Another milestone in the allotmenteer’s calendar!

Mild and overcast, but a nice temperature for working.

Our lovely strawberries are finished, so time to remove old leaves and straw for another year. Looking ahead to the fallow season, we sowed a first crop of green manure (phacelia and buckwheat) as last year’s September sowing proved to be too late to germinate well.

Weeding today between the paving stones, amongst the parsnips and in the Unusual Veg bed (hopniss, orache, mashua, climbing spinach)

Soft fruit briers were tied in and fruit trees given a scattering of blood, fish and bone.

We dug 2 mini rows of tatties – Acoustic and Colleen. – always exciting, as you never know what treasure’s going to emerge from the soil. Both have cropped fairly well, giving us good sized and very clean-skinned potatoes.

The first tattie boiled or steamed with a bit of mint is another milestone in the allotmenteer’s calendar, on a parr with the first strawberry of the year. The onions have loved this year’s sunshine and have grown into monsters, especially the Senshyu Yellow variety.

Courgettes are rapidly turning into marrows too. Recipes are being shared! The first of the climbing beans are coming through and we picked a good handful of French and Purple Teepee climbers.

Back on the brassica bed, we prematurely pulled more cabbages (Tantour) due to recently discovered clubroot. The pointed hearts are just beginning to form, so disappointing to have to do this.

The blackcurrants and blueberries are beginning to slow after a few weeks of picking, but this year’s redcurrant harvest is in full swing. We’ve left these till now as redcurrants last well on the bush. Today we picked punnets of plump, gleaming fruit destined for jelly making and perhaps as a culinary Christmas treat.

The loganberries are starting to go over – it’s quite a balancing act – waiting till they’re claret coloured but not too overripe so they’re starting to spoil. Once again, we picked a small bucket of sweet peas, which just keep on coming.

At breaktime we went through FEDAGA’s order form, choosing which varieties of potatoes, leeks and onions we want to try next year. Allotmenteering really reflects the cyclic nature of life!

Jobs for next week: keep picking beans and courgettes; harvest more onions for drying; weed amongst the beds and check the Communal Bed; water and mow