What a contrast July has been when compared to June! Almost every day this month has been warm and sunny with very little rain. It’s been a very busy month for us. We’ve transformed the allotment and the plants there are thriving in the warm weather. It has meant that we’ve had to spend a lot of time watering the plants this month, and even more time weeding.
In the garden the legumes bed has been very productive. Our Martock field beans have produced such a crop that we’ve had a couple of plants bend in two under their own weight. Both were staked up to about half way up the plant, but the heavy beans weighed the top half down so much that they bent just above the stake.
Our Boddington’s soup peas are bearing quite a few pods which have filled out, with more pods still filling out and more flowers too. Our pea beans and runner beans are also doing quite well, although most have still not reached the top of their cane wigwams yet.
The legumes patch in the garden – not a great photo but you get the idea. Left to right, Martock field beans, Boddington’s soup peas, runner beans and pea beans. Note the giant Jerusalem artichokes in the back ground!
The miscellaneous plot is producing tomatoes and courgettes and we’ve got a couple of small female squash flowers formed, so hopefully we’ll have squashes soon too. Our brassica bed has calabrese and purple sprouting broccoli, and both are looking OK, if a little small for the time of year.
The roots patch is looking rather healthy with its abundance of potato and oca leaves and two rows of rapidly thickening leeks. Our row of celeriacs has taken somewhat of a beating. Strangely the first few I planted out (I did so in stages due to the stony nature of the bed, I sieved a couple of feet in preparation, planted a few out and then a few days later sieved the rest), are looking very happy. But two subsequent plantings have struggled.
Several young celeriac plants appeared to have been lost to birds. I found the plants completely pulled above the surface of the soil, roots and all. The second batch I covered with some metal mesh that I found when we cleared the vegetable patch last year. That would surely keep the birds off. But then that entire batch of young plants was lost to slugs. Sometimes it seems we can’t win.
So the barren patch in what was going to be a row of celeriacs has now been given over to more spare leeks we had. The quinoa seemed to do very little for a long time, but with the warmer weather they’ve had a growth spurt and are now starting to take shape.
Taking shape – our allotment plot at the end of July.
At the allotment we’ve been very busy. We’ve turned over almost all of the plot, we’ve sown carrots, beetroot and planted some celeriac (which I thought were spares from the garden until we lost most of the ones in the garden). But we’ve had a change of plan with our four bed crop rotation system at the allotment. For one year only we plan to dedicate two beds to miscellaneous crops, and not grow any legumes at the allotment.
The reason for this is that we didn’t get the allotment until mid-June, by which time it was too late for peas or broad beans. In the excitement of having more space we sowed far too many squashes for just one bed, so we decided to dedicate two beds to these. There’s still a little more of the allotment to prepare, and still a few more potted plants that we need to plant out, but it’s certainly taking shape.
We planted a patty pan plant at the allotment a couple of weeks ago and it has already formed a couple of female flowers. I’d like to think this is at least in part due to that well rotted manure that I placed underneath it. Last year our only patty pan plant didn’t produce any female flowers until later in the year, about early September from memory. At our local community garden their patty pans haven’t produced a single female flower between them, so we’ve very proud of our plant at the moment.
Our patty pan plant at the allotment. Note the two female flowers.
Our brassicas are also doing well under the netting we covered them with. It does make weeding them quite a time consuming process, but at least they haven’t been decimated by caterpillars. In the root crop bed we had good success with carrot germination, and the leeks are doing very well. We are set for a real bumper crop of leeks this year between the allotment and the garden!
Brassicas growing at our allotment under netting.
Looking back it’s been quite a successful month both in the garden and at the allotment. The warm weather has resulted in a surge of weed growth and we’ve struggled a little to keep on top of it, but we have been very busy. The kids have really started to enjoy helping at the allotment now that the tasks have moved from preparing the beds to planting out, sowing, watering and weeding.
We’re now looking forward to next month, which promises to be a month of harvests. The plums on the trees in the garden look almost ready for harvest and all the indications are that we will have more runner beans, courgettes and tomatoes that we will know what to do with. Be sure to check back soon to see what we do with our delicious harvest.