Potatoes!

At last, a Bank Holiday weekend, and the chance to spend some decent time at the allotment.
Of course, we wake up on Monday morning to fairly persistent rain...but then it clears up, and all 3 of us are on the plot by 9am.
My main task is to get the remaining leeks weeded, and then to try to get some seeds in. Otherwise there'll be precious little to harvest once we get to the middle of September or so.
W occupies himself happily watering the pumpkins, and collecting stones in his wheelbarrow, under MP's watchful eye - until boredom sets in, and they head off home. Which leaves me to crack on with the jobs.
I get all the weeding done - slow and only rewarding in a slightly weird way - but it's done. Then B&D roll up, and we spend some time chatting about plans for the autumn/winter. I have a few:
- get another 4 raised beds built
- put a path in along the bottom edge of the plot
- finish off the main path to the shed, and tidy the area round the shed
- create a sitting/picnic/flower-growing area next to the shed
- do something to partially screen-off the 'messy' end, compost heaps etc
- put in a fruit cage
- keep the raised beds in active cultivation through as much of the cold season as possible
And what will I do the weekend after that, you ask! It's good to be ambitious, and if I end up getting half of that lot done by Easter, I will be content enough.

Not a lot of activity from the new neighbours. They've built a neat doorstep at the front of their shed, which I might copy.

Am surprised how quiet the allotments are, given it's BH Monday. Maybe everyone was up on Sunday when the weather was really hot and sunny?

I get some seeds planted: lamb's lettuce, spinach, spring greens, winter lettuce (Arctic King - the free seeds from GYO magazine months ago). And I do various tidying jobs. The sun comes out from behind the clouds every so often, and it feels good to be up there for a decent stretch. I even have time to sit and have a sandwich and a cup of coffee, watching the countryside beyond the railway line: bliss.

And there's a bit of picking to be done. I lift an experimental plant of spuds - and get a pleasant surprise: a good number of decent sized spuds. Obviously the dry weather has not nobbled them completely - and they make into a fantastic mash in the evening. MP tells me she was really thrilled to be presented with an apronful of potatoes: proper veg growing. And W gets to pull a few crrots on his own, which pleases him no end. Runners keep coming, and loads of flowers (and bees). There are loads of squashes appearing all over the place, so I spend time last night looking at recipes...

Honey, I'm home...

Oh my. Three weeks away, and what a lot to do... Not that the holiday wasn't great. And how I enjoyed spotting other people's allotments around and about - a feature of the landscape, especially on the journeys there & back, that I had never really noticed before.

[One memorable exception does stay in my mind. I was on a train back from Manchester, on Bonfire Night - must have been in the mid-1980s - having been to see Robert Lindsay in Hamlet at the Royal Exchange, I think. The lights on the train failed, and I was sitting in the dark compartment in the November night, and we passed through an area of allotments where there were bonfires burning. I remember thinking it felt like the Blitz, sitting on this old blacked-out train with fires all around.]

Anyhow, the allotment has survived OK. Big thanks to my in-laws B & D, and to our friend G, who did sterling work between them on the watering front. A lot easier now that the water-trough has been installed, but even so a big commitment on both their parts - in return for a few beans...

Speaking of beans, one of the big changes while I was away has been the sudden surge in the runner beans. The ones I'd originally planted in the open ground had failed completely, so what I now have is a combination of some I brought on in a raised bed (Desiree), and some I bought from the market - planted out in May. They struggled a bit with the dry weather, but they have decided to make a go of it after all, and there are now loads of flowers - and a fair few beans to pick (some of which had got a bit big). Although I am not the world's biggest runner bean fan, I have soft spot for them as my Grandad grew them on his allotment - they're a sort of 'talisman' crop: it's not a proper allotment without runners. The ones I picked cooked OK, one or two were a bit stringy, but overall a tasty crop.

Green beans carry on cropping fantastically well - the relief waterers had taken a few, and still they come. Delicious too. I suspect they're starting to tire now - and maybe we'll only get a few handfuls more. Still, they were selling at £2 a packet in Waitrose this week.

The squashes have also done very well - though goodness knows what I am going to do with all of them. They've filled out their patch with foliage, and whilst they're not entirely keeping the weeds down, it's at least covering them up a bit. Ditto the marrows.

Other stuff is coming along OK. I lifted some shallots and onions, and a handful of (still small - 'baby') carrots, and a few courgettes, so those and the beans will keep us in veg for much of the week.

I had thought I might lift a 'trial' forkful of spuds last night, but left it - they don't look ready yet to me.

Last night I spent the time weeding - all the spuds, which were awash with Fat Hen, bindweed, even some brambles in there - and two rows of leeks. Surprisingly, the soil the leeks are in looked and felt really good when it had been weeded. The rain we have had over the past few days has obviously made a difference: it had a nice earthy colour, and a good rich texture.

It was going (gone) dark by the time I left the allotment at 8.45 - gone are those evenings when it was possible to work up there at 10pm.

Two other bits of news... First up, we have a new neighbour - a shed has appeared on the plot below, which had been completely wild (supposedly a beekeeper had it, but there'd been no hives this season). It's been strimmed and the new tenant has attacked the hedge at the south end in order to set the shed right in. It will be interesting to see who it is... I am slightly anxious that it'll be someone really keen and committed, who'll put pressure on me (not intentionally, of course) - S tells me not to be so silly.

Second, the allotment features in the new (Sept 2006) issue of Grow Your Own. The writer - Jeannine - has done a really good job turning my garbled 'phone interview into a piece that reads nicely, and actually sounds like me.

So there we are, all up to date pretty much. I want to spend some time up there this weekend, to complete the 'big weeding' and to get a few things in the ground that might keep us going into the (now rapidly encroaching) autumn, and through to next spring. The more I can get done this season before the weather closes in, the better I'll feel in the spring. And there's some structural stuff - more raised beds and a possible fruit cage - to get sorted during the dark months.