Allotment Diary (August – Week 2)

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How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 8 hours, it’s been raining a lot (so no watering) and to be honest there’s not much to do apart from harvesting.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,460.   We’ve spent a total of £931 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £222 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 30 meals with ingredients from the allotment.  We’ve finally processed some of the onions and shallots and moved them into the store, so I’ve added those to the total, lots more to go.

 

We picked: Main crop runner beans, main crop French beans, main crop onions, calcots, a few of the main crop potatoes,cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, tayberries, red currants, chard, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves,  lots of types of kale, spring onions, mixed herbs and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples. Bold items are new this week.

 

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nothing

Video’s this week

Preparing for a Self-sufficient Winter – Part 2 – Cold-frames and Low Tunnels

Setting the brassicas free from their nets!

Planting the last Christmas potatoes and carrots

What I’ve sown

All of my attention is now turning to keeping us well fed in Autumn, winter and early spring!  This week I completed sowing everything except plants destined for the polytunnel and over-wintering, except lambs lettuce and spinach.

 

 

What I’ve planted

Nothing

What I’ve potted on

Nothing

First harvests of the year

This section of my diary is about to get very boring, very soon as first harvests are almost all done!  This week is exciting though, because we finally started harvesting the main crop runner beans and the French beans!!

 

What we’ve run out of in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, shallots, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I didn’t intend tracking water reserves until the taps go off, however it’s been a remarkable month.  We’ve been totally self-sufficient in water for over a month now due to huge amounts of rain.  However the tap water has still been incredibly useful for harvesting.

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

Debbie is a bit behind on her tracking, so this will get updated next week.  We’ve processed a lot though.

Highlights

1. Salad mixes are wonderful
2. The first outdoor runner beans, just before the polytunnel beans ran out!
3. The first French beans, (I’m growing polytunnel French beans next year)
4. The first bulk tomato harvest destined for passata
5. No watering needed
6. It looks like we have agreement to keep the allotment sites tap water switched on

Lowlights

1. Huge amounts of rain, overflowing all of the water storage containers and causing local flooding.  This means I have to figure out some overflow management piping.
2. The wind and rain is burning some of the lettuce growing tips
3. The peppers are very slower to ripen than the tomatoes, which means the first passata mixes are sans peppers
4. The beets are suffering terribly this year.  The reds all have a mix of leaf-miner and fungal spot, the goldens are bolting due to the hot/cold cycles
5. The golden purselane is hating the wet and windy weather