Allotment Diary (July – Week 1)
Two of my four daughters live very close by, but the other two are in the London area, which is a 5-7 hour drive away, depending on the traffic. As a result we only see them a few times a year and they – and their families – are staying with us over the next two weeks. As a result we’ve been busy: decorating, cleaning, tidying and generally making the house and garden visitor ready.
I’ve also been trying to get well ahead on my gardening jobs, to minimise the amount of time I spend away from them. It’s been a busy, but fun filled week. Aside from the joy of seeing family again, it’s also a great motivator to get all those little jobs finished!
On the gardening front I’ve cleared and replanted the gaps between the tomatoes with beetroot and golden purslane and planted spinach in one of the garden beds. I still have two garden beds waiting to be planted, which will happen next week and then I will be 100% planted again.
I’m also continuing to plant carrot containers, we’ve used these containers for our summer and soon to be, early autumn harvests. Our main crop for late autumn, winter and spring are in the ground.
I’m also rapidly harvesting the last of our second earlies and replanting the containers with Charlotte’s which will be harvested as salad potatoes from November until April, when our new season harvest is ready.
I’ve not had time for any days away from St Annes this week, but I’ve done plenty of beach walks.
I’ve a new way of tracking my first harvest dates now. The beauty of this new system is that it’s fully integrated with my sowing records, so I automatically get ‘sowing to harvest’ and ‘planting to harvest’ data. New firsts are at the top.
Here’s what I sowed this week:
Here’s what we planted this week.
We are now at full harvest volume, feeding everyone on our target list for this year and one lucky extra person as we have a bit of a surplus.
Here’s our harvests for the year so far, with the most recent at the top. We hit our target for last year and harvested over £12,000. We will never harvest as much again as we have less land now, our objective has changed now.
Here’s a list of the preserves for last year. We don’t have any preserves this year yet, although Debbie is certainly making a lot of stewed rhubarb and dried parsley for immediate use!
YouTube videos for the week can be found here:
Not to sure that your garden needed any work Steve, it looked immaculate in last weeks video.
Just needed a bit of dog proofing, sweeping up ready for bare feet, removing trip hazards for little uns and putting supports in for the potatoes which are a bit floppy now in the wind
I’ve been doing a lot of the ‘little jobs’ in our garden and I’m usually surprised by how much time it really takes! It’s good you were ab le to visit with family. I’m guessing your garden was more tidy to start with than mine is too! Not having people over to see ours very often does tend to make me somewhat lazy with upkeep, especially when the temps turn hot and I can only stand to work out there very early or very late in the day.
My tiny garden is fairly easy to keep tidy, especially as it’s mainly edibles. Every few months it’s all pristine again. As well as constant family visits, doing a monthly YouTube tour was a great motivator to tidy up once a month, at least it was when I started.
Your open beaches are like other places in California, but certainly not like urban San Diego. Always nice shots of them. I’ve never grown carrots in containers but that’s an interesting idea for a summer crop. They wouldn’t be in the way of fall planting and I could keep them in a shadier place to keep an eye on them and help with germination. Of course the soil would be so very loose. What size containers do you use? Hard to guess from the photo. Thanks.
I’m using 20 litre containers, but 15 litre ones work well too Sue. For germination I just cover them with a sheet of wood or similar, to keep them moist