Archive of ‘Autumn’ category
It was officially the first day of Autumn yesterday and boy don’t we know it! I’m one of those people that get cold easily anyway, or maybe I’m just being a big wimp but it’s starting to get very cold, as a matter of fact I woke up to a thick layer of fog this morning and left the house wearing a coat and a scarf! Oh Summer I miss you already!
The allotment is also showing signs of Autumn with a few plants starting to die back. The pumpkins for instance have already been harvested and the munchkin pumpkins look a little sorry for themselves with their large wilted, brown leaves trying to cling onto my archway but failing miserably. I’ll be alittle sad to see my archway all empty and naked, maybe I’ll have to decorate it with bunting and fake flowers once the pumpkins and borlotto bean plants have all gone! The climbing french beans have also come to an end and I will have to take down the supports later this week. The tomatoes came down with blight and were removed a few weeks ago and the strawberries, gooseberries and blackcurrents have started their hibernation.
On the other hand, I am a little pleased with how my allotment looks so far. I look around at the site and see that quite a few neighbours have dug over their plots and left nothing but a blank canvas of soil. My plot on the other hand is still full to the brim with crops and flowers and I’m managing to use nearly every inch of it, if you’ve got the space then you might as well use it right? The dwarf purple french beans which I sowed back In August are starting to crop like crazy, I’ve already had 2 large harvests from them and they keep producing more perfectly shaped, purple pods by the minute. I have 4 rows of swiss chard in the old root bed and 3 rows in the fruit cage (I’m realising now I sowed too many!) and they all goot lovely and bright on these cold Autumn days. There’s also the carrots that are either still growing or being stored in the ground waiting to be eaten, and the leeks are starting to bulk up now. The brassica bed is a little weedy but very productive, the kale is ready for harvesting, the flower sprouts are growing bigger every day and I’ve already eaten one red cabbage (which was delicious!)
Fingers crossed there will be plenty more harvests to come, I’m just trying to hang onto the gardening season for a little while longer. I’m not sure what to do with myself otherwise! 
It’s officially Autumn, that’s a fact. I know this because I had to harvest my pumpkins yesterday and that to me means the end of Summer and a sign that Halloween is nearly here.
Now as you all know I acquired my allotment last year at the beginning of July, which meant that it was far too late to plant any pumpkins. They were one of the crops I most wanted to grow so they were at the top of my list when buying seeds in the Spring. I have to admit that I had never tried pumpkin before so it was going to be an experiment as well as a nice novelty item to grown, carve and make soup with. I chose two varieties: a climbing tiny pumpkin called Munchkin by Sarah Raven, and a small pumpkin variety called Mars by Unwin Seeds.
I would have loved to have grown a giant pumpkin however I realised that my allotment is too tiny and I’m pushed for space, so I opted for some smaller varieties to fuel my pumpkin obssession and I’m so glad I did (plus I’m a little in love with miniature things) Although it would have been nice to have grown a giant pumpkin I am a little proud of my harvest of mini pumpkins! The munchkins are by far the best crop I have grown this year and I can’t stop raving about them (sorry but here goes again!) I planted four munchkin plants and overall I harvested 35, we’ve eaten 12 already and the rest will be stored and eaten throughout the winter (I posted a delicious recipe a few weeks ago!) Another thing I would like to point out is the fact that I would never have had the space to grow these if it wasn’t for my archway and the pumpkins ability to climb up it. I will definately be growing these next year, and the year after, and probably for the rest of my life (they seriously are that good!)
Now onto the mars pumpkins, I only planted two of these plants and overall harvested 5 pumpkins. They had a space measuring 3 metres long by 75cm wide and they took up that entire space, I’m guessing if they had more room then I might have had more pumpkins to harvest but I am so happy with the 5 that I have. I plan to carve one for halloween, make a pumpkin pie with one and then soup with the others
It’s the results of the Sarah Raven give-away and I’m pleased to annouce that the winner is….
Samantha Jones!
Well done Samantha, I will send you a private message very soon
Thank you to everyone who entered xx
We had our very first allotment bonfire this evening. All the up rooted plants, weeds and rubbish was starting to build up on both mine, and my Dad’s plots. I had broad bean stalks, strawberry runners and sadly my tomatoes were struck with the dreaded blight so they had to go. To me, this is a sign that Summer is nearly over and Autumn is well on the way.
It’s September already and Summer has just flown by. It seems only yesterday that I was planning, sowing seeds and getting the soil ready. It has however, been a great Summer with plenty of harvests, plenty of lessons learnt and great fun too. The year isn’t over yet though and theres still plenty growing on Plot 15C. The gherkins are still producing, pumpkins and munchkin pumpkins, borlotto beans, swiss chard and carrots are still all a plenty. There’s also the purple dwarf french beans which are growing nicely and I’ve also sown some kohl rabi and turnips. And not forgetting the brassica bed full with kale, red cabbages and flower sprouts!
There’s big plans for next year too and I just can’t wait to start planning and preparing. One of the big plans involves chickens. Now I have wanted chickens ever since I got my plot last year, I love the idea of looking after chickens, letting them roam the allotment and collecting fresh eggs every morning. I am a complete animal person anyway, and I know your not meant to get attached, but I can see myself naming and caring for my chickens. The only problem is I don’t have permission yet, and as you can tell I’m getting my hopes up a little! I re-read the allotment rules and although it states that ‘rabbits and hens are allowed on the allotments’, I decided to get in contact with the parish council and they are bringing my question up at the next meeting. Which means on the 10th of September I will be told if I can keep chickens on plot 15c, and I just can’t wait to find out!
