Olympic harvests!!They are carrots Jim but not as we know it!!

Greetings! Soo how many courgettes have I eaten this week?!! We have had soup, rice and courgette pie, courgette and broad bean pasta, and potato and broad salad, broad bean humus....and there's much more to come!!! I'm absolutely loving my harvesting marathon whilst watching the most fabulous Olympic champions in team GB perfectly rounded my day off when Murray got a gold!!

My beautiful sweeeeeeet peeas!!!

Well my sweet peas have really gone bananas and I just keep on a pickin' 'em!!! I also have lots of lovely yarrow and wild marjoram on the wild bit of the plot coupled with some bright orange marigolds!!

Spot of still life in the kitchen!

This is is the first (and only so far...this was picked a few days ago now)  cheery cherry tom!

This was taken tonight as the light was fading, have now harvested ALL my  mega  hoard of broad beans! Now have a  freezer full!

They are carrots Jim but not as we know it!

Wild Allotment about to be strimmed

A quinoa experiment

Have found several sources of cobnuts-apparently I have to beat the squirrels to them!!

So considering the distinct lack of sun...we're not faring TOOo badly......again a few weeks away from the plot due to illness then a short holiday yielded a reasonably good change and contrast:

Sweet Peas are doing ok all things considered-I had dreamt of a wall of sweet peas by now but hey ho-think we are lucky to have got these as we have heard from other growers with really disappointing weather related disasters.
Some veritable jungles forming:

The courgettes-again very late in the ground but hopping along now ate our first few this evening-see dinner pickings below:

It always amazes me that broad beans grow upwards! They look very alien! Again had some of these fresh tonight with peas, feta, mint, dill, olive oil and salt and pepper-yum!

These sunflowers should turn out to be a reddish colour and were really small and straggly a few weeks ago now they are creating their own little jungle-mind you a fellow allotment, nextdoor but one has the most amazing huge stand of what look like perrennial sunflowers that are way above my head and not a flower in sight yet...when I see him next I will be after cuttings!! Will try and get a picture for here..

Just so pretty

Cardooonn!!

Pickerel weed flowering in it's temporary tub!

Newly in, sure I fed them a few weeks ago but reckon more food and some blessed sunshine would help!!

OMG!!! Soooo much time gone since I last posted-some sad family stuff happened, then weather been really weird so visits have been sporadic....BUT...back with a vengeance today-here are some recent doings!!

Before..slightly frost scorched first early potatoes..back in May

 Then....a bit of sunshine and a good deal of rain and my first harvest appeareth!! Awesome as they say!

Our resident Slow worm..Jim... is still in da house...

'Jim'

Isn't he gorgeous? One of our fellow allotmenteers is a wildlife keeney and told us he is a young male and we even found some sloughed off skin that shows he is growing!

So a while back plants were backed up in the greenhouses as the climate was generally inclement, then life got in the way then while we weren't looking it all started outgrowing it's pottedness and started screaming to get in the ground...so the last week or so has been a race to weed new areas for plants to go in...

Then.... I went a bit mad and suspect I have started the beginning of a courgette jungle...but hey it'll be fun!!

Finally managed to get our sweet pea wall in although he sweet peas were in various states of stunted and weird growth we are hoping they will buck up and climb these metal bread trolley frames we found on site...

Sweet pea wall

...and finally...the tomatoes are settling in nicely to their snug little greenhouse-fed and watered today...nom nom nom

Tchuss! x

Dragonfly Design Uk..Paul Lewis-my partner in crime!

Just thought I would tell you about my partner Paul Lewis as he has some very special skills that I am very envious of! He is one of those people whose fingers really are green! Not only that but he can see plants in ways that fit the landscape and climate whilst also creating a design that is unique for your space and how you want to be in that space. I think he does this by firstly having a passion for plants and wildlife and how they all work together ecologically and then he uses that insight to create environments that buzz with life that you can enjoy just as much as the wildlife that inhabits it!


