Taking a chance to tidy up

I went down to the plot today in the hope that I would get a chance to tidy things up. The weeds seemed to be the single most obvious growing things on the allotment and I feared that they would soon be too well established for me to deal with them.


I took a light azada as well as a hoe with me. My colleague and fellow allotmenteer, Mark, had shown me the azada he uses at his plot one lunchtime and I was taken with it enough to buy two. One is medium weight and seems to be good for turning over previously cultivated ground. On the experience of today the light one makes an excellent hoeing tool. I was able to work between rows much more effectively than using a push hoe. I was able to prepare ground for seed sowing using it too. All in all I was delighted with my purchase and I can see myself using it a lot. Thanks to Mark for the the tip.


After a couple of hours the plot was looking much better, despite enforced some pauses due to rain showers. Once the potatoes are lifted it will all look much tidier overall. Now that the foliage has been removed from them the potato rows are a happy place for weeds but I'll be able to remove them as I harvest the potatoes.


I took a fork and did some gentle exploratory lifting in a corner of the main crop Picasso potatoes. I was disappointed at first finding only very small tubers but I tried harder and was rewarded by the sight of a decent sized and reasonably numerous potatoes. I'll lift the whole lot in a week or so.


Elsewhere on the plot the sweetcorn is doing well as are the dwarf french beans, main crop onions, beetroot, lettuce and broad beans. Most improved crop has to be squash. They took a long time to get started but the squash Celebration is taking hold of the bottom left corner of the allotment. We have pumpkins (Invincible) and a butternut variety too (probably Hunter) but their effort has been half-hearted so far at least.

Pumpkin Invincible - just a flower so far

Squash Celebration - one of many...

Sweetcorn (of course)

Dwarf beans - Borlotto and ?

Spring onion Apache

 While I was down at the plot I decided to sow some more spring onions (Apache) and lettuce. Is is probably too late but I think it is worth a try at least - it at least possible we will get some Little Gem lettuce in October...