It's high time I reported back from the allotment on what's happening and plans for the growing season.
I've spent a nice slice of time tending the plot over the last month - it does seem to have dried out much faster than expected, the first potatoes went in a month ago. I'll try to give you a fairly orderly tour round the plot.
Below, (front left). This will be the brassica patch and the other veggies which linger on well into winter. So the sprouts, cabbages, cauliflowers as well as leeks etc. This looks to be a really generous size patch for all of this.
Above, C gave the shed a lick of paint and it now looks so much more cheerful. The roof drains in to the barrels. The first of the new raised beds. This one has just had parsnips sown in to it.
 Above, the shallots, onions and garlic. Lots of varieties, some sown last year and some not long in. A mixed garlic row. We are almost out of our stored onions from last season and we get through loads each year, hence the large patch.
Below, two more raised beds C built in lockdown, one has carrots in.

Above, beetroot next to the raised beds (good germination rate) and standard allotment mess. It drives me mad that C is so happy to leave carnage in his path; the allotment is no exception, bits of crap everywhere. The pallet remnants from raised bed making, someone's propagator which blew into out plot, we don't know who it belongs to. Below, wire, buckets of crap... and our bench we never sit on.

 Above, the new rhubarb patch which were sown from seed last year,
Below, the muck bays to rot down. I need to plant into them mid May with courgettes and butternut squash so will need to be topped with compost.

Above, the potato patch. We have first earlies 'Swift', as well as maincrops 'Setanta' and 'Maris Piper'. Maris Piper are an especially useful potato. Swift will be for salad potatoes and Setanta will be the everything else fill in. This is fewer potatoes than ever before which is good. After last year's storage success we have a few to use still although they are getting eyes now.
Then the beans and peas... I also want to put the movable trellis along the fenceline and grow climbing squashes up it.
Below, sugar snap peas under polythene for protection. Then a mysterious row of garlic which presumably has decided to make a resurgence after the nil result of last season, most unexpected.
Between the mysterious row of garlic and the strawberry patch shall be the sweetcorn if we are able to grow any. These are notoriously difficult to germinate and at this rate there may not be any!!

The strawberry patch is now all weed free after I spent hours meticulously weeding it. C's irrigation system is still in place from last year and I'm very much hoping we get a good crop this year.
Below, the asparagus bed. We are REALLY hoping for some spears to start appearing soon.

So that's the main plot covered.
On to the fruit plot which is half the size. To the front we have our original rhubarb plants. For some reason our rhubarb is always behind everyone else's at the allotments which is infuriating as we like to harvest and use our whereas others don't seem in any hurry.
Behind the rhubarb there is half a row of currant bushes (no leaves yet) and half a row of gooseberries. I love gooseberries and make crumbles and jam with mine, they are a real treat. I don't even mind them raw. The year before last we had a monster haul but last season not even a third.

Then we have two rows of fruit trees. Some apples, pears, cherries, plums and a mystery tree which was supposed to be apricot which has actually turned into a greengage, Isn't nature astonishing?
We have taken care to keep the trees well pruned in the last 3 or so years (after a rough first few years) and although it may not be 100% accurate, we have achieved what we set out too. They are a good goblet shape, not too tall, plenty of blossom, no inward or overlapping branches. Very tidy and manageable. It's amazing how the trunks have thickened so much since they went in. As you can see, lots of blossom (except the apples, which aren't out just yet but should be good).
I have flowers in between the trees, with various bulbs for spring and summer then topped up with what I have left over summer.

Behind the trees we have another row of currants. We have red, white and black currants but every year we fail to label, catalog or remember which are which so until they fruit we are none the wiser. Again, the year before last we had a mamoth haul but last year very few. C likes blackcurrant jam, but we both gorge on red/whitecurrant jelly all year with chicken. Yum!!
The penultimate row is a raised bed of raspberries and hops. The hops are beautifully decorative. Fingers crossed for raspberries this year, their first year produced a pitiful amount.
And the back row which I usually fill with flowers. You can see sweet williams in a nice cluster which should be lovely in a month or so. I might use the rest of the space for my overspill tomatoes; there will be some in the greenhouse but the remainder shall go outside and this will be their home.

