It only seems like yesterday we were on holiday in Cornwall. September went by in the blink of an eye, mainly because my wife and I got married. We are now in the middle of October, and we have started putting the allotment to bed for the winter.
Prepping the Allotment for Winter
We have emptied most of the beds and begun mulching them with homemade compost and well-rotted manure. There are still a few things left; we need to pick and harvest loads of beetroot, the runner beans are just hanging on, and the pumpkins are ripening up and will be ready for Halloween.
Unfortunately, the weather battered the leeks, and they don’t look great. We’ll start harvesting them soon, as I doubt they’ll make it through the winter.
We picked the remaining apples and pears from our fruit trees, and I’m happy to say we had a decent crop this year.
We harvested and froze the remaining sweetcorn. It’s one of our favourite crops, and we look forward to harvesting it each year. We’d quite happily fill the entire plot with sweetcorn if we could.
The tomatoes in the greenhouse are still producing fruit and thriving. Normally, by now, we would have harvested all the fruit and composted the plants, but this year they are doing exceptionally well. I really want to have fresh tomatoes in December, so we’ll see how it goes.
As we wrap up the allotment for another year, it’s satisfying to see the results of our hard work, even though some crops thrived while others struggled. We always learn something new from each season, and we’re already thinking about what to grow next year (in fact, our onion sets and garlic just arrived today).
Until next time, it’s time to enjoy the fruits of our labour—both in the kitchen and in life.
There’s something truly special about the taste of homegrown vegetables, a flavour that simply can’t be replicated by store bought produce. Recently, a friend heading off on holiday gave me some cherry tomatoes they couldn’t use and were about to discard. For fun, I decided to do a taste test between my homegrown cherry tomatoes and store bought ones.
I’m growing the trusted Gardener’s Delight variety this year. Gardener’s Delight is a cordon variety that produces sweet red cherry tomatoes and is known for its high yields.
How do they compare?
Before biting into the first cherry tomato, the first noticeable difference was the smell. My homegrown tomatoes filled the air with a rich tomato scent, while the shop-bought ones had no smell at all. Visually, the shop-bought tomatoes appeared more appealing, with a deeper red colour than my homegrown toms.
Now for the taste test. Biting into my homegrown tomatoes, they taste exactly like a tomato should: vibrant, with a sun-ripened sweetness that bursts with a fresh, garden flavour. The store bought tomatoes, on the other hand, were sweet but lacked the depth of flavour and richness that only comes from being freshly picked off the vine. They were also on the watery side.
Why does homegrown taste better?
The varieties of tomatoes you get at the shop are chosen with different priorities in mind. These tomatoes are selected primarily because they can be mechanically harvested, withstand the rigours of long-distance shipping, and ripen more slowly to ensure a longer shelf life. Unfortunately, many growers often prioritize other factors over taste. As a result, these tomatoes often look perfectly uniform and are easy to transport, but they lack the rich flavour that homegrown varieties offer. This is why, despite their convenience, shop-bought tomatoes frequently fail to match the flavour of homegrown tomatoes.
Have you noticed a difference in flavour between homegrown and store bought tomatoes? I’d love to hear your experiences!
It finally feels like summer is here. We’ve been harvesting plenty of fruit and veg from the allotment and took our first holiday of the year to Cornwall.
We managed to have our first dinner where all the vegetables on the plate were picked fresh from the allotment just hours before. There’s something satisfying about knowing where the food comes from and the effort it took to grow it.
We had chicken cooked in sweet chilli sauce, accompanied by a medley of freshly harvested potatoes, courgettes, carrots, spring onions, and sugar snap peas. It went down a treat and reminded us why we love our allotment so much.
Onion harvest
A couple of days before heading to Cornwall, I spent some time at the allotment to ensure everything was in order while we were away. One of the jobs involved harvesting some of the onions. I pulled up half my onions and left them to dry in the greenhouse. There’s something so wholesome about the smell of freshly pulled onions; it’s one of my favourite times of the year. The remaining half was pulled up when we returned from our trip, and they are currently drying out in the greenhouse, waiting to be stored.
Our Cornish Adventure
Cornwall was a breath of fresh air. We stayed just outside Lizard and spent a lot of time exploring the local area and Cornwall itself. I’ll let the pictures do the talking here:
Mullion Cove
Sunset at Lands End
Fishing Boat at Lizard Point
Lizard Point
Kennack Sands
Back to the Allotment
When we arrived back from Cornwall, I popped down to the plot for an hour; first to feed the chickens and second to see if there was anything to harvest. To my pleasant surprise, the allotment had thrived while we were away. I harvested runner beans, more peas, beetroot (one of my favourite vegetables), raspberries, tomatoes, cooking apples, and some of the onions that had completely dried out.
Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough time, so I had to head back home, leaving quite a bit still to harvest. This week, I plan to spend more time at the allotment to gather the remaining crops.
It’s time for a July 2024 allotment update. Things seem to be growing ok; some plants are loving this weird weather while others are taking their time to get going.
