In this short video I talk about how and what we harvested in spring, the joy of seasonal eating, what I do with all of the fruit and veg and how I calculate the value of our harvests.

Harvest highlights at the end of spring

If you are new to my allotment videos you might find a bit of context useful. We live in the north west of England, in Lytham St Annes, which I believe is the equivalent of USA Zone 8.

We have three allotments in my family, mine (Steve), my wife’s (Debbie) and my middle daughter’s (Jennie). We also have a small kitchen garden at home. They are all managed in an integrated fashion, so don’t expect to see the usual mix of veg on each plot. I do most of the planning and seed starting. We each have our own plots, but we all help each other out.

Jennie’s plot has been designed as a traditional allotment, but we put a lot of focus on minimising the work we do there.  It’s basically a plant and forget it plot, full of garlic, leeks, onions, potatoes, brassicas, squash, beans and fruit trees. It’s heavily mulched to reduce weeds and easy to water.

Debbie’s plot is mostly full of perennials, it’s a garden plot.  Again we did a lot of work to keep the weeds down and Debbie’s approach is inspired by the TV programme The Ornamental Kitchen garden.

My plot is all about experimental growing, maxium productivity and year round abundance.  As with all of the other plots I did a lot of work to control the weeds, but it’s a high maintenance plot.  I’m always planting, harvesting, experimenting and generally having a great time.

Collectively the plots deliver an amazing abundance of fruit and veg all year round.  Debbie, Jennie and I are effectively self sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit for much of the year.  During winter we have enough surplus to feed a few more of our friends and during the rest of the year we feed up to 22 people.

This video provides an overview: The Big Picture: How and Why We Live The Allotment Life

I do an update of the allotments, roughly one a week, you can find the tours here.

Our approach to allotment life is to: grow as much as we possibly can, to be self-sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit in season, to give away our huge surplus to friends and family, and to have as much fun as possible.  For more on self sufficiency check out these videos:

Debbie and I spend about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week on the plots (on average) and we keep nudging that down as we eliminate non-productive work: like grass cutting, weeding and watering as much as practical. We are both newbie gardeners, only starting the allotments in 2016.

I’m a bit obsessive about the nutrient density of the veg that we grow and making the plots easy to work because it’s through this allotment lifestyle and food that I’ve overcome a debilitating auto-immune disease.

I’m always aware though that it might not last so I make sure that I don’t work too hard, eat as much organic fruit and veg I can and design the plots so that I can still work them if I flare up again.

May has been a much more relaxed month than April,  sowing just a few seeds and a leisurely planting schedule.  Almost all of the summer planting is complete now, with about half of the autumn/winter brassica’s in too.  The focus now switches to preparing for an abundant winter and spring, which means carefully timed sowings in June, July and especially August, with a just a few sowings in September/October and fewer still over winter.  Watch the associated videos as they are released.

For me the most important thing is that the allotments have become a very relaxed place as we potter around, watering, planting and harvesting, with no real work to do until late September/October when we transition everything over for winter veg.

In this video I show you the progress of my April and May sowings which are doing very well.  Most of the peppers are doing well, the early tomatoes seem to have been worth the effort and the main tomato sowing destined for the polytunnel is all planted.  The early courgettes and cucumbers are planted or potted too.  The early brassicas are in the ground and succession sowings are growing strong.

In the video I also spend a few minutes on the computer to show you the databases that I’m using to capture all of my knowledge about the 250+ varieties of fruit and veg that I grow and also the details of what I’m sowing.

Before we get to the video though you might like to check out my latest tour, which shows everything that’s growing.

May allotment tour: as we finish preparing for summer

You might also like to see some of my May harvest highlights you can check out the following video:

Harvest highlights at the end of spring

So finally we get to the video for June’s sowing and growing:

What I’m Sowing and Growing In June

This video shows several databases that I’m using to manage my allotment this year.If you would like to find out more about these databases please take a look at the following video, and it’s associated description:

If you want to get a copy of the tools that I demonstrate in this video please click on this link and create an account.  Once you have an account then click on this link to browse all of my databases, if you want, you can take a copy of the databases to use for yourself.

If you want to download any of the following views to a spreadsheet you can clock ‘download CSV’ to get your own private copy, or use the web based database I’m using by watching the video above.

When looking at these databases please bear in mind that they are live views onto rapidly evolving data. The content and design is being constantly improved. If you want to look at snapshots and/or take your own copies, please look at the video above and it’s associated description.

Here’s a complete read-only view of the sowing log and varieities database with all of my data:

Here’s a view of everything I sowed in May:

Here’s what I’m planning to sow in June:

For completeness here’s a view of my sowing database with all the details!

Watch out for the next video showing what I’m sowing in July!

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

Allotment Finances

We’ve harvested a total of £3,210, smashing all previous records for spring!  Harvesting this much gives me immense freedom to spend money to save time and increase food quality and variety, without a hint of guilt. Of the £3,210 about £2,000 is a direct saving off our food bill.   We’ve spent a total of £717 this year, mostly one time investments.

What we’ve harvested and eaten

We harvested a total of £228 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. This is inching up a bit each week and the harvests have hardly even started really.  We won’t see any significant increases until the fruit kicks in and we start to do some bulk harvests of alliums.  We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.

We picked: New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, onions, tomatoes, carrots, green garlic, onion scapes, garlic scapes, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, chard, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, broad beans, mangetout peas, shelling peas, broad bean tops, new potatoes and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: potatoes, onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People are we feeding

We are stable for now at eight families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 20 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Lots of seed potatoes for winter new potato harvests
2. Pepper plants (due to the batch lost to greenfly)

I’ve published three videos

Harvest highlights at the end of spring

What I’m sowing and growing in June

What I’ve sown

1. Pea, Mangetout Oregon Sugar Pod Legumes

What I’ve planted

1. Pepper Sweet Sweet Red
2. Pepper Sweet Cheyenne
3. Pepper Hot Apache
4. Pepper Hot Big Jim

What I’ve potted on

1. Butternut Squash
2. Blueberries

First harvests of the year

My new first harvests database!

1. Carrots – May week 1
2. Green garlic – May week 1
3. Cauliflower – May week 2
4. Peas – May week 3
5. Strawberries – May week 3
6. Mangetou Peas – May week 4
7. Broad Beans – May week 4
8. Onions – May week 4
9. Garlic Scapes – May week 4
10. Golden Purselane – May week 4
11. New Zealand spinach – May week 5

What we’ve run out of in store

1. Dried pears – March
2. Winter squash – March
3. Carrots – May week 2
4. Garlic – May week 3 (we have still have pickled garlic and green garlic to harvest)
5. Shallots – May week 4 (strictly speaking we didn’t run out, they just sprouted and got bad greenfly)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4

What’s left in store

1. Potatoes – 1/3 medium sized bags
2. Onions – 1/3 large box
3. Beets – 3/4 big box
4. Dried Apples – 1/2 big cool bag

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

1. Nothing

Highlights

We have huge harvests of broad beans now and mangetout peas/strawberries make up a big part of my breakfast every day!

The general range of foods is now accelerating rapidly and after a few months of mainly green food, it’s wonderful to have so many colours back in our diet!

The squash looks like it has survived it’s shaky start and is now growing well.

I’ve almost finished planting out the kitchen garden at home, just a tray of golden beetroot to plant out and then it’s all finished.  The same is effectively true of my plot, every square inch is now planted outside, with just a few bits to squeeze into the polytunnel.

Lowlights

1. I will get to use maybe half of my brassica spare plants due to slug damage in the main bed.
2. I’ve got quite a lot of leaf miner damage to the early beetroot and celery in the polytunnel, both should survive although I’ve had to pick off a fair number of their leaves
3. May weather had been very windy, with fairly sunny days/cold nights but no much rain, not ideal growing weather for the summer crops, although great for the rest
4. At least 50% of the early carrots have gone to seed,  this seems to be an issue with Early Nantes 2, when exposed to the elements.  By contrast the Napoli which I sowed in October were fine as are the same Early Nantes 2 that were in containers in the polytunnel
5. I’m starting to see some problems with compost contaminated with weed killer. For example see these two tubs of potatoes – same variety, same compost, planted the same day.

