*High Summer Down On The Allotment (July 2)*

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High Summer Down On The Allotment (July 2)

I promised a 2nd part to the blog I posted just a week ago.

Here is a photo of the Sunflowers & Runner beans Gerry planted. They are all coming on fabulously! I was a bit worried that his Runner beans didn’t seem to be setting seed but now it seems they don’t like the heat we have been having. I’ve seen a few pods during this week so perhaps the couple of days of lower temps helped.

Gerry planted some more Runners a couple of weeks ago & now they are living up to their name & running up the canes! LOL! These are in a parallel plot where I had transplanted the Raspberry canes I dug up from the main bed where we put the greenhouse. In the autumn I shall transplant some more canes to that end space & so fill that bed with them, in the meantime Gerry’s beans fill up the space.

As you can see in this photo of my Onions they have reached the point of drying. The leaves had begun to fall over so about a week after noticing that I decided to pull them up & lay them on their sides to complete the drying process. I’m obviously VERY pleased at the size of the onions! The guy from the allotment beside ours, Eddie, commented that he had never had any luck growing onions & wanted to know what I did! This has been my very first time ever growing onions! Beginner’s luck? We’ll see next year.

For the “fans” on my experiments here is a close up photo of what the plants of the Garbanzo bean (Chick Pea) look like. I saw today (24th July) that some plants now have flowers & seed pods.

The Pinto Beans have flowers & are beginning to climb but I haven’t seen any seedpods as yet.

Even the Lentils have flowers & seedpods as well.

Here is a view from the greenhouse of the sunflower near the shed. Since I took this photo the petals have all fallen off. :-(

At the end of the half allotment there is this enormous Buddelia. It’s looking fabulous during this month & it attracts many butterflies, from where it gets its popular name of Butterfly bush, I’ve also seen the many bees that are attracted to it.

During the week 12-15 July we had some very strong winds & the visible result we have here – the Asparagus blown over on top of my Beetroot & Lentils! After a few days I tied some thick twine to the posts at either end of the row & brought it down either side of the Asparagus that way holding it off the other plants. The red Gladioli amongst them have been there for years according to Gerry & flower every year while increasing in size.

You may be able to make out the tomatoes I put in the growbags some weeks ago. Even though there are still some panes of glass missing from the greenhouse it still gets very hot in there. I spent half an hour in there last Tuesday & I was thankful to get out! I felt like I was being cooked alive! The plants have set more fruit than I thought they might. I hadn’t seen a single bee it the greenhouse so I have taken to knocking the flowers around when I go in there to water them. Whether its the bees or me I noticed quite a few tomatoes on the plants today.

If I leave water too long in the cans inside the greenhouse the water becomes too hot to use in the growbags! I now remember to check it before using it – I don’t want to scold the tomatoes’ roots!

The Black Currant bushes (2) are loaded down with fruit! As I noticed a lot of fruit was falling on the ground below them I decided to pick some.

You can see just how many I picked in this photo! When I got home I weighed them & found I’d picked 700g, almost 3/4 kilo (1lb 8oz in old money. Luckily our scales are marked in both systems!)

Here is a shot of the big Blackberry bush at the top of the allotment. It has 1,000s of berries & during the last couple of days I’ve been picking off the ones on the very tips of the branches & eating them! I found the majority of the ones I picked were quite sweet.

The Gooseberry bushes behind the shed are so weighed down by fruit that all the branches are bowed down or out! They are cookers according to Gerry but I find them as sweet as the dessert ones at the top of the allotment & which I have been watering since April. These bushes have never received a drop of water that hasn’t fallen out of the sky! Which means they have been growing practically under drought conditions!

The Gooseberries in this first photo of them all came from the “Dessert” bushes. When I had finished it didn’t look as if I’d even started! The bag contained 1kg 700g or 3lb 12oz.

This 2nd picture taken a few days later was of the “Cookers” But I’m still eating them even now as I write this blog! I got as many as I could in the little supermarket punnet but even so I managed to pick 840g or 1lb 12oz!

Well I’m posting this update & going to finish off my Gooseberries!

Until the last day of the month then when I’ll add the updates during the last week or so.

• 24 Jul, 2010
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