Rhubarb, rhubarb, rhubarb...

It has been a long time since I posted anything here and I have been shamed by the literary industry (and quality) of my fellow allotmenteer and work colleague Mark's gardening blog. It's high time I recorded progress here.

The spring has been busy even though late. Al and I have found plenty to do and at this point we have only some leeks to plant out into what is the only significant space left on the plot. I don't think we have approached the variety of planting that we have managed this spring in the previous two years and like Mark I'll post a diagram of how the plot looks when I have one.

Some of our work has been aimed at getting a crop in future years. The raspberries and strawberries, mentioned in an earlier blog post, are in that category and some things are experimental; Romanescu cauliflower (or broccoli, the books aren't sure), celery, pointed variety cabbage and cucumber fall into that category. I will see how we get on but if I have some losses I won't be too disappointed. In fact some of the brassicas have been attacked by pigeons and slugs already. Netting and the less nasty kind of slug pellet will deal with that problem I hope.

The usual suspects have been planted as well. We have sweetcorn (Lark), squash (Honey Bear, Sweet Dumpling), courgettes (Romanescu and Tuscany) and I sowed beetroot, chard, ,lettuce,  spring onion, parsnip and carrot too. These suffered from cat trouble and I am not sure what will result in the end. We'll find out. 

The plot as it looks at the beginning of June.

We have one crop so far this spring. I planted rhubarb in the first year and it now looks quite vigourous. I took around ten stems and set about making some jam. I had never made it before but the process seemed straightforward and a decent result was obtained (Al acted as a fairly independent judge). My only concern was in dealing with a super heated sugar and fruit mixture - it looked like something that could have been poured from the walls of a castle as a kind of weapon. It tasted better and we now how just less than four pounds of it.