This video is the finance update for spring. I go through the value of our harvests, how much we’ve spent, how much we’ve saved off our food bill. I also talk about why this year has been so much better than last year and some plans for the future.

If you are new to my allotment videos you might find a bit of context useful. We live in the north west of England, in Lytham St Annes, which I believe is the equivalent of USA Zone 8.

We have three allotments in my family, mine (Steve), my wife’s (Debbie) and my middle daughter’s (Jennie). We also have a small kitchen garden at home. They are all managed in an integrated fashion, so don’t expect to see the usual mix of veg on each plot. I do most of the planning and seed starting. We each have our own plots, but we all help each other out.

Jennie’s plot has been designed as a traditional allotment, but we put a lot of focus on minimising the work we do there.  It’s basically a plant and forget it plot, full of garlic, leeks, onions, potatoes, brassicas, squash, beans and fruit trees. It’s heavily mulched to reduce weeds and easy to water.

Debbie’s plot is mostly full of perennials, it’s a garden plot.  Again we did a lot of work to keep the weeds down and Debbie’s approach is inspired by the TV programme The Ornamental Kitchen garden.

My plot is all about experimental growing, maxium productivity and year round abundance.  As with all of the other plots I did a lot of work to control the weeds, but it’s a high maintenance plot.  I’m always planting, harvesting, experimenting and generally having a great time.

Collectively the plots deliver an amazing abundance of fruit and veg all year round.  Debbie, Jennie and I are effectively self sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit for much of the year.  During winter we have enough surplus to feed a few more of our friends and during the rest of the year we feed up to 22 people.

This video provides an overview: The Big Picture: How and Why We Live The Allotment Life

I do an update of the allotments, roughly one a week, you can find the tours here.

Our approach to allotment life is to: grow as much as we possibly can, to be self-sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit in season, to give away our huge surplus to friends and family, and to have as much fun as possible.  For more on self sufficiency check out these videos:

Debbie and I spend about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week on the plots (on average) and we keep nudging that down as we eliminate non-productive work: like grass cutting, weeding and watering as much as practical. We are both newbie gardeners, only starting the allotments in 2016.

I’m a bit obsessive about the nutrient density of the veg that we grow and making the plots easy to work because it’s through this allotment lifestyle and food that I’ve overcome a debilitating auto-immune disease.

I’m always aware though that it might not last so I make sure that I don’t work too hard, eat as much organic fruit and veg I can and design the plots so that I can still work them if I flare up again.

I don’t generally like to make ‘hot to’ videos, because everyone’s needs and circumstances are so different.  However sometimes I make a “how I do” video, and this is one of those.  I explain my philosophy about the use of containers in the polytunnel and greenhouse and show examples to illustrate the point.

As a rule I only grow in containers when a plant needs to start, or end it’s life inside my polytunnel/greenhouse and then move outside or inside later on.  Also when a plant has a relatively short life.  Of course every rule will have exceptions and I give a few of those too.

If you are new to my allotment videos you might find a bit of context useful. We live in the north west of England, in Lytham St Annes, which I believe is the equivalent of USA Zone 8.

We have three allotments in my family, mine (Steve), my wife’s (Debbie) and my middle daughter’s (Jennie). We also have a small kitchen garden at home. They are all managed in an integrated fashion, so don’t expect to see the usual mix of veg on each plot. I do most of the planning and seed starting. We each have our own plots, but we all help each other out.

Jennie’s plot has been designed as a traditional allotment, but we put a lot of focus on minimising the work we do there.  It’s basically a plant and forget it plot, full of garlic, leeks, onions, potatoes, brassicas, squash, beans and fruit trees. It’s heavily mulched to reduce weeds and easy to water.

Debbie’s plot is mostly full of perennials, it’s a garden plot.  Again we did a lot of work to keep the weeds down and Debbie’s approach is inspired by the TV programme The Ornamental Kitchen garden.

My plot is all about experimental growing, maxium productivity and year round abundance.  As with all of the other plots I did a lot of work to control the weeds, but it’s a high maintenance plot.  I’m always planting, harvesting, experimenting and generally having a great time.

Collectively the plots deliver an amazing abundance of fruit and veg all year round.  Debbie, Jennie and I are effectively self sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit for much of the year.  During winter we have enough surplus to feed a few more of our friends and during the rest of the year we feed up to 22 people.

This video provides an overview: The Big Picture: How and Why We Live The Allotment Life

I do an update of the allotments, roughly one a week, you can find the tours here.

Our approach to allotment life is to: grow as much as we possibly can, to be self-sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit in season, to give away our huge surplus to friends and family, and to have as much fun as possible.  For more on self sufficiency check out these videos:

Debbie and I spend about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week on the plots (on average) and we keep nudging that down as we eliminate non-productive work: like grass cutting, weeding and watering as much as practical. We are both newbie gardeners, only starting the allotments in 2016.

I’m a bit obsessive about the nutrient density of the veg that we grow and making the plots easy to work because it’s through this allotment lifestyle and food that I’ve overcome a debilitating auto-immune disease.

I’m always aware though that it might not last so I make sure that I don’t work too hard, eat as much organic fruit and veg I can and design the plots so that I can still work them if I flare up again.

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

Allotment Finances

We’ve harvested a total of £3,460, smashing all previous records for spring!  Harvesting this much gives me immense freedom to spend money to save time and increase food quality and variety, without a hint of guilt. Of the £3,460 about £2,000 is a direct saving off our food bill.   We’ve spent a total of £758 this year, mostly one time investments.

What we’ve harvested and eaten

We harvested a total of £250 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. This is inching up a bit each week and the harvests have hardly even started really.  We won’t see any significant increases until the fruit kicks in and we start to do some bulk harvests of alliums.  We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.

We picked: Courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, onions, tomatoes, carrots, green garlic, onion scapes, garlic scapes, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, chard, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, broad beans, mangetout peas, shelling peas, broad bean tops, new potatoes and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: potatoes, onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People are we feeding

We are stable for now at eight families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 20 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Hanging baskets for cucamelons, these are self-watering.  In October I will take out the self-watering system (to create more depth) and sow the baskets with carrots

I’ve published three videos

Spring update on the allotment finances

How I use containers in the polytunnel

Inter-planting in the polytunnel

What I’ve sown

1. Runner beans
2. French beans

Both of these are to fill in gaps, where I’ve had poor germination in the ground

What I’ve planted

1. Rubine red sprouts
2. Bedford sprouts
3. Calabrese
4. Trumboccino squash in a container in the polytunnel
5. Cucamelons in hanging baskets
6. Bolt hardy beetroot
7. Golden beetroot

Half of the brassicas went into the old chard bed, the rest are to fill in gaps where existing plants have been ravaged by cut-worms

What I’ve potted on

1. Broccoli, Florret Claret Brassica
2. Cabbage Red Drumhead Brassica
3. Cabbage Tundra (savoy) Brassica
4. Calabrese, Florret De Cicco Brassica
5. Cauliflower, Florret North Forelander Brassica
6. Kale Winterbor Brassica
7. Broccoli, Florret Early Purple Brassica
8. Cabbage January King Brassica
9. Cauliflower, Florret Romanesco Brassica

First harvests of the year

My new first harvests database!

1. Carrots – May week 1
2. Green garlic – May week 1
3. Cauliflower – May week 2
4. Peas – May week 3
5. Strawberries – May week 3
6. Mangetou Peas – May week 4
7. Broad Beans – May week 4
8. Onions – May week 4
9. Garlic Scapes – May week 4
10. Golden Purselane – May week 4
11. New Zealand spinach – May week 5
12. Courgettes – June week 1

What we’ve run out of in store

1. Dried pears – March
2. Winter squash – March (we still have some in the freezer)
3. Carrots – May week 2
4. Garlic – May week 3 (we have still have pickled garlic and green garlic to harvest)
5. Shallots – May week 4 (strictly speaking we didn’t run out, they just sprouted and got bad greenfly)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1

What’s left in store

1. Potatoes – 1/4 medium sized bags
2. Onions – 1/4 large box
3. Beets – 1/2 big box
4. Dried Apples – 1/2 big cool bag

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

1. Nothing

Highlights

1. I’ve cut the tops off the early tomatoes so they can concentrate on being early, rather than growing, not sure if this will actually work
2. The New Zealand spinach and golden purselane beds have grown incredibly well and we are already taking substantial harvests off them, well in advance of the true spinach harvest finishing
3. We have picked our first two courgettes
4. The runner beans are almost ready for harvest, as are the mangetout broad beans and the early French beans: so the race is on for the first beans pods of the year!
5. We have huge harvests of broad beans now and mangetout peas/strawberries make up a big part of my breakfast every day!
6. The squash looks like it has survived it’s shaky start and is now growing well.  I will have to use a few of my spares though, but they have grown very well in the polytunnel
7. The new carrot beds have all germinated fairly/very well
8. The last spinach bed has germinated very well
9. The kitchen garden is now fully planted!

