Harvesting

I have been away on holiday for the major part of July and left Mattias to get on with the allotment on his own. Every now and then a text message would appear on my mobile saying everything was growing really big. I did not really understand how big things could grow in just a few weeks... we now have an abundance of vegetables including some really big courgettes (which are probably to big to be called courgettes and should be referred to as squash or something else).

Then there were the cucumbers which must be the biggest I have ever seen. The long green variation and also a smaller round variation (crystal apple I believe). Funniest thing is that one of the cucumbers had decided to grow straight into the piece of string that is holding the plant up with the result of a very weird looking cucumber. See the picture here...

We are in for a bumber crop of tomatoes, the first ones I harvested today are very sweet and juicy. The 100s & 1000s tomato plant has literally produces 100s & 1000s of tiny little tomatoes that are the size of big blueberries. We have planted so many variations of tomatoes that it is difficult to remember what is what... but one thing is for sure, they are all doing really well.

Other things doing really well included the just under metre high swiss chard... yes, it is growing out of proportion. The purple sprouting broccoli with it first couple of broccoli spears appearing already, the berlotti beans which I harvested some of today and the artichokes are all impressive. I was told that we could not expect any artichokes in the first season having grown them from seed in only 6 months, two of the plants is now producing lovely little artichokes.

One of the sunflowers we planted seems to have taken on monster proportions. Its stem is the size of a human arm in diametre (perhaps we should call it tree trunk) and it is reaching more than 2m above the ground. If it was not for it being so heavy and leaning worse than the leaning tower of Pisa, I would guess that it is even 2.5 m tall... I wonder how big the actual flower will be when it is in blossom...?!

Sad news on the raspberries as the autumn variety have failed to establish themselves on our allotment, however the summer variety is growing really well and are producing some very large sweet and juicy berries.

The Halloween pumpkins we planted to turn into lanterns at the end of October are also growing to enourmous proportions. If they are already larger than a football, then how big will they be by October?

Having now brought home what looks like a bumper crop, it hardly shows on the allotment as there is so much more to harvest over the coming weeks. We will probably enjoy a mostly vegetarian diet over the weeks to come.

The Big Dig

Today we have started clearing our new allotment. It was totally overgrown as you can see on the 'before' picture here. Long couch grass and lots of thistles everywhere. We also found a shoe, a sandal, a bag of dog poo, lots of plastic bottles, toys and bits of concrete. As the plot has not been in use for at least 5 years it seems that people have been using it to dump their garbage on it. Well they better not do that now that we have taken it on!

We got stuck right in with the help of our good friend Bethan. We have promised her a regular supply of fresh vegetables and fruit in return and hopefully the allotment will help us deliver on our promise. But she seemed to be happy to help and enjoy the day as much as we did.

Mattias set off with the strimmer and started having a go at cutting the grass down. He looked like a pro from the beginning! Petra and Bethan followed him gathering all the cut grass to pile it up so that we can burn it once it is dry. We got as far as cutting everything once and then almost half the plot a second time before the strimmer decided it had enough. We still need to cut the remaining grass a second time as some bits were still very long. But the strimmer would just not have any of it. So all we could do was to start digging. We came a lot of roots as we were digging away. The size of some of the roots were insane and we found two potatoes and a carrot growing in there. And a lot of worms too which we think is a good sign!

In the end we managed to dig over almost half the plot - that is all that had been cut down twice was then dug up and turned over. If the strimmer could have finished the work and cut down the rest, then we would easily have been able to complete the whole dig today. Once we got going, we really got into it and we could have finished the rest in a couple of more hours. Now we will leave it for a week before we can finish the rest of the plot. In any case, we are now well on the way and feel that we really accomplished something today. Just look at the 'after' picture. We think it is a really good start to our allotment adventure. .

Thank you to Bethan for all your help today! We definitely needed it!