More produce and a chewed door.

Today we took a break from building work at home and went to harvest some more produce. Jim gave us another of his lovely cucumbers and we pulled some carrots, courgettes (of course), beetroot, French beans and spring onions. Some the onions we dug last time have dried gently in the greenhouse and are ready for use. A few are slightly softer than others so we took these to use first, hoping the others will store for longer. All of the onions look good, with the average size much bigger than last year.

The sweet corn is coming on nicely. Cobs are forming, with the tassels collecting precious pollen. The top, male flowers are bursting with pollen, so things look good. I suspect the first ripe cob is still a couple of weeks away, and there looks to be lots of cobs forming so we should be overrun with wonderful sweetcorn very soon.

The site is on the edge of the village, largely surrounded by fields with a woodland nearby. There are often wild visitors on the site, especially attracted to so much food in such a compact space and like all allotment holders people here try to stop their precious produce falling into the clutches of crop-noshers. Fences keep rabbits out most of the time, nets keep birds and some insects off fruit and cabbages, more elaborate fruit cages and green houses help too, string, silver foil, CDs and other deterrents dance in the wind and a couple of plots even boast scarecrow. None of this stuff protects my shed door from attack.
The close-up picture shows the way the surface of the door has been systematically scraped away, probably by the jaws of wasps to carry off to make the paper that their nest is made of. Oddly enough, we haven't seen may wasps this year, but they must be out there ...

End of the peas

The mange touts have been pretty good, after a sticky start with partridges helping themselves, but now they have finished. I pulled them up while Jean did some much needed weeding. I checked our hazel nuts, which are ripening nicely and have not been found by squirrels or jays. The sweetcorn is producing more cobs. They are beginning to get tassels and the male flowers are beginning to open. I've been trying to shake the pollen onto the cob tassels.

There were some french beans to take. They have not turned out to be as prolific as people told us they would be, but they are very good to eat and they freeze well too. There were some more carrots, which are a good success this year, after a couple of failed years. Naturally there were courgettes. The neighbours are beginning to hint that they can't keep up with the supply. Next year we must grow fewer plants.  The onions are laying down, so I pulled about half of them and laid them out in the shelves in the greenhouse to dry. I would have pulled more but the shelves are full. They smell fantastic.

Our leeks are fattening up now the ground has been soaked. One thing I noticed is that Tony has just planted out a bed of very small leeks. I think these are intended to be picked in the spring, which sounds a really good idea. It's too late to grow them now, but we might try that next year.

Rain, produce and weeds

The latest dry spell broke with very heavy rain showers. The plot has benefited from the rain, which does so much more good than we can ever do with a watering can. Over the last week we have had some beetroot, which is very sweet and succulent. We have had lots of mange touts and a few good harvests of French beans. The courgettes have been prolific, one harvest produced 8 good sized courgettes and then more a couple of days later. Our spring onions have been delivering well. Carrots have begun to produce very good roots which are sweet and so crunchy.

Sweet corn is showing the male flowers on some stalks and the beginnings of a few cobs are forming too. The rain should help them. The rain will also swell the leeks which look good, but the need the water to swell while the days are still long. The onions are looking very good. Some of their tops are laying down, but they are not shrivelling yet so we will leave them in the ground until they do.

Jean has sown some broccoli, which is growing very fast. It was sown a bit late but it is experimental winter crop this year.

Going nuts

When we first took over plot 18 we planted a few small trees around the edges. Some were hazel trees and I thought that maybe we would see a few hazel nuts in many years to come. Well just four years on we do indeed have hazel nuts on one of our trees. I tried to pollinate some of the female flowers with a catkin from another tree and it seems to have worked. Now I need to work out when the nuts will be ripe, and hope the local squirrels don't find them. Six hazel nuts will not make a feast - maybe more next year.

We also took the last of our gooseberries yesterday along with five courgettes and our first carrot  - another little success. There were a good take of mange touts and sweet peas too.

Dwarf french beans

We spent some time watering the plot this morning. Promised rain came to very little and no more rain is forecast this week, so it was needed. The good news is that the dwarf french beans have produced a crop. When we looked closely it was more substantial that I had thought. We took a few spring onions too. A few of the beetroot are swelling so we might have some of those soon too.

Hungry army

A very useful visit to the plot this morning gave us half a kilo of broad beans (out of their pods), another half kilo of gooseberries, some mange touts, a big bunch of sweet peas, our first spring onion, two courgettes and the army arrived but too late.

The broad beans have caught up a bit but they have still not produced as many pods as in years before. Some of the plants were so badly attacked by black fly that they had no useful pods on them. We have taken the last pods only to find the plants were covered in an army of seven-spot lady bird larvae. They should much through the black fly, but they arrived too late for the beans.

The gooseberries are all ripening nicely. There will be loads more yet, they are just a pain to pick with the thorns being carefully positioned to defend each juicy berry. Some more mange touts were ready with the plants growing nicely having recovered from the partridge attack. I wonder if ladybird larvae will attack partridges.

The courgettes have responded to the water we have given them, and some rain has helped. The first two fruit were ready with more growing. The spring onions are doing very well, so we took one to try. I also dug up the first garlic, but the stem was still too hard so they can stay in the ground to fill out some more yet. The French beans are growing well, but they are not quite big enough to pick yet.

Mange touts

The summer is really upon us, with warm, sometimes hot, days. The long days have pushed everything into growth spurts and so lots of water is needed. We still haven't had plentiful rain, but June was a bit wetter than the previous three months. Today we paid two visits, the second in the afternoon was after we saw how much work was needed from a brief visit in the morning. There was a lot of weeding with a hoe and by hand, a lot of watering and the reward was our first mange touts. Not many yet but the plants, suitably watered, weeded and protected from partridges and pigeons, now look strong with flowers and a few more small pods. The time from flower to edible pod is quite short so we should have some more to eat later in the week.

We took another batch of sweet peas. They just go from strength to strength - the more you cut the more grow to take their place.