Lowlights

1. I had to use maybe half of my spare brassica plants due to slug/cut-worm damage in the main bed
2. I’m continuing my battle with greenfly, it’s not gone, but hopefully it’s manageable
3. I’ve noticed leaf-miner damage all over the place, even on the spinach and I’ve got quite a lot of damage to the early beetroot and celery in the polytunnel, both should survive although I’ve had to pick off a fair number of their leaves.  This is definitely worse than last year
4. At least 70% of the early carrots have gone to seed,  this seems to be an issue with Early Nantes 2, when exposed to the elements.  By contrast the Napoli which I sowed in October were fine as are the same Early Nantes 2 that were in containers in the polytunnel

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

Allotment Finances

We’ve harvested a total of £3,843, smashing all previous records, since records began! Harvesting this much gives me immense freedom to spend money to save time and increase food quality and variety, without a hint of guilt, it also bought me a fancy new iPad Pro this week. Of the £3,843 about £2,200 is a direct saving off our food bill.   We’ve spent a total of £758 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £320 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. This is a lot more than last week, because we did the bulk harvest of the broad beans, which are now all processed and frozen.  We also harvested a lot of garlic and onions, but these aren’t processed yet so they are now included in this weeks tally.  We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.

We picked: Runner beans, elephant garlic, bulk garlic harvest, beetroot, mange tout broad beans, bulk onion harvest, celery, baby leeks, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, tomatoes, carrots, onion scapes,  calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, broad beans, mangetout peas, shelling peas, new potatoes and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: potatoes, onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People we are feeding

I’m delighted that another of our daughters has returned to the local area, so we are now harvesting for her too, so that makes nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nothing

Video’s this week

None!

What I’ve sown

It’s been a big sowing week, in went all of the late summer salads and the winter brassicas!

1. Broccoli, Florret Claret Brassica
2. Cabbage Tundra (savoy) Brassica
3. Cabbage January King Brassica
4. Calabrese, Florret Marathon Brassica
5. Cauliflower, Florret Romanesco Brassica
6. Kale Redbor Brassica
7. Kale Winterbor Brassica
8. Kale Nero di Toscana Brassica
9. Turnip Greens Rapa Senza Testa Cooking Leaves
10. Annual herb Red leaved Basil Herb
11. Broad Bean Luz De Otono Legumes
12. Lettuce Moon Red Salad Leaves
13. Lettuce Grenoble Red Salad Leaves
14. Lettuce Tesy Salad Leaves
15. Lettuce Lobjoits Green Salad Leaves
16. Lettuce Cantarix Salad Leaves
17. Lettuce Grenoble Red Salad Leaves

What I’ve planted

No big plantings this week, but I continue to fill in gaps with spares.

1. Rubine red sprouts
2. Bedford sprouts
3. Calabrese
4. Reflex kale
5. Sweet corn
6. Baby Leeks
7. Celariac
8. Spring onions
9. Outdoor tomatoes
10. Outdoor cucumbers
11. Outdoor gherkins

What I’ve potted on

1. Outdoor cucumbers (to keep as spares)
2. Outdoor gherkins (to keep as spares)

First harvests of the year

Using the same technique my first harvest database now also gives me a nice summary view of the week’s first harvests.

Cut off at the bottom of the photo are baby leeks!

What we’ve run out of in store

1. Dried pears – March
2. Winter squash – March (we still have some in the freezer)
3. Carrots – May week 2
4. Garlic – May week 3 (we have still have pickled garlic and green garlic to harvest)
5. Shallots – May week 4 (strictly speaking we didn’t run out, they just sprouted and got bad greenfly)
6. Onions – June week 1 – we are processing the few that are left and freezing them
7. Beetroot – June week 1 – the few that are left have gone soft

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1

What’s left in store

1. Potatoes – 1/4 medium sized bags
2. Dried Apples – 1/2 big cool bag

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

1. 70kg of broad beans for freezing
2. 10kg of onions for freezing
3. 6 jars of strawberry jam

Highlights

1. Although we’ve had tomatoes for months now, we finally got a harvest from the polytunnel plants, Tumbling Tom yellows, very sweet!
2. Our garlic harvest this year is superb, but we muddled up the types last year and planted way too many hard necks!
3. The runner beans won the race for first and best early beans, one container in the polytunnel is yielding very well!
4. We completed the harvest of the broad beans, about 70kg, which is by far our biggest harvest.  We don’t freeze much, but broad beans are so easy and freeze so well that we do them.  We also need to free up the ground for squash and leeks that go in next week.
5. We cleared the carrot bed that had gone to seed and actually managed a decent harvest, enough for a couple of weeks, we have plenty of other carrots ready too
6. The peppers have finally started growing

Lowlights

1. Most of the elephant garlic failed to split into cloves, yielding just large mono-bulbs.  This is the first time we’ve grown it so maybe we should have left it for another month, who knows.  Anyway we will save some and plant it for next year.
2. Greenfly continue to be a challenge, especially on the red lettuce
3. I suspect that the company who look after our lawn managed to get weed killer on some of our veg beds, as a result the chard is alive but not growing, so I need to plant that again

In this video I talk about how we planted our early broad beans, the wonderful harvest we’ve just completed and how we will continue to harvest broad beans into autumn and then bean tops through winter and into early spring.

If you are new to my allotment videos you might find a bit of context useful. We live in the north west of England, in Lytham St Annes, which I believe is the equivalent of USA Zone 8.

We have three allotments in my family, mine (Steve), my wife’s (Debbie) and my middle daughter’s (Jennie). We also have a small kitchen garden at home. They are all managed in an integrated fashion, so don’t expect to see the usual mix of veg on each plot. I do most of the planning and seed starting. We each have our own plots, but we all help each other out.

Jennie’s plot has been designed as a traditional allotment, but we put a lot of focus on minimising the work we do there.  It’s basically a plant and forget it plot, full of garlic, leeks, onions, potatoes, brassicas, squash, beans and fruit trees. It’s heavily mulched to reduce weeds and easy to water.

Debbie’s plot is mostly full of perennials, it’s a garden plot.  Again we did a lot of work to keep the weeds down and Debbie’s approach is inspired by the TV programme The Ornamental Kitchen garden.

My plot is all about experimental growing, maxium productivity and year round abundance.  As with all of the other plots I did a lot of work to control the weeds, but it’s a high maintenance plot.  I’m always planting, harvesting, experimenting and generally having a great time.

Collectively the plots deliver an amazing abundance of fruit and veg all year round.  Debbie, Jennie and I are effectively self sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit for much of the year.  During winter we have enough surplus to feed a few more of our friends and during the rest of the year we feed up to 22 people.

This video provides an overview: The Big Picture: How and Why We Live The Allotment Life

I do an update of the allotments, roughly one a week, you can find the tours here.

Our approach to allotment life is to: grow as much as we possibly can, to be self-sufficient in veg all year round and in fruit in season, to give away our huge surplus to friends and family, and to have as much fun as possible.  For more on self sufficiency check out these videos:

Debbie and I spend about 4 hours a day, 4 days a week on the plots (on average) and we keep nudging that down as we eliminate non-productive work: like grass cutting, weeding and watering as much as practical. We are both newbie gardeners, only starting the allotments in 2016.

I’m a bit obsessive about the nutrient density of the veg that we grow and making the plots easy to work because it’s through this allotment lifestyle and food that I’ve overcome a debilitating auto-immune disease.

