31/8/26 - Back In The Saddle

Hello dearest reader.  It's been a while!  It's amazing what a couple of dodgy knees can stop you from doing when it comes to dealing with your allotment!  But it's been a period of mixed blessing.  The weather has finally broke to the rapturous sounds of thunder and insane periods of rain coupled with a much welcome drop in temperatures.  The weather prior to this week has continued to be hot and dry.  Plenty has suffered when it comes to growing.  My sweetcorn has failed entirely, squash sizes are down on previous years, and tomatoes are splitting their skins left right and centre.  Even the weeds had abated their growth during the hot weather.  All that means that other than watering, there hasn't been much going on at the plot aside from watering, which is a good job given that I haven't been able to walk much for the last 6 or 7 weeks!  This Bank Holiday weekend has been a good yardstick in my recovery though, with two days spent on the feet, or laying on the floor in some cases around the garden or on the plot.  Well, where are we now?

Harvesting

Let's take a look at the good stuff!  Despite the growing season through the Summer being, shall we say, sub-optimal, there has been plenty of harvesting going on.  Harvesting tomatoes has been an almost daily occurrence, but they have all been split, so unless we've caught them in time, or, within a day of it happening, we've also lost plenty too.  We've been growing beefsteak varieties this year, and even though they are though of more a salad tomato, we've also been making some batches of sauces too, with a particularly nice pasta dish recipe coming in another post at some point.

The Uchiki Kuri squash plants started to die back some weeks ago.  We just couldn't keep up with the watering, but from the two plants, they have produced some reasonably sized fruit, and a bunch of cricket balls too.

It's also been a good time for the cucumbers and cucamelons as well.  Again, neither getting to the sizes I would expect, but still producing nonetheless.  Watermelons have also been harvested, though they are also down in size this year.  From 3 plants, I've had around 6 or 7 fruits, which is about right, but the largest from this year was much smaller that last years.  Also, I'm not sure if this is down to watering, but the plants themselves also died back much quicker this year.  I gave a plant to an allotment neighbour who is growing hers outside, and that is still growing well, full of green foliage.

The break in the weather have sent the lettuces into overdrive!  

You may remember from a previous post that I accidentally bought 52 lettuce plugs.  So, it's taking some time to get through them, but I have also been sharing them with plot neighbours.  The lettuces have been brilliant quality though and the race is now on to get through as many as possible before they start to bolt.

Perhaps the most significant harvest this weekend though has been the first row of main crop Sarpo Mira potatoes.  Let me tell you, it's really tricky to harvest potatoes when you can't bend your legs enough to push a fork into the ground.  To tackle that issue, I spent an uncomfortable 20 minutes laying down on the path alongside the bed, dragging myself along and working through the row with a hand fork.  Not much fun, but it did the job.  The potatoes have been ready to come out for the last 3 weeks or so, but not being able to get to the plot, they stayed in the ground.  I knew that they would be quite happy, but when the weather broke, I started getting concerning about them potentially rotting off.  I needn't have worried, and the reason why I stopped after one row, as well as being really uncomfortable, was that within a few inches, despite having around an inch of rain, the soil was still dust dry under the surface.  No action shot of me dragging myself across the floor, but there is an 'after' picture.  Again though, compared to last year, this years potatoes are much smaller.  Last year, we harvested some that were nice baked potato size.  Not so much this year, although we did enjoy our first allotment roast potatoes with our Sunday dinner this weekend.

Harvesting - Part 2

Around two and half months ago, I posted about a new water collection method that I put in place on the big polytunnel.  10 Weeks later, it finally decided to rain.  10 Flipping weeks.  It's taken this long to finally see the fruits of the idea and my labour.  We think we've had around an inch, maybe inch and a quarter of rain in the last few days.  A lot of water has come out the sky, probably something close to the average for the whole month of August.  At last though, I now have confirmation that the system works.  Not only that, but when I took the photo below, the water butt wasn't far off from being full.  And since this picture was taken, we've had more rain and a check on things today showed that it was totally full!

Everything Else

Due to my lack of activity, I now have several empty beds and an ever growing list of jobs that should have been tackled over the last couple of months.  I should of had some winter veg in places, turned the manure pile, manured the empty beds, got more manure from the stables as well as the day to day keeping on top of weeding and pruning.  That has all had to get pushed back, but while I wait, the leeks which have given me so much concern this year thanks to mole activity are finally looking good.  They are really starting to thicken up and though not quite right for harvesting yet, the rust fungus is staying away which is good to see.

The one winter veg I did manage to get in the ground before going crook was the red cabbage.  Hopefully this will provide us with some Christmas dinner trimmings.  There are white fly about, but at the moment, they don't seem to be doing too much damage and the plants themselves are looking quite healthy.

Back At Home

Sitting at home getting hacked off at not being able to visit the plot has allowed the mind to wander.  I've tried to use the time in a more positive way, and I've also muttered the words on more than one occasion that Ali roles her eyes at the most... 'I've had an idea....'  Those ideas are for another time, but involve more water harvesting and storage.  I've also had a look at next year, and would you believe it, I now have my growing list for next year, on paper at least anyway.

In another mind wandering moment, I also decided to see what AI made of allotment planning.  Controversial, I know!  For some years, I have kept a seed stock list of all the different seeds I have in the seed box, along with their suggested planting and harvest times according to the packet, and their use by dates.  I also have a separate file with my list and positions of beds.  I then thought that I now have everything I need to create a growing plan, but lets see if Copilot could do it quicker or better.  You know what? It made a really good job of it, even offering to produce a PDF growing guide for the year.  I added my seed stock spreadsheet and bed plan into Copilot, used the prompt to ask it to produce a growing plan for next year taking into account all the information I presented it, and within a few seconds, it had everything worked out and gave me all the information I needed to run my plot for next year.  I dare say that if next year, I put that information into Copilot again, it would also take into account crop rotation, and produce another plan for the next year.  So, am I going to follow that then?  Probably not.  But it was an interesting experiment.  For now though, I like the process of using my VegPlotter subscription and working it all out my self.  It also makes like much easier when it comes to looking back on previous years.  I do wonder though, with a bit of vibe coding, if I could write my own app....???

Finally for this post, all this mentioning about planning and getting ready for this year should make it obvious that I am sticking on the plot for 26/27.  Last week, we had our invoice for next season.  As a committee a couple of weeks ago, we agreed to a small rent increase across the board, which everybody was in favour of.  These are my charges for my one and a half plots for the next season...

Total area of both plots: 135m sq.

Cost per m sq:  35p

Annual standing charge:  £5.50  (all members pay this, regardless on the size of their plot or plots.)

Total for 2026/27:  £52.75

Personally, I think this is still remarkable value to be able to use the land for a whole year, including water.  There aren't many hobbies in life where you can live off your hobby, and it cost very little.  For comparison, last year, both plots cost me £46.00, so there has been an increase, but still great value!