The end of summer

Now that we are mid way through September you really notice the dark mornings and the dark evenings not to mention the cool breeze and regular rain but when I see the sweetcorn ripening and the pumpkings swelling I remember that I love this time of year. Soon will be the time for hearty soups and stews and soon the whole plot will be dug over so I can ignore the weeds for a while yet.

A Potimorron squash


The giant pumpkin plant has decided to fruit


One of the many small aubergines ripening on a tiny plant


The warm weather and rain has made late sowings possible, but here come the weeds

Fruits of July

Potting on

Not much plot action this weekend because I've just run 10k for Cancer Research, a worthy cause but unfortunately one that highlights how incompatible my love of running is with my love of veg growing! I'll explain how I ended up pursuing both another day.

So with the need to rest prevalent I have spent the weekend sowing seeds and potting things on. The seed sowing guide is still in use and it does seem to be working; now when I have 10 minutes spare I can quickly consult my spreadsheet and get some seeds sown rather than wasting all the time sifting through my mess of seeds. 2 trays of leeks have joined the 2 sown a few weeks ago, this year I am attempting to have a decent crop of leeks, something which didn't seem important in previous years because we hardly ever ate them. The discovery of Sarah Raven's creamy leek recipe has completely changed that and we are now buying leeks on a regular basis.

The courgettes and squash have all been sown, I might follow them up with some later sown courgettes to make sure I have a supply right through the summer. Alys Fowler has been giving some tips on how to store courgettes for the winter in her "The Edible Garden" programme on BBC (still available on the iPlayer if you've missed it) so I'm not feeling quite so worried about the courgette glut as I normally would. Normally I grow 'Crown Prince' as my Squash variety but the F1 seeds are very expensive so this year I'm experimenting with a variety called 'Potimarron' which is meant to be excellent for roasting as well as being a French heirloom variety so I'll have a chance of saving the seeds.

The aubergines were in desperate need of potting on, as were the chillis but annoyingly the weather is still far too cold for either to move outside so I have completely filled my coldframe. The aubergines are from Real Seeds and should fruit outside provided we have a decent summer, they have certainly been excellent in germination and growth so far so I'm starting to worry about an aubergine glut - well I can dream can't I?

Squash

This is the first Crown Prince squash to be spotted beneath the rather impressive squash leaf canopy which is currently threatening a good third of the allotment. I love growing squash and pumpkins; they can easily fight with even the most persistent weeds, have long roots to break up the soil and give you something of a surprise when the leaves die back to reveal, hopefully, a dozen or so squash.

This year I have at least 4 Crown Prince plants, they are a nightmare to cut open but the taste makes it all worthwhile. I also grow Baby Bear which looks like a mini pumpkin but is apparently a squash, anyone know where the difference comes in?

Finally I am having a go at some butternut squash for the first time, I am fairly sure this plant is meant to be a butternut squash Hunter but somehow I think I am in for a pumpkin...

Squash, heat and some bees

All this hot weather is really making things happen, the first courgette was picked today (a beautifully small one which I am quite looking forward to eating), the beans need staking and the weeds are making good progress in taking over my plot.


The squash plants are starting to spread out, soon I hope they will be big enough and brave enough to fight it out with the weeds which I have deliberately not bothered weeding because I know squash have excellent smothering tendencies which will hopefully kill even the most persistent of weeds. Most of the squash plants are planted over an upturned bottomless bottle to help funnel the water to the roots, and it seems to be working, the plants with the bottles are definitely more vigorous than the ones without.

It was far to hot to actually attempt anything today so I picked some cabbage and globe artichokes to go with my new potatoes and then took some snaps of the bees enjoying the flowering parsley.

Slow but steady progress

Today I managed to earth up the potatoes, I only covered the leaves with a very thin covering of aoil after reading this on Pumpkin Soup's blog. This year I will be aiming for little and often and hoping for a bumper crop. Strangly the Rooster potatoes (a maincrop) are far more vigourous than the Charlotte (a salad crop). Go figure.

I also got around to sowing 8 more squash plants, the batch sowed 3 weeks ago came through ok but then I lost 3 so hopefully I will have a full set before the month is out. I have also sowed my courgettes inside, two plants this year and also a full list of couregette lovers from work, well you need to have somewhere to ofload the excess.

No sign of the carrots or chitted parsnips on the allotment, hopefully they are just biding their time. Managed to get the dward beans, pak choi and beetroot sowed but sadly no extra carrots because I left the seed at home, doh!

With 2 more days of the bank holiday stretching ahead I am hopefull that more sowing will happen, some weeding might not go a miss and if the weather stays like this there will certainly be more watering.

Pumpkins Galore

This year turned into a great year for pumpkins and squash, fairly surprising given the lack of sunshine, I had planted 1 Ghost Rider pumpkin plant to get that perfect Halloween pumpkin and it surprised me by managing to produce 3 huge fruits. As you can see in the picture only 1 is properly ripe, hopefully the warmth of the shed will sort the other 2 out.

