October Allotment Tour (Steve’s Plot)

It’s been a super busy month here in a not so sunny Lytham St Annes in Lancashire, but we’ve managed to take advantage of every good day and got a lot done. The main job has been building a second hot bed, which will go into service in early February, you can see all the details in this video https://youtu.be/qXuI6uY1aK8.

We’ve also cleared the sweet potato bed, which looked very promising but turned out quite disappointing, we only harvested maybe 5 lbs of tubers and they were a mixed bag in terms of size. The total value was probably less that £3 and a polytunnel bed can easily provide £30 of harvest with the right crop. I put down a couple of inches of compost and replanted straight away with Medina and Red Kitten Spinach, and a two rows of giant red and red frills mustard.

Debbie also cleared all of the larger beetroots and a few of the smaller ones. The large ones are now all packed away in our store room at home (see this video for details https://youtu.be/x4ltWhMEW8M), Debbie’s going to try pickling the smaller ones. The rest will stay in the ground and feed us for a couple of months until we switch over to the store. I put down an inch of compost and then replanted with lambs lettuce and winter gem lettuce, which will stay under fleece for a couple of weeks, to protect it from the gales we are expecting.

Debbie harvested all of the leeks that had gone to seed, cored them, chopped them and make wonderful Leek and Potato Soup, which has gone down very well with everyone who tried it.

I’ve also been pulling a few of my least favourite lettuces, which I planted just in case, and replacing them with chinese cabbages and mustards to provide a bit of extra salad variety.

Other than that it’s just been non stop harvesting and the store room is chock full now, we’ve got 4 sacks of potatoes, a freezer full of beans, New Zealand Spinach and fruit, three large crates of beetroot and three smaller crates of apples and pears and we are falling over onions and shallots. Everything else is still in the ground as we’ve no where to put it!

The next bulk harvest will be all of the beans we have grown for drying, a dizzying collection of colours and patterns better than any modern art.

If you’d like to see more pictures of my allotment the best place is on instagram https://www.instagram.com/_steve.richards_/ and if you’d like to read more the best place is my blog http://steves.seasidelife.com/