I’m always aware though that it might not last so I make sure that I don’t work too hard, eat as much organic fruit and veg I can and design the plots so that I can still work them if I flare up again.

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

A lot of people seem to have the impression that I spend every waking hour on the allotments, compulsively pulling every weed and tending each plant with tender loving care.  Well I don’t my focus is on enjoying myself and growing lots of food.  I’m constantly working on new systems to reduce my workload and grow more/better at the same time.

With that context I thought it would be interesting to actually track how much time I do spend on the allotments, the total for this week is: 20 hours and that’s a lot more than usual because I’ve done a huge amount of harvesting and re-planting this week.

Allotment Finances

Wow, what a week it’s been, out biggest harvest ever as we complete the bulk harvests of the over-wintered veg. We’ve harvested a total of £4,183. Harvesting this much gives me immense freedom to spend money to save time and increase food quality and variety, without a hint of guilt, I’ve done that too this week.  We’ve spent a total of £869 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £403 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. This is a lot more than last week, because we did the bulk harvest of the broad beans, which are now all processed and frozen.  We also harvested a lot of garlic and onions.  We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.

We picked: Baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, bulk elephant garlic harvest, bulk garlic harvest, beetroot, mange tout broad beans, bulk broad bean harvest, bulk onion harvest, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, onion scapes,  calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, mangetout peas, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People we are feeding

I’m delighted that another of our daughters has returned to the local area, so we are now harvesting for her too, so that makes nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Multi-purpose compost (for the Christmas potato pots)
2. Spent mushroom compost (to mulch the harvested garlic, broad bean and onion beds)
3. Top soil (for the carrot containers)
4. Seed compost (for the August sowings)
5. Environmesh (for the beetroot beds)

Video’s this week

All about broad beans: planting, harvesting and more …

Thrilled with the garlic harvest, confused by the elephant garlic!

What it’s like to be self-sufficient

harvesting onions, planting brassicas and preparing for beetroot

Am I organic, no-dig, square foot, bio-dynamic or pragmatic?

What I’ve sown

It’s been a big sowing week, in went all of the beetroot for winter and spring and some winter carrots!

1. Beetroot Burpees Golden
2. Beetroot Cylindra
3. Beetroot Bolthardy
4. Beetroot Mulatka
5. Beetroot Boldor
6. Carrot Night Bird
7. Carrot Chantenary Red Core

What I’ve planted

Having cleared the broad beans, onions and garlic I’ve opened up a lot of space for planting.  This space is only available until October though because I will then need it for the field beans, broad beans, garlic and onions.  So I have to make sure I only plant stuff that will be finished by then.  I also filled a few pots with spare cucumbers:

1. Aztec broccoli
2. Graffiti cauliflower
3. Green sprouting broccoli
4. Calabrese
5. Red cabbage (which might not be quite ready in time)
6. Crown prince squash
7. Butternut squash
8. Outdoor cucumbers
9. Outdoor gherkins

What I’ve potted on

1. Nothing

First harvests of the year

Using the same technique my first harvest database now also gives me a nice summary view of the week’s first harvests.

What we’ve run out of in store

1. Dried pears – March
2. Winter squash – March (we still have some in the freezer)
3. Carrots – May week 2
4. Garlic – May week 3 (we have still have pickled garlic and green garlic to harvest)
5. Shallots – May week 4 (strictly speaking we didn’t run out, they just sprouted and got bad greenfly)
6. Baking potatoes – May week 4
7. Onions – June week 1 – we are processing the few that are left and freezing them
8. Beetroot – June week 2 – I thought I’d finished last week, but when I emptied out the wood chip that I store them in I found three large beets in perfect condition

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1

What’s left in store

1. Dried Apples – 1/2 big cool bag

The store was almost empty, but it’s now refilling rapidly, I will update this list when I count up properly:

1. Over-wintered onions – a few dozen – these are not really for keeping
2. Pickled garlic – 6 jars
3. Garlic – about 200 bulbs
4. Elephant garlic – a few dozen bulbs
5. Frozen broad beans – about 10 Kg
6. Jams – dozens of jars
7. Cordials – a dozen bottles

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

1. Strawberry jam
2. Strawberry and rhubarb jam
3. Mixed fruit (strawberry, raspberry, gooseberry) jam
4. Onions – chopped and fozen
5. Garlic – pickled
6. Broad beans podded and frozen

Highlights

1. The summer fruit is now coming thick and fast, Debbie is hard at work making preserves!
2. We have baking potatoes again, we had a few weeks without them!
3. The garlic and onions are excellent this year.  Last year we lost some in store in late winter – we almost ran out – so this year we are processing more of it to ensure abundant continuity of supply!
4. I’ve cleared a lot of space on Jennie’s plot which is almost all replanted now.  A quick turnaround is key at this time of year to give the new veg time to mature before it’s replaced in October
5. Although we’ve had tomatoes for months now, we finally got a harvest from the polytunnel plants, Tumbling Tom reds, very sweet!
6. The squash bed is now fully planted!

Lowlights

1. None this week

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

A lot of people seem to have the impression that I spend every waking hour on the allotments, compulsively pulling every weed and tending each plant with tender loving care.  Well I don’t my focus is on enjoying myself and growing lots of food.  I’m constantly working on new systems to reduce my workload and grow more/better at the same time.

With that context I thought it would be interesting to actually track how much time I do spend on the allotments, the total for this week is: 10.5 hours, that’s a little less than usual, because it’s been too hot to work, but I don’t have much of a backlog of work.  The vast majority of that time is spent watering and harvesting.

Allotment Finances

It’s been a relatively quiet harvesting week.  I hurt my back on Sunday so Debbie did the harvest on Monday and we decided to cancel deliveries to all but immediate family. We’ve harvested a total of £4,383. Harvesting this much gives me immense freedom to spend money to save time and increase food quality and variety, without a hint of guilt.  We’ve spent a total of £879 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of seeds and compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £200 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. This is a lot less than last week, because of my back.  We had over 40 meals with ingredients from the allotment, including snacks (berries).

We picked: Pine berries, tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, mangetout peas, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People we are feeding

I’m delighted that another of our daughters has returned to the local area, so we are now harvesting for her too, so that makes nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Seeds

Video’s this week

After last weeks flurry of video’s I’m back to my normal rate of a couple a week:

My ‘amazing’ home grown smoothie mixes

June Allotment Tour – successes and failures!

What I’ve sown

It’s been a big sowing week, the first of the chicories, which I use to add colour and crunch to the winter salad mixes, went in.  More lettuces and some unusual choices!  I discovered that the six courgettes that I sowed weren’t in fact courgettes, why remains a bit of a mystery.  Anyway I’ve sown some more courgettes in the hope of a late harvest.  I’ve also sown a batch of peppers, which I intend to try and over-winter as small plants.  I’ve also started sowing my late tomatoes (more next week) which hopefully will be with us in October and November when I’ve pulled up the polytunnel plants to be replaced by winter veg.

1. Cauliflower, Romanesco
2. Kale Nero di Toscana
3. Lettuce Navara
4. Lettuce Moon Red
5. Radicchio Palla Rossa
6. Outdoor (cordon) Ildi
7. Sweet Lipstick
8. Sweet N.Napia
9. Courgette Black Beauty
10. Potato, Second-early Charlotte
11. Radicchio Ceasar

What I’ve planted

I’ve planted a few carrots and the last of the tumbling tom tomatoes.

What I’ve potted on

That’s now it for the winter cabbage/Cauliflower, focus now switches to the spring veg in a few months!  I’m still sowing calabrese and romanesco though.

1. Winterbor Kale
2. Claret Broccoli
3. Tundra (savoy) Cabbage
4. January King Cabbage
5. Marathon Calabrese
6. Red Drumhead Cabbage
7. North Forelander Cauliflower

First harvests of the year

Using the same technique my first harvest database now also gives me a nice summary view of the week’s first harvests.

