April 2019 - Grow Harvest Eat

Easter BBQ down the allotment

Things have been a little hectic recently. I’ve had a lot of work on recently that’s taken most of my time up, so my time down the allotment has been rather limited. I’m hoping to get down there this bank holiday weekend as the list of jobs is piling up. That said, on Easter Sunday, myself and the other allotment committee members, held a volunteer morning followed by a BBQ in the afternoon.

For as long as I can remember, the allotment association has always held volunteer mornings a couple of times a year to help keep the communal areas nice and tidy. This was the first one we organised since been voted in as committee, so we wanted to get a lot done.

It was a great morning, we managed to get the portacabin painted, weeded the communal flower beds and also tidied around the compost bays. We had an excellent turn out too and everyone got stuck in.

The afternoon BBQ was a great success too. We had an egg hunt for the kids, egg painting competition and various raffles. I’m looking forward to our summer gathering.

Me after everyone left, acting the idiot as always
An entry for the egg painting competition
Again, me acting like an idiot
An entry for the egg painting competition

Things are in motion

I finished work early today to try and get down the plot for an hour. It felt nice to get down after work to be honest. My aim for today was to plant out my first early potatoes which I bought back in January from a local garden center, and like every single year, I cannot remember the variety. D’oh!!!!!

Most of the seed potatoes were either shrivelled up or really small. To be honest, I think I left them too long on the window sill and I should have really planted them a couple of weeks ago. Oh well.

I’ve still got my main crop of potatoes to plant out, which again, I can’t remember the variety (I do it all the time). These will go in within the next couple of weeks after I’ve finished preparing the bed.

While I was at it, I also planted out half my onion plants. I’ll give it a week before planting out the rest, the birds have a habit of pecking off the tops of the plants, so I don’t want to lose the entire crop. These were a bargain, 80 onion sets for £1 from a local DIY store back in January. I wish I picked up a couple of more bags to be honest. Oh well….

End of the season

So last years growing season has come to an end, I harvested the last of my leeks this week. I’m a huge fan of leeks, sow at the beginning of the year, plant out when they are pencil thick and you can just leave them to themselves.

I wanted to do something simple with them, so I boiled the leeks until soft and served them with chicken and butter. Yum!!!!!