I also grew 4 Crown Prince plants, this is meant to be the tastiest squash variety, it certainly proved to be one of the most expensive at £2 for 4 seeds! Luckily all 4 seeds germinated and went on to be rampant plants, you can see 2 of the squash in the picture and there are another 4 still at the allotment, they have proved to be rather heavy so getting them home is a bit of a challenge.

Finally I planted 4 Baby Bear pumpkin plants which have proved to be fantastic, in total I had 15 pumpkins (4 have already been eaten). The small size is perfect for 2 so we have been enjoying lots of pumpkin roasted with cinnamon and mixed spice, don't bother peeling just wash, chop into smallish pieces and stick em in the oven for half an hour. Yummy.

Next year I am planning to grow even more squash and pumpkins, they are just so easy to grow, actually after planting them out I did absolutely nothing to them, they do need a lot of space and the seeds are very expensive so this lot of top of my seed saving list, but once you have them they taste great and should store for a few months. Failing that just turn them into soup.

Not a great picture, but I wanted to finish this post with some evidence that despite the weather, the darkness and now the clocks changing it isn't winter yet:

Tomatoes, sweetcorn and more

This weekend saw the first harvest of tomatoes, 16 sungold, and 3 cobs of sweetcorn, there were also a few raspberries, runner beans and plenty more courgettes. This is the first real harvest where more than 1 thing has been ready at the same time so I am very excited. The tomatoes are my first experience of a home grown tomatoes and they taste fantastic, hopefully the rest will ripen soon.

One rather normal pumpkin fruit has somehow morphed into this monster, see the pic below for some scale, I think it must be the Ghost Rider which I planted for a real Halloween pumpkin, the alternative it that is one of my baby bear pumpkins but that seems just a little unlikely. Just behind the pumpkin you can see one of the Crown Prince squash which is also growing pretty quickly. I am repeatedly being told that the soil on my allotment isn't that good, I think these two prove something rather different.

A perfect summer's weekend

This weekend was fantastically hot with some really heavy rain on Sunday morning which removed the need to do any watering. Actually the hot, wet conditions are making everything grow at an incredible rate, as you can see in the picture the squash plants, which are planted between the sweetcorn, have started there mission to cover the plot. Last year I grew 5 squash and pumpkin plants in the garden and spent most of the summer trying to keep them to the confines of the raised bed so this year I am going to leave them to their own devices as much as possible. So far there are about 4 visible fruits but it is fairly hard to identify the plant from the stem so I'm not sure if they are the Baby bear pumpkins or the Crown Prince squash.

After a few close encounters with a pair of pheasants it occurred to me that I would have to net the raspberries if I actually wanted to eat any of them. Thanks to Wilko and a few garden canes I now have a temporary fruit cage, visible in the pic behind the sweetpeas, this should keep the birds out until fruiting finishes and then I have great plans for a real fruit cage... Also of note this week I ate the first 2 raspberries! I am now anxiously awaiting a real crop.

It has been a while since there was a full plot pic so I thought I would finish this post off with one. As you can see it is still fairly weedy but not as bad as in previous months. On the bottom left you can see the asparagus which is growing well, behind that is the netted raspberries followed by the sweatpeas and runner beans. Just beyond the oil drum there are the potatoes and also my new tarp (hopefully that will stop the nettles), and right at the back is the sweetcorn (visible only to those of you with good eyesight).

Raining

So no plot visit for me. Still I am going to the garden centre later to buy my copper fungicide - I have been recommended by an old boy to start spraying my potatoes at the end of June - and I am hoping to get some cabbage plugs since I have missed the seed sowing opportunity.

Hopefully it will dry off later so I can check my squash plants haven't died after my failing to give them well rotted manure (see http://www.soilman.uk.com/ for full details on this particular concern)

Busy busy

I am going on holiday on Friday so this weekend was a last ditch attempt to get the plot into some sort of order before I go. Hopefully the weeds won't manage to recover too much whilst I am away. I managed to get all the weeds cut down to the ground with my new shears, it was quite amazing how much of a difference this made, you can actually see that some areas are planted!

After all the rain and the sun it is now perfect seed sowing conditions so I over-exerted myself to get the whole root bed dug over and sowed with 3 rows of carrots, 1 row of beetroot and 1 row of fennel. I also planted out the nasturtiums that OH's gran had kindly given me and the celeriac which was sowed way back at the beginning of March. Hopefully when I return all these seeds, and the parsnips which I sowed 2 weeks ago, should have germinated.

The first pumpkin plant and 2 of the squash plants were planted between the sweetcorn and finally I wanted to get the globe artichokes, which have been looking a little sad in their mini pots, planted out. I cleared an area by the sweetcorn to plant them in and hopefully they will create a barrier between the compost area and the plants to deter the slugs, I can't imagine they like prickly plants.