Also, note how well the rear hedge is blossoming. You guessed it, we'll be in for plenty of sloes again if we're lucky. We planted various roses in the hedge which look pretty lovely in summer too.

If you made it through all that then congratulations! It took me ages to write and I could have babbled on even more, I thought I was keeping it brief. The allotment plan of varieties still isn't complete (and keeps changing due to last minute variety swaps) but if you have any questions about varieties then just ask and I'll try and answer.

Take care,
Sophie

We had a little pear tree, nothing did it bear...
I haven't made mention of the 'orchard' patch in terms of the trees on the blog mostly due to having reaped virtually nothing off them. Their original site was the main plot but once we took on the extra half they were dug up and moved, so we lost a year while they were settling. A few years ago we had very hard frosts while they were in blossom. I remember is trying to wrap them in fleece which not only didn't keep them warm but knocked off a fair amount of blossom in the process. The years we have grown fruit it either fell off, got eaten or never amounted to more than a handful. The cherry tree produced enough for one jar of jam last year.

However, this year we were shocked to see so many pears on our little pear tree. The other pears being devoid of any fruit, of course. I assumed many would fall off in due course as the season progressed, but no! About 6 weeks ago I decided to take one off the tree which did have a glimmer of pink and give it a try. Ok, so it was quite a 'firm' eat, not juicy but had a lovely flavour. I took around a dozen off over the next week to give away and eat myself. Since doing that I was told that pears don't ripen on the tree and need to be picked and stored to ripen. Now you tell me!!!
The weather had other ideas and the hoolie that blew in, you guessed it, knocked all the pears off bar a couple, leaving them in a heap around the tree. Of course, I was dismayed at the prospect of all the fruit going to waste so we gathered them up in a big trug bucket. Aside from maybe 5 which weren't going to make it, the rest seemed absolutely fine, I suppose the short fall onto a soft surface hadn't hurt them. Even so, I was concerned that any mild bruising might lead to the fruit rotting so we pondered what to do with an enormous bucket of potentially damaged pears.
Being a pudding glutton I was keen to make a pear sponge. I did find a recipe which sounded pleasant again on Delicious Magazine which I already had all the ingredients I wanted - always a winner. The ground almonds were previously used by C for his horrible healthy cookies and had sat opened but unused for months so I was doing a good thing by setting about using more of them up. I've made a big thing of my journey to try eating more nuts even though they are not something I enjoy at all. Anyway, ground almonds are a fairly innocuous way of consuming a nut portion especially as the crunch and texture of nuts is a significant part of the reason I don't like them. I did make this sponge three times in total though the last time was with a lovely little pear which lingered sadly in the fruit bowl with two surplus bramleys. I didn't change the recipe at all except for I didn't use the lemon juice on the fruit, just chopped it quick, added a spoonful of water and a little sugar. One time I chopped up a stem ginger ball and added some of the ginger syrup to the fruit which added a lovely wintery warmth. I didn't add the rosewater or almond extract as I don't have any but I wasn't after an especially almond taste.
The main thing we did with the fruit was to 'can' it in jars. A while ago, C bought a canning machine which basically looks like a big slow cooker. Apparently 'canning' relates to the process rather than the vessel. He had intentions of ale brewing but safe to say that's not happened in there as yet. We squirrel away all jars, bottles and glass containers in boxes, ready for such occasions as this but even our stock wasn't going to cope with this alone so we did buy some nice tall jars from Wilko to go with our mostly mayonnaise jars. The pears were peeled, cored and quartered-ish. C made a different syrup on each occasion, one was lightly spiced and the other was vanilla spiced. We had put a used vanilla pod in a kilner of sugar which resulted in a lot of highly scented sugar - this recipe put some of it to use, finally!
Pears were plopped to jars and filled with syrup then left to bubble away in the canning machine.
Unsure how they were going to turn out I opened a small jar a week later to test for whether they were edible or pleasant; it's no good giving away anything that's no good to eat. We'd forgotten to label soon enough so they're all pot luck on flavour. The pears were absolute heaven. Soft and tasty, sweet and utterly delicious. They will last a long time too so we can keep a few, while giving away some too.