What we’ve run out of in store

1. Dried pears – March
2. Winter squash – March (we still have some in the freezer)
3. Carrots – May week 2
4. Garlic – May week 3 (we have still have pickled garlic and green garlic to harvest)
5. Shallots – May week 4 (strictly speaking we didn’t run out, they just sprouted and got bad greenfly)
6. Baking potatoes – May week 4
7. Onions – June week 4 – we are processing the few that are left and making red onion marmalade
8. Beetroot – June week 3 – I thought I’d finished last week, but when I emptied out the wood chip that I store them in I found three large beets in perfect condition

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Broad beans – June week 3
7. Garlic – June week 3
8. Over-wintered onions – June week 3
9. Spring cabbages – June week 4
10. Spring cauliflowers – June week 4

What’s left in store

1. Dried Apples – 1/2 big cool bag
2. A few hundred garlic cloves
3. A few dozen over-wintered onions
4. Elephant garlic – a few dozen bulbs

The store was almost empty, but it’s now refilling rapidly, I will update this list when I count up properly:

1. Pickled garlic – 6 jars
2. Frozen broad beans – about 10 Kg
3. Jams – dozens of jars
4. Cordials – a dozen bottles

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

We now have a new database for tracking all of the recipes that we use for our preserves, and all of the batches that we make of those recipes.

1. Strawberry Jam June 11, 2019
2. Pickled garlic June 21, 2019
3. Elderflower and lemon cordial June 21, 2019
4. Strawberry Jam June 18, 2019
5. Mixed fruit Jam June 21, 2019
6. Strawberry and rhubarb Jam June 20, 2019
7. Strawberry and rhubarb cordial June 22, 2019
8. Mint syrup June 27, 2019
9. Red currant jelly June 28, 2019
10. Red onion marmalade June 29, 2019

Highlights

1. The summer fruit is now coming thick and fast, Debbie is hard at work making preserves!
2. We have chard and true spinach again after a few weeks without them, we also have NZ spinach and turnip greens.  These are staples for stirfry and smoothies
3. I’ve managed to germinate another bed of carrots, despite the heat
4. The new plants in the squash bed all survived the heat
5. All of my seedlings are on the patio at home, it’s too hot under-cover on the allotments and they are so easy to look after here

Lowlights

1. I left a tray of salad on the patio (rather than the slug free raised bench) and I lost 30% of the seedlings, I resowed in the affected cells and new seedlings are now germinated!
2. One of the golden purselane beds has a lot of greenfly, the other bed is fine
3. I hurt my back, but it’s fully recovered now

June has been a crazy month, with a few days colder than February and then blazing hot a fews days later followed by gales and heavy rain. The beans have suffered the most, hardly climbing at all. Hopefully July will get things growing again, there’s not much I can do to help so my focus now switches to preparing for an abundant winter and spring, which means carefully timed sowings in July and especially August, with a just a few sowings in September/October and fewer still over winter. Watch the associated videos as they are released.

For me the most important thing is that the allotments have become a very relaxed place as we potter around, watering, planting and harvesting, with no real work to do until late September/October when we transition everything over for winter veg.

In this video I show you the progress of my May and June sowings which are doing very well.  Most of the peppers are now doing well, the early tomatoes seem to have been worth the effort and the main tomato sowing destined for the polytunnel is all growing strong.  The early courgettes and cucumbers are cropping well.

In the video I also spend a few minutes on the computer to show you the databases that I’m using to capture all of my knowledge about the 250+ varieties of fruit and veg that I grow and also the details of what I’m sowing.

Before we get to the video though you might like to check out my latest tour, which shows everything that’s growing.

June Allotment Tour – successes and failures!

So finally we get to the video for July’s sowing and growing:

What I’m Sowing and Growing In july

This video shows several databases that I’m using to manage my allotment this year.If you would like to find out more about these databases please take a look at the following video, and it’s associated description:

If you want to get a copy of the tools that I demonstrate in this video please click on this link and create an account.  Once you have an account then click on this link to browse all of my databases, if you want, you can take a copy of the databases to use for yourself.

If you want to download any of the following views to a spreadsheet you can clock ‘download CSV’ to get your own private copy, or use the web based database I’m using by watching the video above.

When looking at these databases please bear in mind that they are live views onto rapidly evolving data. The content and design is being constantly improved. If you want to look at snapshots and/or take your own copies, please look at the video above and it’s associated description.

Here’s a complete read-only view of the sowing log and varieities database with all of my data:

Here’s a view of everything I sowed in May:

Here’s what I sowed in June:

Here’s what I’m planning to sow in July:

For completeness here’s a view of my sowing database with all the details!

Watch out for the next video showing what I’m sowing in August!

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 12 hours, which is a little less than usual because we’ve been on holiday for a few days.  My average is running at 16 hours which is amazing really as this was my target level when I started the allotment experience 3 years ago and this is the first time I’ve tracked it.

Allotment Finances

We’ve been away on holiday this week so levels have been low, but we’ve harvested a total of £4,555.   We’ve spent a total of £869 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £173 worth of veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.

We picked: Gherkins, french beans, Pine berries, tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, spring onions, salad rocket, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, mangetout peas, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new.

People we are feeding

I’m delighted that another of our daughters has returned to the local area, so we are now harvesting for her too, so that makes nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nothing

Video’s this week

What I’m Growing and Sowing in July

‭New plans for the allotments and a mini harvest‬

What I’ve sown

Nothing, I have a bit of a backlog due to the holiday

What I’ve planted

I’ve now planted all of my spare kales, squeezing them into every nook and cranny.   Red and Green Curly kale, Carvelo Nero, Dazzling Blue.  I continue to plant potatoes every week, as I empty containers for harvest.  I have loads of new brassicas waiting for space to come free!

What I’ve potted on

1. Nothing

First harvests of the year

Using the same technique my first harvest database now also gives me a nice summary view of the week’s first harvests.

What we’ve run out of in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

We have a new database for our preserves now and Debbie’s been hard at work.  These are the preserves so far this summer!

Highlights

1. We took a few days holiday and everything survived!
2. The preserves are amazing
3. The squash are romping away after a slow start
4. I’ve finally got the winter carrots planted, 2 weeks later than I’d hoped for

Lowlights

1. The beans are still very slow,  I’ve replanted about 30% of them and the replacements are already bigger than their much elder siblings
2. I planted the summer lettuces about two weeks too late, the main salad beds are running to seed now, so it will be touch and go whether we have sufficient supply.  This seems to happen to me every year!
3. some of the container planted potatoes are suffering, some from lack of water, some blight and some unknown

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 17 hours, which is up a little on last week because I’ve been doing a lot of planting and tidying up, it’s our allotment open day in a few weeks and I want to do a bit extra each week to get ready.  I like the open day, it’s a great opportunity to inspire more people to grow their own food, all year round.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £4,890.   We’ve spent a total of £869 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £200 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment. Debbie created preserves with a total value this year of £163 and a profit of £135 after subtracting the cost of ingredients we didn’t grow (sugar, vinegar etc)!

We picked: Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, Pine berries, Tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, true spinach, spring onions, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: onions, red beetroot, golden beetroot and dried apples.  Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

I’m delighted that another of our daughters has returned to the local area, so we are now harvesting for her too, so that makes nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nothing

Video’s this week

Planting carrots and talking about successions and interplanting

Planting beetroot, inter-planting and taking drastic measures!

What I’ve sown

I sowed the lettuces that we will be eating in early autumn today.  For the first time these will go on Jennie’s plot, allowing me to focus my plot totally on winter and early spring crops.  This is possible because I’m no longer growing potatoes on Jennie’s plot, so we have a lot of extra space.

I’ve also sown another 6 clumps of sprouts, which grow together just fine as relatively small plants, with huge quantities of the most fantastic small (6″) sprout leaves, which we eat steamed and in smoothies, they are my favourite brassica leaf.  Also for smoothies and stir-fry I’ve planted one of the hardier chards, to complement the bright lights that I sowed a few weeks ago.

I’ve also planted a very late batch of tomatoes, which will give us a nice harvest in winter/spring, if we manage to repeat last years experience.

1. Indoor (bush) Maskotka
2. Sprouts Brendan (clumps of 3)
3. Kale Red Ruble
4. Lettuce Bijou
5. Lettuce Lobjoits Green
6. Lettuce Moon Red
7. Chard Fordhook Giant
8. Lettuce Navara
9. Lettuce Grenoble Red
10. Lettuce Tesy

What I’ve planted

I’ve done a lot of planting this week, of particular note is a bed of Red Ruble, my first kale grown specifically to harvest as baby leaf for salads and smoothies.  My main bed of winter carrots, destined to be harvested for storage in late October/November and eaten in late winter/spring, my main bed of autumn carrots, to be harvested and eaten in October and November.  I’ve also planted my maincrop beetroot, to be harvested in October for storage and another bed to be harvested in autumn as required.  In total that’s about 400 carrots and 200 beetroot.

