief, only half of them were sprouting last week and I was starting to get concerned but all this sun has got them going. If I can get the fruit cage (or maybe just netting) sorted then there should be plenty of raspberries to look forward to. The dandelion was removed shortly after this picture was taken...

The asparagus is growing like no tomorrow, here is one of the spears which was just emerging a week ago. So far I have got 1 spear from all but 3 of the 11 crowns, so things are going ok. I have sowed parsley in the bed to try and prevent asparagus beetles so hopefully they will get through the year unscathed.

After all the rain and then the sun I was thrilled to see the blackcurrant bush has loads of currants forming. They are already a fair size so if the weather stays nice they should be very successful. I haven't ever eaten a blackcurrant before due to the fact that they are almost impossible to buy so I am very excited about the first harvest.

Finally, for those of you who have made it this far I was thrilled to see the first 2 tubes in the Red Mason bee nest are filled. I even managed to see the bee flying into one of the tubes which was pretty good timing. Bees are fantastic pollinators and the Red Mason bee is completely docile, interestingly this is because they have nothing to defend unlike the Bumblebee which will defend the nest, therefore they are very welcome in my garden.

Rainy bank holiday?

The weather forecast for the bank holiday was rain, rain and then some more rain but, not wanting to tempt fate or anything, the weather so far has been lovely. Yesterday was sunny and then a little cloudy but still hot, and today has been very cloudy but very warm and both days have been almost completely dry.

So of course I have been busy at the plot and also in the garden, my veg beds at the back of the garden have finally become too much of any eyesore, I think it was the fleece which finally broke the camel's back as it were, anyway we have now erected a rather fetching reed screen to hide said eyesore. Actually I am rather pleased by the result because what was previously some veg beds at the back of the garden is now a fully fledged veg garden :)

The allotment has had some attention too, the sweet peas are planted around my new rustic (homemade) pea support and the first row of carrots has been sow under fleece. I have spent about 4 hours fighting the nettles and ever spreading grass so things look generally tidier but the most exciting part of teh whole weekend was discovering the first asparagus spears...

Of course I can't crop them for several years yet but at least I know they are alive and kicking!

Asparagus has arrived

This morning I got up super early (well 7am but that is pretty early for a Saturday) and headed down to the allotment to tackle nettles before the rain arrived. It was actually very pleasant and in between the frequent coffee breaks I managed to make good progress with the clearing, it I can keep it up then I will actually have somewhere to plant my leeks.

I returned home completely spent at around 10:00, 1 hour later and the postman kindly delivered 10 asparagus crowns, after reading Ken Muir's instructions that they must be planted immediately on receipt and seeing that the weather forecast was predicting rain for the next 10 years I trotted back to the allotment to quickly chuck the crowns in my carefully prepared asparagus bed.

Unfortunately I had overlooked that although I had dug over the bed and covered it in manure several months ago, I would still need to actually dig the bed. 1 hour later and rather a lot more tired I had a rudimentary asparagus bed, as you can see from the photo the crowns sort of fit, although to be very fair it isn't all my fault because I have ended up with 11 crowns instead of 10 so my careful (ahem) measuring was never going to add up.

After the pain of digging the trench I actually had a pretty good time placing the crowns and spreading the roots around. Re-filling the trench wasn't so much fun but I am hopefully looking forward to many years of home grown asparagus, and at least I have learnt in advance that there is no way I am digging a trench for the potatoes.

More digging...

Back in October I ordered 10 asparagus crowns from Ken Muir which are due for delivery in March. Now that we are in February it has been more and more obvious that I needed to sort out the asparagus bed before their arrival. Apparently asparagus can be productive for 20 years and it is very important that the crowns don't dry out before planting, so after OH's amazing efforts shifting soil this weekend I headed off to the plot to dig a trench.

For 10 crowns I needed a well dug area about 3 foot by 10 foot, or thereabouts, I selected the area last year based on the sole criteria that this is probably the least windy area on my plot. Yesterday I dug over the area, nicely weed free thanks to the covering of carpet and then spread some bags of manure over the top for the worms to deal with. Hopefully by March the manure will be mixed and the soil broken down.

The plot

My allotment, number 19 is huge (after numerous failed attempts to measure it I am still none the wiser about exact dimensions) and rammed full of nettles. After spending the last 3 months desperately trying to find the soil, and getting stung in the process, I am now finally at a stage where some digging has started.

Today was a significant day because I have just ordered my raspberry canes (5 Autumn Bliss and 5 Glen Ample), a plum tree (Victoria of course) and 10 Asparagus crowns (Gijnlim)....now I just need to finish preparing the planting positions :)

I will be documenting my struggles to turn this nettle patch into a lovely patch of food bliss and as my usual approach to dealing with large volumes of veg is to make soup I think it is safe to expect some recipes along the way.