Friday 24 June 2011

Photographs of things growing in June

After the cold May winds June has turned out to be rather damp.  While June has been wet it has not really been warm and the vegetables have not really been growing very quickly. 

I have harvested the comfrey and filled up both of the green bins.  I am watering comfrey on a lot of the vegetables so I am using up quite a bit.  

 The salsify and the scorzonera are growing quite well but I have not harvested any of them.  I took out a row of spinach and replaced it with a row of Swiss Chard.  The Swiss Chard has not germinated yet.  Beetroot and the Hamburg parsley are doing quite well.  
The carrots are pushing against the enviromesh they are growing so big.  I have begun to thin them out and use the small carrots in salads.  
The Swiss Chard and the parsnips  are coming along well although I would like to see them a little bigger. 

I have not used any of this spinach yet and it seems to be going to seed already.  I will make sure that I get some of this over the weekend.  

The strawberries have virtually finished now.  I have only had about 18kg off them.  Not bad I suppose.  I am going to leave the runners on the plants now to get some more plants for next year.  The stolons will have little plantlets on them and these are what I use to plant up the new strawberry bed.  



The potatoes are still taking over the world.  The heavy rain battered them about a little and now they are lying  a little flatter  The tops are right over the path and make it very difficult to get to the shed.  I can put up with this if there is a big crop of potatoes under all this foliage.  The old blokes keep on trying to convince me to take a few roots up to see how they are doing but I haven't yet partially to irritate them and partially because I want the biggest potatoes I can get.  


These are my oca and I am very proud of them.  I have five plants now and I will be treasuring them until I can build up a big stock of them.  The potatoes keep trying to cover them completely so I have to keep staking them back.  
The raspberries are beginning to fruit now and also throw up really long new canes.  These will be the fruiters next year and will have to be tied in so that the wind does not blow them over.  I haven't taken any of the raspberries home yet because I have eaten them all with my cup of tea. 

The big lettuce has not gone to seed yet and we are eating quite a few.  Still got a lot left though.  Looks like salad for tea today.  The lettuce succession is working well and I have replaced the garlic with broad beans and the new lettuce.  


The leeks are fine at the moment but I will have to cover them with enviromesh towards the end of July.  The onions are now being infected with white rot.  I doubt if I will  have a good crop of onions this year.  
This is the first main picking of the sweet peas.  They are looking and smelling good now.  
These are the Blue Danube that are going to be picked next.  


I didn't take a photograph of the blackberry although it is covered in fruit.  I noticed yesterday that they were turning black as well.   I know that I have an early one but blackberries in June?  

The Aintree runner beans have nearly got to the top of the canes now and there are some flowers on them as well.  I don't think that they will produce any beans for a couple of weeks though.  
Swedes and kohlrabi are forming swollen roots now.  I hope that they don't come too soon though.  When I crop them I will replace them with another brassicae.  If I keep all the brassicas together like this then there is less chance of club root infesting the soil.  Next year they will be rotated into the next bed.  
The calabrese is starting to head up now.  I will crop this when the heads get big enough and any that I cannot eat I will freeze.  They still taste relatively acceptable after freezing.
The purple sprouting brocolli are shading out the summer cauliflowers.  I will have to release the cauliflowers from their net because it is restricting their growth.  
The turnips are not very big yet but I expect them to be a reasonable size by next week.  The red Brussel sprouts are growing well but they need hoeing up so that they do not fall over.  
I have harvested some of the broad beans.  I got about 1kg off them at the first picking but there are an awful lot more on the plants.  

Brussel sprouts are coming along well.  I have hoed them up to help to stabilise them and prevent them from falling over.  They will produce roots along the stem where the soil has been earthed up against them.  This may also help to ward off cabbage root fly.  
One of the squashes has been eaten by slugs a little so I put a sunk a plastic cup and filled it with beer.  I t has not caught the culprit at the moment but I am hoping that it will in the near future.  The squashes have recovered from the cold winds of May but they are still not very big.  





 
I have five lines of peas each sown one week after the last and believe it or not they are all coming more or less at the same time.  I don't really mind because I will freeze the ones that we don't eat.  However, it would be good to grow them in some kind of succession.  
The dwarf French beans are doing well and are not too damaged by slugs and snails which cannot be said for the climbing French beans.

There are some climbing French beans there but they are very slug eaten which means that the courgettes and the sweet peas have taken over a little more than I wanted.  There are some courgettes on these plants already.  

So that is the state of the allotment towards the end of June.  Not bad at the moment.  

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