Finally I planted the late summer lettuces,  I always struggle with the timings of late summer lettuce, never quite having enough.  The reason is that my lettuce beds always seem to abundant in spring that I neglect to sow their replacements and then all of a sudden those amazing spring beds shoot to seed, or are the victim of drought/prests and I’m left with nothing.  Every year I just about pull through, although last year I think I had to skip harvests for a week.

1. Beetroot Burpees Golden
2. Beetroot Cylindra
3. Lettuce Tesy
4. Lettuce Lobjoits Green
5. Lettuce Cantarix
6. Lettuce Grenoble Red
7. Beetroot Bolthardy
8. Beetroot Mulatka
9. Kale Red Ruble
10. Carrot Autumn King
11. Carrot Nantes 5

What I’ve potted on

A few brassicas

First harvests of the year

Using the same technique my first harvest database now also gives me a nice summary view of the week’s first harvests.  Not much new this week, just Aztec Broccoli, which is really more of a spinach alternative, quite good though and very prolific.

What we’ve run out of in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

We have a new database for our preserves now and Debbie’s been hard at work.  These are the new preserves for this week!

Highlights

1. I’m making big changes to the way that we manage the allotments: changing the mix of veg we grow to increase the emphasis on staples, reducing our mandatory workload, changing harvest days to provide us with complete freedom for the week to go on holiday or take day trips, moving the summer leafy greens to the back garden where they are much easier to water and where we can harvest daily, I’m going to build a new structure for bringing on the summer seedlings in the garden so again they are easier to water.
2. The weather has been cooler, so I’ve managed to spend some time on the allotment tidying up.  I actually like weeding/tidying, just not too often.
3. I’m experimenting with reducing the frequency of watering to once a week for outside beds and twice a week for the polytunnels, however if it’s really hot I might need to water the salad beds twice a week.  That helps me a lot because it aligns with my two harvest days.

Lowlights

1. The beans are still very slow, unbelievably slow in fact.  Talking to other plot holders this is definitely down to timing.  People who had success with their beans planted them just before a warm spell, allowing them to get well established before the cold spell hit.  Those like me timed it so that they planted just before the cold spell.
2. I planted the summer lettuces about two weeks too late, the main salad beds are running to seed now, so it will be touch and go whether we have sufficient supply.  This seems to happen to me every year!

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 16.5 hours, it’s been a busy week.  Unfortunately a few of these hours have been spent writing letters to the council because they have just notified us that they intend to switch off our tap water supply, except in time of ‘drought’ which is undefined.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,055.   We’ve also created preserves with a total value of £201. We’ve spent a total of £885 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view of my harvests (I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.  Below each photo is the total number of boxes we harvested, often more than shown in the photo.

We harvested a total of £300 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment. This week Debbie created preserves with a value £38 and a profit of £30 after subtracting the cost of ingredients we didn’t grow (sugar, vinegar etc)!

We picked: Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, Pine berries, Tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, spring onions, sorrel,  mixed herbs, rhubarb, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples.  Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Seeds
2. Compost for one of the new garden beds that we have created for winter kales!

Video’s this week

Planting cabbage, calabrese, chard, lettuce and beets and a nice surprise

‭Harvesting interplanted (over-wintered) shallots for storing and pickling‬

What I’ve sown

All of my attention is now turning to keeping us well fed in Autumn, winter and early spring!

1. Potato, Second-early Charlotte
2. Spinach Red Kitten
3. Radicchio Palla Rossa
4. Radicchio Ceasar
5. Kale Reflex
6. Kale Nero di Toscana
7. Kale Redbor
8. Cauliflower, Florret Romanesco
9. Broccoli, Florret Early Purple
10. Winter onion SENSHYU YELLOW
11. Winter onion TOUGHBALL F1
12. Winter onion Sturon
13. Cucumber La Diva
14. Lettuce Roxy

What I’ve planted

I’m now quite short of space for winter plantings, so I’m clearing existing beds as fast as I can and filling up every gap!

1. Calabrese, Florret Marathon
2. Kale Winterbor
3. Kale Nero di Toscana
4. Beetroot Mulatka
5. Cabbage Red Drumhead
6. Chard Bright Lights

What I’ve potted on

Nothing

First harvests of the year

Lots of firsts this week.  Golden beetroot, the first few main-crop onions, over-wintered shallots, cucamelons, the first of the cordon tomatoes from the polytunnel, sweet corn and our first Crown Prince squash of the season.

What we’ve run out of in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

We have a new database for our preserves now and Debbie’s been hard at work.  These are the new preserves for this week!

Highlights

1. I’m excited to be getting ready for winter, I washed all of the seed trays ready for the big planting in August!
2. The shallot harvest was a real joy, we only planted a dozen sets, in a very small corner of the plot and what a harvest!
3. There are some crops that we really look forward to in summer, the first berries were a great example, but this week we have the first sweet corn and squash.  Everyone particularly loves the sweetcorn, after you’ve had home grown it’s hard to eat shop bought, so this is a treat Debbie in particular has waited a long time for!
4. Calabrese side shoots have been amazing this year, as have the main heads.  We used a new strategy for the brassica beds, building fertility over winter with field beans.  It seems to have paid off.  We don’t know what the sporuts and kalettes will be like yet, but the calabrese and cabbage are amazing.  The heads have been HUGE and we have had a dozen or more very large side shoots off each plant, which is just incredible.
5. The beans are finally starting to climb, so it looks like we will have a late crop, which is fine because we still have polytunnel beans for now.
6. Very few pests this year, except leaf miner

Lowlights

1. The council published a policy stating that tap water will no longer be provided, except in times of drought.  This is particularly devastating for anyone who’s self-sufficient and see’s their food supply being put at risk.  Letters to the council have already been sent, making our case!
2. Still lots of leaf miner about

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 8 hours, it’s been a relaxed week, if you exclude the hassle of dealing with the council’s strategy to switch off the allotments water supply.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,356.   We’ve spent a total of £931 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £197 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment. This week Debbie created preserves with a value £6 and a profit of £5.4 after subtracting the cost of ingredients we didn’t grow (sugar, vinegar etc)!  Actually we also harvested the first of three beds of main crop shallots, but I’ve not had chance to price those up, so they will be added to next weeks tally.

We picked: Cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, Pine berries, Tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, spring onions, sorrel,  mixed herbs, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples.  Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Seeds
2. Seed compost for the rest of the year

Video’s this week

July allotment harvest, highs and lows!

July allotment tour – big problems but no shortages

What I’ve sown

All of my attention is now turning to keeping us well fed in Autumn, winter and early spring!

1. Kale Nero di Toscana
2. Lettuce Freckles

What I’ve planted

I’m now quite short of space for winter plantings, so I’m clearing existing beds as fast as I can, I cleared a few beds this week, but with the weather being so bad I held off on planting.

What I’ve potted on

Nothing

First harvests of the year

I harvested half of the main crop shallots this week, but I didn’t get a photo, or figure out how much they are worth, so that will be added to my totals for next week.  I also harvested some more of the maincrop tomatoes.

What we’ve run out of in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

We have a new database for our preserves now and Debbie’s been hard at work.  These are the new preserves for this week!