Here is his website-lots of pictures, I especially like the Wildlife Pond at Treborth Botanic Garden, a joy to all who visit it;


http://dragonflydesignsuk.co.uk/

Well summer has been and gone and soo much has happened that I have gotten a bit behind! February and March were really HOT! My niece made me a mud and stone 'sculpture' for my birthday:

We've been starting to get nicely settled, chairs and everything!

I got a random piece of carpet from Freecycle, turns out it is axminster and goes very nicely with our compost bins (also acts as a place to sit and have a picnic when we are down there) 
Talking of settling in...we got the paint brushes out and get this-painted the wood that the GREENHOUSE will sit on!! So impressed with my gorgeous Paul-he's soo cool.

...and then we took a break:

There has been a greenhouse growing story that doesn't really show in my pictures as it relies on being able to show pane by pane how the glass went in. One must take into consideration that we dismantled this greenhouse from a house in Maidstone which took us about 4 hours! All lovingly wrapped in newspaper and blankets to stop the glass breaking, pictures taken so that we had reference for putting it back together.


Getting to the site was also a labour of love as not only is there no parking, our site is many rods from the gate. So it was many trips, hazard lights on at the gate whilst we dropped a few panes at a time, then carrying these huge panes one by one down the end to our plot...it was exhausting!


We weren't lucky enough to get any without any breakages BUT Paul (officially my hero) found a friendly local glazier who mixed and matched to Paul's measurements, and managed to use all the complete old bits of glass thereby reducing the need to buy too much expensive new glass.. it was all beyond me...my bit comes later...feeding him with all the glorious veg I am going to grow!


So here's a few stages...not sure if you can spot the difference:

Funky base and frame in place-the easy bit!

Carpet down...still a pane or two missing!

But finally man in glasshouse definitely NOT throwing stones!! He he!! Paul is definitely man of the month-he rocks big time in my world! I would never have had the patience or the skill to re-build this greenhouse-love you!

My first crop to go in the ground were my first earlies!! Sharpes Express I went for and they went in when summer was still in full force.....and now they are just starting to poke through. 

Spot of chitting!

Sunny sowing!

Ooooh yeah!

Can you dig it?!!

Sooo tired I can hardly type! On one of the hottest Feb Days since 1998, me and 'Da Gang' got digging!
Paul and I put in some hard spade work for a few hours trying to analyse some of the roots we were coming across, we think couch grass is abundant, small amount of nettles and brambles. So we were thoroughly weeding and sifting then trying to get mulch down to keep that precious water resource from evaporating too much.
We planted a cheap Lidl pear tree...a £3.99 experiment!

Blink and you'll miss it!

As we worked, our plans for the site were tripping off our tongues....a shelter with a green roof, a small pond, fruit cage, 4 bed crop rotation, hot beds, greenhouses, solar panels, wind-up DAB radios, water saving, clay oven, bug hotels, bird tables.....we weren't getting carried away honest!!
But first....more digging...more weeding....ooh and some BURNING!! So I put my trust in my brother's fire-starting (and fire-controlling) skills, made sure we had marshmallows for the kids and off we went! I was a little nervous as everything was so dry but we watered the edges and kept vigilant.

Fire...boys looked studious, girls nonplussed!

Whilst old wood panels and vegetation crackled, me and mum sat on my 'Freecycled' bit of axminster carpet and perused the seed list. Hot favourites include courgettes, sweetcorn, chillies, potatoes, squash and peppers-so we will really need a greenhouse!

A Welsh Wonderwoman, a tool delivery, and a natural progression

I am totally out of sync and playing catch up...so do excuse-nothing new there!!

Before snow stopped play we did make some real progress....quite literally the day before it snowed

Our Welsh Wonderwoman, Dr Thomas arrived with a boot full of tools for us to caretake at our allotment and we quickly put her to work building the compost bays! We decided this was a good first job to be achieved so that when we start clearing vegetation we have somewhere to put it!!

A natural progression.....

Composting  avec la dame Cymraeg!

Paul ably assisted...first pallet up

A lonely half built compost bay...

A funky finish! Paul and Abbey in a compostable pose!

...et enfin...the ladies of the canyon..er compost! I think we are impressed!