I woke up yesterday, and it felt like autumn. In fact, I had to turn the heating on in the house. It feels like summer passed us by completely and autumn arrived abruptly.
Plot-wise, things are growing slowly. The cooler weather certainly isn’t helping. My potatoes look okay, but my first early potatoes are a hit-and-miss. Only four plants are growing in the bed, although I planted eight. The second early potatoes are fine though, and all of these are growing. The potatoes in my containers seem to be doing okay, and I harvested some last week for dinner.
Unfortunately, pigeons have battered my second batch of peas, and most of the leaves have been eaten. I’ve covered them with netting and gave them a feed; hopefully, they will recover and produce a crop. However, my second sowing of peas looks amazing and has been planted out. I start my peas off in some old guttering, and once they are 4-6 inches high, I slide them off the guttering into the bed. It makes planting out a lot quicker and avoids disturbing the roots.
Elsewhere, I’m glad to report that my onions are starting to bulk up and look really healthy. These were sown in the autumn and put on a lot of growth before winter set in. It’s only in the last few weeks that they’ve started to perk up.
The strawberries I planted in late winter are doing really well. I bought 10 plants off eBay to create a new small strawberry bed. When they arrived, I honestly didn’t think they would do much, but they’ve put on a lot of growth and have started to produce fruit. I really need to net them before the birds and other animals eat them before I do.
I had a little win last week—I spotted the first fruit on my tomato plants. They are tiny, but they are producing fruit. Hopefully, the plants won’t get hit by bacterial wilt like they did last year.
May started out with hot sunny weather and you could tell summer was on the way. However, the last couple of weeks, the weather has turned and we’ve had a lot of rain. Most plants (and weeds) have loved the rain and putting on a load of growth. Join me in this months allotment tour.
Join me as I share the latest updates from my plot in April! From the excitement of sowing seeds to the challenges of unpredictable weather, I delve into the progress of my broad beans, tomatoes, peas, and potatoes.
April has brought a flurry of activity to my plot; I’ve started to sow my seeds, and they’ve started to poke their heads through the soil. My fruit trees are in blossom, and the weeds have started to grow. Spring is around the corner. However, it’s taking its time, we have a couple of days of warm sunny weather, followed by rain and cooler temperatures. I’ve felt like it’s been a long autumn and winter, and I really can’t wait for summer.
What I’ve been sowing
I planted my first batch of broad beans into their final positions, and they are looking really well. I sowed a second batch in pots in the greenhouse a few weeks ago, and they’ve started to come through.
I sowed my tomatoes in mid-March. Until the beginning of the week, there was no activity, and I thought none of them had germinated. Because of this, I bought three plants from the local garden center as a backup last week. Oh well, at least I’ve got some spare.
I had sown some peas directly and covered them with glass to aid germination; unfortunately, the slugs have eaten them. I sowed a second batch in the greenhouse using some old drainpipe guttering. Once these are big enough, I can simply slide them into the beds without disturbing the roots.
I normally plant my potatoes Easter weekend; however, we were away in Wales on a short break. So last weekend, I planted them in the beds. I had some left over, so I planted them in large containers. I like growing potatoes in containers; it makes them easier to harvest, and you never miss any. The only downside I find is that they require a lot of watering. This year I’m only growing two varieties; Swift and Acoustic, both early varieties.
I’ve yet to sow some runner beans, courgettes, or sweetcorn. I’m seeing a lot of people on Facebook sowing these, but I always wait until May before I sow them. They germinate and grow quickly, especially in the greenhouse. The last thing I want to do is plant them into their final positions and be caught out by a late frost.
Join me in this mid-March allotment update. With spring in full swing, some of my plants are starting to put on growth, but I’m still holding back from sowing too much for another week or two.
It’s nearly the end of February and I’ve got an itch that I simply need to scratch. Seed sowing.
I see a lot of people sowing their seeds as early as January. While some plants take a long time to grow, such as chillies and peppers and need to be sown early, I personally think January is too early for most veg plants.
Sowing seeds early can lead to spindly or leggy growth, poor germination rates and generally, in my opinion, a weaker plant. That said, you can use growing lights and heat mats to combat this. But once the plants get to a certain size, you need to move them on and if you haven’t got the space indoors, means moving them into the garden or greenhouse. The weather might be a little too cold for them and shock the plants.
I prefer to start sowing my seeds from mid-February.
Seeds I’m sowing now
I started some broad beans in little pots a couple of weeks ago and these have just started poking through the soil. I’m growing my broad beans in two beds and will get around 8 plants per bed. So far, I’ve sown 12 plants in total and will sow another 12 in a couple of week’s time. This will give me some extra plants in case some fail to germinate, or they don’t survive.
I’ve also sown some spring onions into seed trays. These will go out into the salad bed when they are large enough and I’ll harvest these in clumps.
In the next couple of weeks, I’ll start sowing most of my seeds in the greenhouse. The less hardy plants such as sweetcorn and runner beans will be sown Mid-April. My tomatoes will be started indoors around Mid-March and once big enough, will be moved into the greenhouse.
