Soilman's Allotment Blog

Baffling success

Pessimism. Terrible thing.

Turns out the remaining onions are, in fact, A1. Not at all the foetid, suppurating horrors I confidently predicted. They'll store fine.

Fancy that, eh? Wrong again. And I don't even know what I did right.

Late, late leeks

Only just got the leeks out. I've become a languid and slovenly gardener.

These will just about be ready for late October, but I'm pushing it. Anyone ever planted leeks later than this and still got a crop before Christmas?

Mad dogs and Englishmen

Don't know if leek flowers are edible, but they certainly look good enough to eat.

Had a day off work, so did three hours at the plot today. Goes against my principles to stay that long, as a rule, but today was so beautiful that the time flew.

I've even got a bit sunburned. Who says this summer's a write-off?

Blink and you miss 'em

Look great, don't they?

How deceptive looks can be. I harvested these early because they looked so plump and perfect. Turns out hardly any will store; they're all soft and some are already showing signs of rot.

I suspect manure as the cause. I dug a lot into the soil in the autumn. Probably too much nitrogen.

Whatever. End result is that I have these and roughly another 40kg of onions that need eating, like, immediately.

Fancy an onion party?

Onions in the desert

What a great year for onions. They're already a vast improvement on last season's crappy, mildewy crop.

Still no rain – hence the good onions. Three weeks since the last drop. With a watering can, I simply can't keep up (under-65s aren't allowed hosepipes on our plot).

It's great having a 100 sq m allotment... until drought strikes. Anyone else suffering?

Vegetable growing in the twilight zone

When I began this allotment blog I worried I'd repeat myself. In nature, after all, much the same stuff happens at much the same time every year. It IS fairly predictable.

And yet... it's not.

Take these onions, for instance. I was convinced they'd have downy mildew by now - as they do every year, to a greater or lesser extent.

But they don't. And that's got me even more worried than if they had. Because for me, onions and mildew are inseparable partners. Like strawberries and cream, or Pete Doherty and heroin.

Whatever next? Cabbages without slugs? Carrots without carrot fly?

Leeks 2009

I like to leave a leek or two to flower for next year's seed. This is Musselburgh, so it should come true. I love the flower buds. They look like minarets on orthodox churches.

This year's leeks are the last vegetables to go out on the plot. Everything else is now in situ, ready or not.

I'd hoped to dig the first potatoes today. Forlorn hope – they're still the size of marbles. That lousy cold April put everything back.

Here's hoping for a decent summer. It can't be worse than last year. It really can't.

... can it?

Take a leek and make a smile

Leeks are go, sown in Rootrainers in my crappy plastic greenhouse. Would have sown them earlier, but the weather's been so grim.

I'll put these in the space left by the early potatoes. Assuming the potatoes figure out a way to push through the ice.

Growing for broke

They say, don't they, that it's a sign of madness to do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different result. Hence my favourite dictum:

"If you always do what you've always done, you'll always get what you've always got."

I try to live my life by this creed. So the question begs itself: Why the bloody hell am I planting garlic again?

Two years running, rust has all but destroyed my crop. Now I'm seemingly going for the hat-trick.

Nurse: The straitjacket.

Muck 'n' garlic

Gorgeous day today. The sun was shining, my back felt pretty good and I got a load done at the plot.

The main achievement was to get eight bags of horse shit spread on the asparagus bed. This will pay tasty dividends when the spears are coming through.

I will of course regret planting the row of garlic. After last year's rust disaster I don't expect much.

But life without garlic is, like, unthinkable. Right?