I may be a little but behind schedule with the tomatoes but they have started to emerge from the soil. And I think these will get panted out on the allotment if they manage to survive the cold, rain and winds. I have 3 larger plants at home that we bought for our back garden – hopefully one of our locations will manage to avoid the blight that normally decimates my crop in late august every year.
Picked quite a lot of psb at the weekend and made this large tart with it. First time at making my own pastry too – not sure why it took me so long. The resulting tart lasted a few days worth of lunches.
Sorry to report that I am probably going to let go of my Allotment. I have taken a new job which will mean moving away from Eastbourne.
It’s quite a shame as we waited 4 years to get an allotment, we spent quite a lot of time and effort in getting the plot in shape for our uses and now we are having to let it go.
I have all of my seeds from the recent post out – so I am going to give them to a friend that has just been given an allotment.
I may post a few more things here – but I think it is actually the end of the allotment blog – once I move house I will come back with news about my new garden – or next allotment.
Spent the morning at the allotment on Saturday and tidied up the collapsing bean wigwams/structures.
I collected all of the withered beans first and filled a huge carrier bag with these.
I have now tidied up all the canes for the winter and since the roots are rich in nitrogen I also left the bean plants in place to rot back into the soil.
Not much left on the allotment now – I did bring home one Kohl Rabi – there are still lots more but they are not swelling up yet – I guess it has been too dry and I have not made enough effort to water the plot recently.
my cabbages were a real disappointment – I picked a few on Saturday and they are all riddled with slugs and snails right through to the middle – I guess I should have used more slug pellets.
My Brussel Sprouts, Kale and Brocolli plants all seem to be weathering OK though.
I had an on-site feast of raspberrries – think that was the last of those though.
Another job I finally got round to was pruning the huge cherry tree. I am sure it is the wrong time of year for this but I have been too busy since getting the plot back in March.
I chopped all of the pruned branches down to managable sizes and have put them in my log-store (it will be soon time to start using the open fire at home) – and the leaves were all raked up and pushed around the base of my raspberry canes – I felt they would make a good mulch.
Anyway – once I was home I podded the withering beans and collected plenty of seeds for next year.
I only got half way through the beans that I had collected and had plenty – so I threw the rest onto my compost heap.
I now have plenty of white and black french bean seeds for next year – plenty more than I need I am sure – I’ll have to pack them up in envelopes and give them away.
Made some sloe gin at the weekend.
I was on a walk around the countryside surrounding Eastbourne – walked from Polegate to Hankham and then back via Stone Cross.
I was walking up a country lane and saw the largest Sloes I had ever ever seen. This climate change seems to be doing us some amazing favours. The long extended summer this year has obviously meant that the sloe growing season has definitely not been slow. it’ s been long and fast.
I picked as many as I could reach and took them home and used my usual recipe to make up 7 bottles of sloe gin.
Quantities for 7 x 750ml bottles:
4 x 750ml bottles of gin
About a bucket of sloes – or about a mugful per bottle.
About 3 mugs of sugar – granulated or castor – I don’t think it matters.
dash of vanilla essence
Half fill each bottle with sloes – pierce or cut them before they go in the bottle.
cover these with sugar
top up the bottle with gin ( I have also done this with Vodka in the past)
add a drop of Vanilla essence.
Job done!
But over the next few weeks and months try to give each bottle a turn to keep the sugar from settling down to the bottom for too long.
After a year I usually sieve and funnel the flavoured gin into other bottles and it will probably make a lot less than you are expecting but should hopefully still equate to the original 4 x 750ml bottles – although the sloes will have soaked up some of the gin. This is where I usually decide to re-use the gin soaked sloes in a chutney – and then spend the rest of the year spitting out the pips when eating the chutney. If anyone has any better ideas what to do with the gin soaked sloes please let me know.
You don’t have to leave them for a year but a year always works well for me – as that is when I need to use the bottles again for a new batch.
Here are 5 of the 7 bottles. I like to use a big black marker pen to write over the existing labels.
My back garden – with lots of help from Suzy – is giving me lots of pleasure to look at these days. i can sit for hours staring at the garden. We have opted for more flowers this year – as the new allotment has allowed us to free up some of the garden. The flowers are really bushing out with lots of flowers on the go. My usual desire to tidy up and keep everything in its place has waned and i am happy to see things hanging out over the borders and the pavements.
Here are a few pictures taken this morning June 29th 2011.
Purple Flowering Geraniums – these have been brilliant – lots of flowers that have lasted weeks already.
Sunflowers growing up in front of my shed – the flowers are just forming now – so these should end up about 8 feet tall – I can’t wait.
Some Cosmos bought from my local summer fair.
One of my 3 lovely Artichoke head s- I’ll leave these to flower rather than eating them.
One of my blueberry bushes has been great – the other one I think I may have killed by putting too much ericaceous feed in the pot.
Lovely curly cucumber that I also bought from the local summer fair.
Hazel tree grown from a nut picked off of a local tree. Very reliable to grow. just a few years to wait before we get some Nuts off of it I expect.
Lettuce and Kale growing in front of my shed.
Nasturtiums – that have been slow to grow – but now finally are flowering.
I have loved the Orange Poppies – they have about a dozen new flowers each day – but the flowers do only last a day. but the seed heads are very pretty too.
This slightly forgotten Parsley has gone to flower – so i’ll let it go to seed.
Some pink poppies that are just now starting to flower – lots of buds are coming up. I’ll collect these seeds and take some down to the allotment.
Flowering wild rocket – I’ll try to get some seeds from these too.
Just emerging Welsh salad onions – to be eaten like chives or left to get a bit bigger and eaten like small spring onions. loking forward to these – i have planted some of these in the allotment too.
Planted some tulips at home in my back garden – back in the autumn. These have come up brilliantly now and certainly help to fill the beds that were usually left empty over the colder months – awaiting planting with veg in the spring.
the back garden is relieved of most of its duties now that we have an allotment. So the beds will now become focussed more on companion planting with a mix of flowers and veg/herbs. We will still need a few edibles close to the kitchen.
The edibles we will still grow at home will probably be…
making more way for…
