Tag: onions

Summer is finally here

Summer is finally here

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.

Chicken with vegetables from the allotment

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.

Harvested onions

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.

Another allotment harvest

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.

 

Spring to Autumn We've missed a season

Spring to Autumn: We’ve missed a season

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.

potatoes grown in containers

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.

The peas eaten by pigeons
Peas grown in guttering

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.

My onions in June

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.

Until next time….

Allotment Tour May 2024

Allotment Tour May 2024 – Grow Harvest Eat

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.

Seeds I'm sowing in February

Seeds I’m sowing in February

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.

Looking back at 2022

I realise we’re at the end of January, but I thought I would take the time and reflect back at 2022, and look at our successes and failures.

After moving plots in autumn 2021, 2022 was the first year growing on the new plot. We managed to clear a large bed in time for spring (in fact it covered almost half the plot) and gave enough growing space for what we needed. We kept to our core veg; potatoes, beans, onions, sweetcorn, pumpkins and courgettes.

The potatoes started off well and we managed to harvest all our first and most of our second early potatoes. However, we left the main crop in the ground for too long, and when it come to digging them up in the middle of winter, they had rotted away.

The beans done extremely well, but started to suffer a little during the heatwave. They soon bounced back in late summer.

Our onions were fantastic, in fact probably the best crop we’ve ever had and we’ve still got some left in the cupboard.

Sweetcorn started really well, but we had a few succumb to smut, a fungal disease which affects sweetcorn. Smut thrives on hot dry summers, so it’s no surprise we had it considering the temperatures we had.

There’s one major issue that cropped up in late autumn and that’s rats. Rats have moved in underneath the chicken coop and while we are keeping them at bay with traps, they are still a problem. Fortunately, they seem to be leaving the chickens alone and more interested in digging holes everywhere.

Here’s some pictures from last year.

View of allotment from my shed

A morning down the plot

I managed to get an hour down the plot this morning with the aim to plant out my remaining onions. I planted out a load of them at the beginning of April but I purposely didn’t plant out one tray, as I’ve had problems with birds pecking the tops off them. Fortunately, they’ve left them alone this year, so I should have a decent harvest from them come summer time.

I’ve been growing my onions from sets for years. I did try growing them from seed a couple of years ago, but germination was extremely poor, so I’ve grown them from sets ever since. I simply plant the sets into seed trays, grow them in the greenhouse until they are around 6 inches tall, and then move them to my cold frame for a month or two.

While having a walk around the plot, I noticed how much the weeds have grown since last weeks rain. Fortunately, my Oscillating Hoe made short work of them. If you haven’t got yourself an Oscillating Hoe, I highly recommend you get one, I find it a lot more effective at dealing with the weeds. It cuts the weeds beneath the soil level where they are most vulnerable.

I’m going to leave you with a photo of the plot looking from the shed.

Until next time…

View of allotment from my shed
Onion bed

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!!!!!

Planting potatoes

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….

Onions