If the answer is yes then of course I will need to make space for a coop and run, this is where my other big plan comes into play. I have three large rotation beds up my allotment, a roots bed, legume bed and a brassica bed. The idea is to take away one bed and then split the other two beds into three smaller rotation beds. That’s leaves me with a 3.7m by 3m bed for the chickens and even some flowers too (I am totally getting my hopes up aren’t I!?)
Now if the answer is no, then I am still going ahead with this plan of three smaller rotation beds. However, because I wouldn’t need any space for a coop I would simply fill the spare bed with cut flowers, and maybe even place a table and chairs in the flower meadow! So really I can’t start planning until next week when it find out if I can have chickens or not, fingers crossed that the answer is yes!
My name is Katie and I have a strawberry addiction!
Strawberries were the first plants I have ever grown myself, and this was when I was 22 years old. My dad had just been given his very own allotment plot and I was officially put in charge of a strawberry bed, like an over excited child I painted up a little picket fence to surround them and waited for those juicy red balls of deliciousness to arrive. Only for a big fat rat to eat them all! And not even that… the rat left a trail of lovely plump strawberries leading to the compost bin and thats where we found a pile of them left uneaten. I was simply gutted, so after turfing the rats out of the plot and securing the bottoms of the compost bins we built a wire fortress around my strawberry bed so we could atleast enjoy some of the strawberries that had been left. That year we enjoyed a mere bowlful of strawberries, but like most things in life, we learn’t from out mistakes. Last year on my dads plot we built a raised bed, lined the bottom with chicken wire and built a removable cage for the top. Success!
Now I have my own plot I am the proud owner of two wonderful raised beds which each have 24 strawberry runners planted inside, thats a grand total of 50 strawberry plants which equals a bumper crop next year (fingers crossed!) I plan on making jam using one bed, but thats only if I don’t keep eating them as soon as they ripen!
On another note, something has been eating my french bean plants! I suspect deer are the culprits which makes my plans of a picket fence around my plot even more important. I do love you deer, but please stop eating my yummy french beans
I’m not really one to celebrate bonfire night, I even forgot to buy a pumpkin this year for halloween (although I do desperately want to grow some on my plot next year!) So when my dad mentioned buying a box of fireworks for the garden I thought why not? We own a fabulous fire pit which has been constantly used on holidays in the campervan and for BBQs in the summer so we piled it with logs and sat round it during a lovely autumn night. I even cooked a delicious homemade goulash soup with meatballs that helped to keep us nice and warm before lighting the fireworks. I must admit, they weren’t anything special, but we all enjoyed every second of it! I have never, ever, lit fireworks in our own garden before so I was like an excited little kid when the rockets zoomed up and the catherine wheels span round (although 2 of them didn’t really spin, they just basically fizzled!). After the fireworks we played with some sparklers and attempted to write our own names and draw pictures with them, which might I add, was a lot harder than we thought it would be! Although my Dad impressed us all with a magnificant flower. We ended the night with toasted marshmallows and hot chocolates topped with whipped cream… heaven!
All in all it was a great night, so great infact that I think it should be a family tradition from now on and I can’t believe we didn’t do it sooner! Our dog, Barry the boxer, was not at all impressed and spent the night laying inside the house.
Happy bonfire night everyone! Be safe and have fun xx
I decided to take a well earned day off from allotment duties today, even though my shed needs painting, my strawberry runners need planting and I need to get some broad beans in the ground! I did however, go foraging for the first time in my entire 24 years of life and I loved every second of it. The prize was indeed, sloe berries, and we were lucky to get a trug full of the little gems even though the bushes had nearly been stripped bare (my tallness came in handy today!) The plan is to make sloe gin and we have just over 1.2kg, which makes 6 bottles of the stuff, but I can assure you I will not be drinking 6 bottles of sloe gin! Some lucky people will be getting a bottle for christmas, and maybe we will keep a couple of bottles stashed away for winter drinks
After foraging for nearly 2 hours we popped over to our little village church up the road to lay some flowers down on my grandparents grave (the flowers included cabbages would you believe!)
I absolutely love this church, it is so small and yet beautiful and very very old. It has been there since the Domesday book was compiled I’ll have you know.
On our way out the sky blessed us with a lovely rainbow, the perfect ending to the day I hope everyone else had a lovely weekend too xx
It’s that time of year again (and only 57 days until christmas might I add), darkness is upon us by 5pm and I seem to already be wearing 4 layers of clothing and it’s not even that cold yet! What can I say? I’m cold blooded and what better way to warm myself up during a day up the allotment then a nice steaming hot cup of soup!
I am completely and utterly in love with my new shed and to be frank I could spend alday up there just listening to the radio and watching life go by, it’s also handy for those little showers that we keep having. But enough of the shed, I do actually do some work up here… sometimes :P. I recently planted 2 rows of garlic and it has already shooted 3 inches above ground level, I was very impressed. This was one of the things I wanted to grow as soon as I put my name down for an allotment, I do love my garlic and I can not wait to make some garlic butter and garlic bread. Another big winner is my swiss chard, I had never even heard of this stuff before and simply decided to grow it because it was a late grower and I wanted to make the most out of my plot but boy aren’t I glad I gave it a go! I have made 8 chard quiches using my crop and it is delicious (I keep meaning to post the recipe and I promise I will!)
October also brings a large harvest of apples and I am super lucky to have a bramley apple tree hanging over part of my allotment from the back garden behind my plot and the lovely lady gave us permission to take the ‘droppers’. This means apple pies, crumbles and sauces galore! I will leave you all with the most perfect looking bramley I have ever collected with leaves and all xx