Highlights

1. Although we only have a single courgette plant (which is still giving) due to the still unexplained disappearance of 6 plants, the Tromboncinos are worthy alternative and we have so many of them!
2. We seem to have got through our shortage of salads, the new beds are ready to give a few leaves, just as the old beds are giving their last few hearts, we don’t have a surplus, but we have enough
3. Our strategy to intentionally grow a surplus has saved us yet again.  We’ve had so many crops fail this year that without this strategy we would have run out and not had enough food for ourselves, but we’ve not had a single shortage for the family.  In my view this is the only way to be self-sufficient and stress free.
4. All of our water storage is full and I’m taking the opportunity to thoroughly hydrate all of the polytunnel beds and low tunnels, to make space for further rainfall next week!  This has been an unprecedentedly wet summer for us, in stark contrast to last years drought.
5. All this rain means no need to water now for at least a few weeks
6. We harvested the first of three beds of spring planted shallots, all grown from seed (almost everything I grow is from seed now).  The crop was amazing, although a few bulbs were slightly soft.
7. Calabrese side shoots continue to be amazing this year, as have the main heads. It’s been over a month now and the same 6 plants just keep on giving!
8. The beans have finally reached the top of their canes!
9. The tomatoes are finally starting to ripen, it’s been a very slow year, we still don’t have a surplus to make preserves with though, just enough to sprinkle on salads

Lowlights

1. The germination of my winter carrot beds has been terrible, maybe 20%, due to the hot dry weather in early July.  Luckily I did plant a few beds earlier in the year, so we will hopefully have just enough, bit not enough to share.  Next year I’m going to sow by winter carrots in June, so if they fail I can have another try in July.
2. I experimented with inter-planting lettuce and cauliflower this year, a complete disaster, I pulled the whole bed this week, without a single leaf being harvested.  Inter-plating in my view is something to be used very carefully, all to often it compromises the yield and makes managing successions difficult.
3. Lots of worried people have been talking to us about the plans to remove the water supply from the site, the general opinion seems to be that we should get organised
4. The weather has been crazy: hottest days, storms, heavy rainfall, the plants have no idea whats happening to them
5. The very hot weather and lack of rain a few weeks ago means quite a few leeks, chard and onions have run to seed.  I’ve never had onions planted from seed, go to seed, but that’s what we get if we don’t water I guess
6. The caterpillars have arrived, so we’ve started to spray with BT, a few plants inevitably suffered before we noticed.  Some of the gooseberries have been decimated by sawfly, which also happens every year, one day they seem fine, the next no leaves!

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 18 hours, which is very high because we have been preparing for Open Day and because I spent 8 hours on site during Open Day..

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,597.   We’ve spent a total of £931 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £175 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 35 meals with ingredients from the allotment.  Actually we also harvested two beds of shallots and all of the main crop onions and half of the pickling onions, but I’ve not yet had chance to price these up, maybe next week!.

We picked: Main crop onions, Calcots, a few of the Main Crop potatoes, Cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, Pine berries, Tayberries, red currants, chard, turnip greens, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, gooseberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves, radish, radish leaves, lots of types of kale, spring onions, sorrel,  mixed herbs, shelling peas and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples.  Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nematodes

Video’s this week

What I’m Sowing and Growing in August

A rare potato reveal, after the worst potato weather I can remember

Preparing for a self-sufficient winter – Part 1 – The Polytunnel

Allotment Open Day and Main Crop Onion Harvest

What I’ve sown

All of my attention is now turning to keeping us well fed in Autumn, winter and early spring!

What I’ve planted

I’m now quite short of space for winter plantings, so I’m clearing existing beds as fast as I can, I cleared a few beds this week, but with the weather being so bad I held off on planting

1. Broccoli, Florret Claret Brassica
2. Calabrese, Florret De Cicco Brassica
3. Radicchio Palla Rossa Salad Leaves
4. Radicchio Ceasar Salad Leaves
5. Potato, Christmas Charlotte (CHRISTMAS) Root

What I’ve potted on

All manner of brassicas this week: cauliflowers, kales, red cabbage, broccoli, winter cabbages

First harvests of the year

I harvested half of the main crop shallots this week, but I didn’t get a photo, or figure out how much they are worth, so that will be added to my totals for next week.  I also harvested some more of the maincrop tomatoes.

What we’ve run out of in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The only thing we have in store now from last year are dried apples and a few things in the freezer.  I’m not going to track things going into the store at this point as it’s too complicated.  In October after we harvest the beetroot/carrots etc I will start again.)

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I’m not tracking water now that the taps are on:

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

Nothing this week, although Debbie is busy processing onions as I write this!

Highlights

1. Open day was great, I had about 100 people visit my plot and was run off my feet all day long
2. We harvested the first of the main-crop potatoes, these have finished much earlier than last year due to the freaky weather, but the harvest was good and we have loads left that are not yet ready for harvest
3. We harvested all of the main-crop onions, we have one bed left of main crop shallots and a lot of onions for pickling still in the ground.  The harvest was good apart from Lila which ran to seed
4. We took the nets off the main brassica beds, as they have reach the top now.  We do this every year as we find it’s easier to manage pests with the nets off now and it’s much easier to harvest!
5. Now the onions are out of the ground I just have enough time to take a quick crop of lettuce and spinach off those beds, before I plant then with field beans in October

Lowlights

1. Lots of worried people have been talking to us about the plans to remove the water supply from the site, the general opinion seems to be that we should get organised
2. Despite the nets moths are getting into the lettuce beds and we have lots of big grubs to try and find and remove!
3. 50% of the red onion, Lila ran to seed
4. The caterpillars have arrived, so we’ve started to spray with BT, a few plants inevitably suffered before we noticed.

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

The total for this week is: 8 hours, it’s been raining a lot (so no watering) and to be honest there’s not much to do apart from harvesting.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,460.   We’ve spent a total of £931 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £222 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 30 meals with ingredients from the allotment.  We’ve finally processed some of the onions and shallots and moved them into the store, so I’ve added those to the total, lots more to go.

We picked: Main crop runner beans, main crop French beans, main crop onions, calcots, a few of the main crop potatoes,cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, tayberries, red currants, chard, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, red tomatoes, runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves,  lots of types of kale, spring onions, mixed herbs and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples. Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!

What we’ve bought this week

1. Nothing

Video’s this week

Preparing for a Self-sufficient Winter – Part 2 – Cold-frames and Low Tunnels

Setting the brassicas free from their nets!

Planting the last Christmas potatoes and carrots

What I’ve sown

All of my attention is now turning to keeping us well fed in Autumn, winter and early spring!  This week I completed sowing everything except plants destined for the polytunnel and over-wintering, except lambs lettuce and spinach.

What I’ve planted

Nothing

What I’ve potted on

Nothing

First harvests of the year

This section of my diary is about to get very boring, very soon as first harvests are almost all done!  This week is exciting though, because we finally started harvesting the main crop runner beans and the French beans!!

What we’ve run out of in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, shallots, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I didn’t intend tracking water reserves until the taps go off, however it’s been a remarkable month.  We’ve been totally self-sufficient in water for over a month now due to huge amounts of rain.  However the tap water has still been incredibly useful for harvesting.

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

Debbie is a bit behind on her tracking, so this will get updated next week.  We’ve processed a lot though.

Highlights

1. Salad mixes are wonderful
2. The first outdoor runner beans, just before the polytunnel beans ran out!
3. The first French beans, (I’m growing polytunnel French beans next year)
4. The first bulk tomato harvest destined for passata
5. No watering needed
6. It looks like we have agreement to keep the allotment sites tap water switched on

Lowlights

1. Huge amounts of rain, overflowing all of the water storage containers and causing local flooding.  This means I have to figure out some overflow management piping.
2. The wind and rain is burning some of the lettuce growing tips
3. The peppers are very slower to ripen than the tomatoes, which means the first passata mixes are sans peppers
4. The beets are suffering terribly this year.  The reds all have a mix of leaf-miner and fungal spot, the goldens are bolting due to the hot/cold cycles
5. The golden purselane is hating the wet and windy weather

If you received this via email click here to get all of the images and videos!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

It’s actually hard to believe that I’m writing this diary almost at the end of summer, because it seems like the last 6 weeks or so have actually been autumn (see photo of our windswept beach).  This week was another windy, rainy one, with just a few hours a day of sunshine.  That’s meant very little time on the allotment 7.5 hours, but some decent hiking days and lots of housework and work on the home garden.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,902.   We’ve spent a total of £935 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £183 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 30 meals with ingredients from the allotment.  We’ve finally processed some of the onions and shallots and moved them into the store, so I’ve added those to the total, lots more to go.

