Summer ending & autumn beginning

8 comments

Summer ending & autumn beginning (Plot 12A)

September – October

Beetroot ‘Solis’:

The Spanish lady, Amparo, who spent 2 weeks here in August, & I sowed these seeds a couple of days before she had to return to Spain.

I had grown Carrots in the narrow bed earlier this year but it had been empty for about a month.

I was disappointed with the poor germination rate of these seeds & with the time they took to come up! Even now they have not made nearly as much progress as I would have liked!

The Pinto beans you can see on the left of the photos have made a lot of progress in just 1 month!

Beetroot ‘Solis’ in October:

Lettuce ‘Paris Island Cos’:

I sowed the very last of the packet of seeds I bought at the beginning of the year on the 1st of September

Making progress!

More plants germinated & greater progress:

On the left of the photos you can see a tomato plant with fruit. This is the only plant to survive in the bed! All the rest of the plants died of Blight in July but this one, although infected as well, has somehow managed to survive & cling to life while producing fruit! I’m saving some seed from this plant to see if the genes will carry through to next year!

The same plants in early October:

Leeks:

Only the two rows on the right were planted out on the date in the photo, the others were planted out a week or two earlier! All the green you see are NOT weeds but Lentils I’d sown some weeks earlier when I had nothing to put in the bed.

Here is a view of the Leeks now in the first couple of days of October:

Leeks in half bed:

As this half bed was empty, except for weeds!, I thought I’d plant Leeks there as well. All the seedlings in both photos came from a guy who had sown several rows very thickly of his own saved seed. He told me I could have as many as I liked as he had plenty planted out for his own use.

Half bed of Leeks now in October:

Peas ‘Hurst Green Shaft’:

These were the very first pods of these peas that I picked & took home:

Pinto beans at far end of plot:

These are turning out to be the best bed of Pinto beans I’ve grown this year! They are at the end of my plot, it’s the last bed of my plot & where I grew early Potatoes ‘Rocket’ earlier this year:

A broad end on shot, rather than a shot from the beginning of the bed as in the other photos:

I put hoops in here as I wanted to cover the beans with fleece to give them a little protection against a possible frost we were forecast, as we had days of very strong winds I was unable to put the fleece over them.

Photo taken in October of the bed of Pinto beans at the far end of my plot:

Runner beans:

I’ve only included ONE photo of each as the plants look practically the same all month!

Runner beans ‘Celebration’:

This bean is easy to distinguish from the other beans I have grown as the pods are a lighter green & flatter than other beans the skin is also very smooth:

A photo of the last Runner beans ‘Celebration’ just harvested:

Runner beans ‘Streamline’:

These beans had a very rough pod but they produced 100s of beans!

Last of Runner beans ‘Streamline’ just picked:

Climbing French Bean ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’, is, I think, the name of this ‘Unknown variety’. I got some seeds in a swap on another gardening forum at the start of the year. The labels got lost when it came to planting out the 5 or 6 climbing beans I’d sown!

French Bean ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’ in October:

French Bean ‘Cherokee Trail of Tears’ seen much closer up in October:

The seeds are jet black & apparently can be cooked in the same way as we cook Pinto beans.

Tomatoes:Blight survivors:

These two plants are the only survivors of the blight that ravaged the allotment field during late July/early August this year. The further of the two didn’t survive to October, it was in such a bad condition that I pulled it up.

One surviving plant left:

Only Tomatoes harvested in 2012!

Last photo taken in October:

Last Tomatoes just picked. I picked these because we were forecast frost that night! I picked all the fruits that were just beginning to change colour & the green ones of a similar size.:

To finish this blog of my own allotment, Plot 12A, here is a photo taken, from the inside, of the glorious show put on by these Perennial Sunflowers which I transplanted from Gerry’s allotment to the top of mine to help cover the corrugated iron sheeting that makes up the composting area:

Here is what they look like from the central pathway where all the allotments begin:

See you next month.

• 11 Oct, 2012
• 6 likes

More blog posts by balcony