Allotment Diary (November – Week 4)
It’s been another very light week on the allotments, although I’m still finding the odd jobs to do. This week the main accomplishment was cutting back the asparagus bed and covering it with a thick layer of home made compost. I’ve also done a little weeding in the garden and on the allotment, but apart from that it’s just been harvesting.
Harvesting hasn’t been completely positive though, because I did notice that some of my test lettuces had greenfly. I could have tried to save them, but to be honest I wasn’t happy with them anyway – they failed the test – so I was pleased to remove them and to have a tray of lovely Navara lettuce plug plants all ready to replace them. I’ve also had a try at micro-greens, although so far I prefer sprouting in a jar.
To make up for the lack of gardening work I’ve had plenty of lovely sunrises and sunsets to enjoy on my daily walks.
I’ve had a day up in the hills and lakes of Rivington and I’ve worked my way through a few repairs to the house. The harvests though continue to be the gardening highlight of the season.
We did a big Sunday harvest and then a salad harvest for Debbie and I on Thursday.
The salads are wonderful at this time of year, although the quality degrades a little as we head into deep winter.
However right now we are enjoying the delights of newly harvested Oca, which has a lovely tangy, lemony taste and a fresh crunch die for. The plot also looks quite nice provided the clouds give it a helping hand
Here’s this weeks sowing log.
As already mentioned I’m well on with the planting now, this is what I’ve planted this week.
I now have a public view onto my database that lists every seed packet I’ve used in the last few years, as well as those I have in stock. You can find it here and embedded below.
It’s worth noting that these embedded views are very powerful, you can search, sort, filter and export from them.
Here’s our harvests for the year so far, with the most recent at the top. We’ve now passed last year’s total harvest value and we still have a huge amount of food in the ground to harvest this year, so I’m expecting to harvest about £2,500 more than last year. This is party as a result of spending £200 extending the growing area in the back garden, a very nice payback!
Here’s a list of the preserves for the year.
I always like to keep a track of or first harvest dates and you can find a summary of those here:
YouTube videos for the week can be found here:
I’ve often wondered what you do with oca. I thought that all you could do with it is boil it like potatoes, but you are eating it raw I think with your salads. I am in awe of your organisation and am starting to get my head around Air Table so that I can make use of your resources. Many thanks for doing that.
Seems such a shame to cook it, not very productive compared to potatoes : all the best – Steve
I’ve done some experimenting with micro greens and sprouting, and I find that I like some of the brassicas better as micro greens. Broccoli comes to mind as one I really don’t like as well sprouted. Interesting to see you cutting your asparagus bed back now. When we do it in fall it seems to get weedy again by spring, so we have been waiting until late winter/early spring to do it.
I just want to get the asparagus well composted, no weeds then