We picked: Peppers, sprouts, Main crop runner beans, main crop French beans, main crop onions, calcots, a few of the main crop potatoes,cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, tayberries, red currants, chard, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, red tomatoes, early runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves,  lots of types of kale, spring onions, mixed herbs and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples. Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!  We are of course not providing these nine families with all of the veg they eat, just what we happen to have as a surplus in any particular week. Only Debbie and I manage to be fully self-sufficient in veg and seasonal fruit.

What we’ve bought this week

1. A few seeds

Video’s this week

I can’t cope with this weather, so I’ve put the cold-frame tops on!

What I’ve sown

Nothing, although I should have sown quite a bit, next week I need to catch up!

What I’ve planted

These lettuces and spinach were actually planted in cold-frames WITH THE TOPS ON, that’s how bad the weather has been.

I’ve also planted out spare brassicas as space has opened up:

1. Red Drumhead cabbage
2. January Kind Cabbage
3. Savoy cabbage
4. Winter cauliflowers
5. Various kales

What I’ve potted on

Nothing

First harvests of the year

This section of my diary is about to get very boring, very soon as first harvests are almost all done!  This week is exciting though, because we finally started harvesting the main crop runner beans and the French beans!!

What we’ve run out of in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, shallots, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I didn’t intend tracking water reserves until the taps go off, however it’s been a remarkable month.  We’ve been totally self-sufficient in water for over a month now due to huge amounts of rain.  However the tap water has still been incredibly useful for harvesting.

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

Debbie has been hard at work preserving, taking advantage of the bad weather to work her way through the surplus that we’ve accumulated.

Highlights

1. No watering needed
2. It looks like we have agreement to keep the allotment sites tap water switched on
3. One of our cats has decided he likes the winter kale bed at home

Lowlights

1. The chard – like the beets – is suffering from fungal spot, so I’ve cut it all back to the base, in the hope that it will regrow in better condition
2. We continue to loose about a plant a week to cabbage root fly
3. I’ve had to put the tops on some of the cold-frames!

How much time have I spent on the allotments?

There’s actually a fair bit of work to do on the allotments, but the weather has been good for cycling and hiking, so that’s taken precedence and I will have a couple of days on the allotment next week.  This week it’s just been harvesting and watering really and that’s just taken 7.5 hours.

Allotment Finances

I’ve now added the value of our preserves into our running total harvest value, so that gives us a total for 2019 of £5,880+£287 = £6167.   We’ve spent a total of £973 this year, mostly one time investments and a lot of compost!

What we’ve harvested and eaten

I’ve a new feature in the database that I created to track my harvests, that automatically gives me a weekly summary view. I only take one picture per harvest, so this is nowhere near everything we picked, but it’s a nice summary.

We harvested a total of £222 worth of fruit and veg this week, excluding everything from the store. We had 30 meals with ingredients from the allotment.  We’ve finally processed some of the onions and shallots and moved them into the store, so I’ve added those to the total, lots more to go.

We picked: Peppers, sprouts, main crop runner beans, main crop French beans, main crop onions, calcots, a few of the main crop potatoes,cucamelons, main crop tomatoes, main crop shallots, over-wintered shallots, Sweetcorn, Crown Prince squash, Aztec broccoli, gherkins, french beans, tayberries, red currants, chard, baking potatoes, trumbocino, cucumber, raspberries, red tomatoes, early runner beans, red and golden beetroot, mange tout broad beans, celery, courgettes, New Zealand spinach, golden purselane, strawberries, yellow tomatoes, carrots, calabrese, cauliflower, sprout leaves, calabrese leaves,  lots of types of kale, spring onions, mixed herbs and loads of lettuce. We also raided the store for: dried apples. Bold items are new this week.

People we are feeding

We are feeding nine families (Us, Elena, Jennie, Tessa, Tony, Diane, Anne, Chris, Christine) about 22 people and I’m also sharing any extra surplus with fellow allotmenteers and Diane’s chickens (which supply our eggs)!  We are of course not providing these nine families with all of the veg they eat, just what we happen to have as a surplus in any particular week. Only Debbie and I manage to be fully self-sufficient in veg and seasonal fruit.

What we’ve bought this week

1. A lot of seeds for next year, all of the staples

Video’s this week

August weekly allotment harvest

Dehydrating season gets started with apples and pears

August Kitchen Garden Tour

Rambling on about getting older and still gardening

What I’ve sown

I’ve finally caught up with the seed sowing, it looks like everything has germinated apart from one tray of old spinach seeds.

What I’ve planted

Just a few radish and three late courgettes

What I’ve potted on

All of the brassicas for the ploytunnel

First harvests of the year

Nothing

What we’ve run out of in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, shallots, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Last harvests

1. Celery – May week 1
2. Last years kale – May week 1
3. Perpetual spinach – May week 3
4. Purple sprouting broccoli – May week 4
5. Chard – June week 1
6. Onions – June week 2 (we have fresh onions now of course)
7. Beetroot – June week 3 (we have fresh beets now of course)
8. Carrots – June week 4 (we have fresh carrots now of course)

What’s left in store

The store is rapidly filling up now with garlic, onions and potatoes, but it’s not full yet so I’m not going to start tracking it until then.

Water Reserves and Rainfall

I didn’t intend tracking water reserves until the taps go off, however it’s been a remarkable month.  We’ve been totally self-sufficient in water for over a month now due to huge amounts of rain.  However the tap water has still been incredibly useful for harvesting.

1. Allotment reserves (Steve) :
2. Allotment reserves (Jennie):
3. Allotment reserves (Debbie):
4. Home reserves :

What have we processed for preserving

Debbie has been hard at work preserving, taking advantage of the bad weather to work her way through the surplus that we’ve accumulated, I’ve started dehydrating and I’ve also started my first ever batch of apple cider vinegar, which we drink every day.

Highlights

1. No watering needed
2. Lots of time hiking and cycling
3. Started dehydrating apples
4. First ever batch of apple cider vinegar, using up the waste from dehydrating

Lowlights

1. The chard – like the beets – is suffering from fungal spot, so I’ve cut it all back to the base, in the hope that it will regrow in better condition
2. We continue to loose about a plant a week to cabbage root fly
3. About 1/4 of the peppers have caterpillar damage, which is a first for us

August, like July, has been a challenging month in the garden.  High winds, lots of rain and not much sun.  I even had to put cold-frame lids over new plantings of lettuce to protect them from the gales and hail!  It looks like everything has pulled through though, the squash harvest looks like it will last us through winter, the beans are finally abundant and we’ve even had enough beets/chard despite the leaf miner and fungal disease.

With the trials of summer behind me though I’m now really excited to be transitioning the plots to their autumn, winter and spring crops.  It’s a wonderful time of year as the dead and decaying debris of summer is cleared away to be replaced by new healthy plants that will be feeding us for so long!

In this video I show you the progress of my July and August sowings which are doing very well.  We have a wide variety of salad greens, loads of onions and spring onions, spinach and leaf beet, carrots, potatoes and of course lots and lots of brassicas!

In the video I also spend a few minutes on the computer to show you the databases that I’m using to capture all of my knowledge about the 250+ varieties of fruit and veg that I grow and also the details of what I’m sowing.

Before we get to the video though you might like to check out my latest tour, which shows everything that’s growing.

End of August Allotment Tour

So finally we get to the video for August’s sowing and growing:

What I’m Sowing and Growing in September

This video shows several databases that I’m using to manage my allotment this year.If you would like to find out more about these databases please take a look at the following video, and it’s associated description:

If you want to get a copy of the tools that I demonstrate in this video please click on this link and create an account.  Once you have an account then click on this link to browse all of my databases, if you want, you can take a copy of the databases to use for yourself.

If you want to download any of the following views to a spreadsheet you can clock ‘download CSV’ to get your own private copy, or use the web based database I’m using by watching the video above.

When looking at these databases please bear in mind that they are live views onto rapidly evolving data. The content and design is being constantly improved. If you want to look at snapshots and/or take your own copies, please look at the video above and it’s associated description.

Here’s a complete read-only view of the sowing log and varieties database with all of my data: https://airtable.com/shrzYBHUBoyDtSN1F

Here’s what I sowed in July and August:

Here’s what I’m planning to sow in September!

For completeness here’s a view of my complete sowing database with all the details!

Watch out for the next video showing what I’m sowing in October!