29/9/26 - Harvesting Continues and Planning Starts
Good evening. Time for the next allotment diary entry, and I have a little bit to catch up on. I really love this time of year on the allotment. The product of all the hard work from through the year pays dividends and visiting the plot at the moment rarely means leaving empty handed. I can't lie, the last 3 or 4 months have been tough. Not only because of the weather, but ill health has played a big part in me not being able to tend to the plot as much as I want to. I still feel so far behind and I still think I could of had a much more positive outcome on many of the crops if I had been more on hand and ready to deal with issues before the got too bad.
But enough of that, onto the good stuff. The last couple of weeks I have been able to manage to spend a little bit more time there, so things are starting to get done. During the last week, we have also been lucky enough to get a large delivery of a manure mix from a local farm which has meant that initial concerns for feeding the soil this year a slightly alleviated. This mean that as then beds are being freed up of crops, I now have something to put down on them to start enriching the soil again, ready for the next crop.
Starting at the back of the plot, but with no photos, we have seen the end of the blackberry harvest for this year, much of which went unpicked because of not being able to spend time on the plot. Nevertheless, the two blackberry bushes were starting to get very overgrown, so to bring it back under control, a vast majority of the growth has now been cut back and I expect a bit more will get pruned out before the end of the year. I'm quite happy to have a drop in harvest next year while the bushes recover and then hopefully be back up and running again the following year.
In the polytunnels, the watermelon plants have all been taken out and the fruits stored. The salads and pepper plants have also come out. Sadly we lost a lot of peppers because I wasn't able to harvest them. But removing the plants in the tunnels did mean I had chance to plant some undercover all year round cauli plants. They are doing really well and are enjoying the cooler evenings.
Outside, the carrot bath has had a bit of a refresh and a single row of late carrots has been sown. It maybe that it's too late for them, but if we continue to have mild temperatures through October, then maybe we'll get some mini carrots late into the season.
Thanks to the arrival of the manure mix, the old bean bed has been fed and will now sit until the Spring. Next to it, the squash and sweetcorn bed has been cleared. We have had a great harvest of Uchiki Kuri squash, but a total fail on the sweetcorn. Again, possibly because I wasn't able to get there often enough to water. But, now it's clear, that bed has also been fed for the season.
Last weekend, I cleared down the leek bed. Last year, we lost nearly all out leeks to allium leaf miner, but this year I was hoping to avoid that. In hindsight, I could have done a bit more to protect the crop, but I managed to catch most of the leeks before the miner visited again. We lost around 1/4 of the crop in total. Unfortunately, some of the leeks were very small. Again, I'm going to blame the weather!
In another first for this season, I also picked the first parsnip. Possibly a little too early as the foliage is still green and growing. They seemed to have faired well in the weather, and they still look healthy. I picked two, but I think we will leave the rest until the green growth stops and starts to die back.
Coming out towards the front of the plot, the potato bed and the pea bed have also been manured and covered up. At some point when I have a bit more stability in the legs and ankle, I'll go back and work in the manure mix a little. I don't want to dig down, sticking to the principles of minimum disturbance, but it should help the manure rot down a little bit born. It's still a little bit ripe at the moment.
Finally, we come to the last couple of beds on the adjacent half plot. Over the last couple of weeks, since the weather started bringing more moisture, two things have happened. On the squash bed, next to the front flower bed, much of the foliage has started to get powdery mildew. It's a common thing, and it is apparently treatable with a milk/water spray. However, the squash themselves are about ready to harvest. This evening, I set about cutting the foliage back and harvesting them. Initially, I was quite happy with the 4 or 5 squash off the 3 plants, but it wasn't until I started pulling at the growth that I realised that there were a whole load of others buried in amongst the flowers. And they were amongst some of the biggest! In the end, I picked up around 10, with only one going to waste as it had split and started to rot back. I could have brought it home and cut out the bad, but given we have so many, there was no real need to. They are now up on the shelf in the polytunnel finishing the curing process before I bring them home.
Finally for this evening, and bringing you up to date, I returned to the second potato bed where the second interesting thing has happened. Since the rain has returned, the top growth of the potato plants has turned from turning yellow to going back to being green and quite lush again. I was concerned about how this would affect the tubers. Would it mean that they continue to grow as normal, or would it mean that the growth started to pull the goodness back out of the tubers again? I wasn't sure and I couldn't really find any advice online or in books about it. To prevent the latter, I decided to cut the growth back earlier this week and then this evening, harvested both rows.
And this is where it turns into a tale of two spuds. Or should it be two rows of spuds? Or should it be two beds of spuds? It breaks down a little like this. For the first row on the second bed, I was surprised and really impressed. At last, we had some proper sized potatoes that could be used as bakers. Compared to the spuds lifted from the other bed, they were much bigger with only a handful lost to damage. Things were looking good! On the turn, I then started on the second row, right next to the first. It didn't start well. It didn't really get better. The first few plants came up, but the potatoes literally all had significant rodent damage. As I was moving the soil with my hands, my fingers kept disappearing into rodent tunnels under the plants. The size of the potatoes were just as big and numerous as I continued through the row. Or at least they would have been if it wasn't for all the tooth marks in them. It was so disheartening. I got to the end of the row and where I had an overflowing box at the end of the first row, the second produced nothing more that around 12 to 15 usable potatoes.
Back at home in the evenings, things haven't been standing still either. I've now finished my sowing and growing plan for 2027, but I also have a sizeable job list for the rest of the year. More on 2027 at a later date, but in the coming weeks will see the end of the tomato and aubergine plants, the cucumber and cucamelon plants and more weeding, feeding and putting beds down for the winter. I'm currently on the hunt for some winter lettuce plants to put in the polytunnel to try and see us into the end of the year, but if that doesn't happen, it's no great loss.
So, until next time, thanks for reading :-)