A cloudy, windy day on the allotment

The summer raspberries had all this year’s fruiting canes taken out and the new canes which are this year’s growth and  which will fruit next year reduced to 4/5 per station.  The old canes were added to the pile for our New Year bonfire.

We made a start on preparing the beds for the winter and managed to get one well forked over and a layer of leaf mould added.

The comfrey which we use as a green manure had its last cut and the leaves were added to the compost heap. There was poor pollination on the apples this year but Discovery seemed to have set well and have a reasonable crop.  But the fruit has turned out diseased, badly misshapen and now started to rot so the netting was taken off and apples  left for the birds to enjoy.  We picked some vegetables for the FEDAGA show at the weekend and put together runner beans, marrows, carrots, Kelsae onions and potatoes for exhibiting – a small selection compared to what we have had in previous years but it has been a very difficult year for growing. Showing means finding for example 5 runner beans, all the same size, straight and undamaged, or  more difficult, 3 carrots, same size and no damage – you can find you are pulling up all your carrots to find 3 suitable ones!  But showing is fun and good to see how others have managed and a good time to pick up on how other varieties do. 

We had been looking forward to some early leeks this year but they are all going to seed. Fortunately we planted others later on so we will have a crop for later in the winter. The Autumn raspberries are slow in ripening but at lunchtime, I saw a young pheasant making its way towards them so that is possibly the reason we are not finding any ripe fruit.  We haven’t had to net these in previous years but it seems we need to do this from now on.

Jobs for next Thursday: Weeding round the hazels and autumn digging.