We have ideas about being able to can more things in a similar way next year too.

Take care,
Sophie

Since my initial allotment post back in April, I've been down there a couple of weekends with Chris to put in some hours keeping it ticking over. As the plot is really Chris' thing, I leave all the good jobs and decisions to him and instead just crack on with the endless weeding that needs to be done and the ground preparation. I swear there is more stone than soil content round here, it's ridiculous.

With the warm temperatures and good amount of rainfall lately things have really shot up no end; it's caught me unawares to a certain extent as I'll have to find a way of harvesting stuff more than once a week. The strawberry patch is going great guns, we've had masses already and they are unbelievably delicious! The peas are running riot (non-sugar snap sadly) so we've had a couple of portions.

The salad leaves are crying out to be picked so I'd better get a shift on before they get past their best. It's good to see how far things have come in such a short period of time. You can see that the sweetcorn are growing huge, the brassicas are too, the peas and beans are shooting up.

Even the rhubarb plants have sprung into action.

To my dismay, the fruit trees and soft fruit bushes are not going to fruit this year as they were planted out too late and have not flowered. Chris isn't too fussed or surprised by this but in a way I feel pretty heartbroken, pathetic I know. Might shed a tear over the fruit drought. (the blue sky picture was taken a few weeks ago, as I don't have a more recent one, that was a sunny hot day).

This little dude scared me by appearing from nowhere!

The asparagus is weird, I would never have guesses that this weedy looking thing is an asparagus plant, it looks pathetic. We have to let them grow bushy this year if we want to harvest spears next year.

Our first main year at the allotment seems to be going quite well. It looks like we'll be digging up some salad potatoes soon as well, what a treat.

Do you like my allotment posts or are they a bit yawnbags for your liking?

Sophie

I can't lie, this is all Chris' doing. He's been beavering away for the past few months (to my general disdain) working on the fence and sorting out the rest of the plot.

The main plan is to get a lot of fruit trees and soft fruit bushes established this year so as to take up an area of the allotment that wont need to be worked year in year out. I'm pretty chuffed as I'm a fruit lover and the trees include several varieties of apple, pear, plum, apricot and cherry trees, soft fruits; strawberry, raspberry (includes yellow ones), blackcurrant, blackberry, tayberry, redcurrants, whitecurrants, red gooseberries and red & white grapes, rhubarb... good grief the list goes on.

Anyway, over Easter I thought I'd play the role of a good wife and help out with the spring chores necessary for a successful allotment so ended up preparing the ground for some growing action. I also planted some potatoes (which were late first earlies apparently) even though I hardly eat potatoes any more

Check out the cute fence Chris erected single handedly. I'm impressed. Maybe I was a little harsh by making him do it alone.

There is still plenty of planting to be done and I'm trying to be more supportive by helping our for a few hours here and there but the nature of the allotment site means that it is always really windy there which makes me feel ill (for some reason if it's on that cusp between warm and cool I feel quite poorly) so wrapping up is always a must. There is a phenomenal amount of stone in the soil as well which only adds to the workload as areas for carrots need to be sifted to be made suitable.

Chris has also put together a raised bed in which we are going to grow salad leaves.

I just need the temperature to notch up ten degrees, a good windbreak and a cool beverage then I'll be there full time. Until then I'll be hunched up in my puffa jacket and blowing my nose every five minutes sowing the seeds and dreaming of summer.

Sophie