My allotment challenge

Burkina Yellow Chilli update 30/08/18 Absolutely gutted, I went away for a couple of days and on my return my plant looked dead. My last had been overwatered and was sat in a container full of water. I drained it and waited a few days for the soil to dry out then continued to water it properly but I think its too late.  I will take cuttings from the main plant about 3inch big, from the bits that look alive. Each cutting needs to have at least nodes ( swellings from where leaves appear) and I will cut just below the lowest node. Then remove the lowest set of leaves, dip in rowing compound and plant. Then place the cuttings in a warm place to hopefully grow ready for fruiting next year. Burkina Yellow update 17/05/18 Today under the leaves I noticed to my great delight a little beauty. Tucked up undertone leaves my first chilli has formed. Its only small at the moment about 1cm but its definitely there. They start life as small pale green balls before they change colour....

Feeding a family on 1/7th of an acre You may remember my blog at the beginning of the year working out how much veg I will need to feed a family of six. Well so far I have produced 7LB of tomatoes with many more to come, 50 Onions, 12 garlic, 1 cucumber with more to come, 19 squash a few more to come, 2lb of teas, 11 sweetcorn with a lot more growing, 29 stalks of swiss chard with more growing, 1.5lb of potatoes which actually grew from a discarded one in a bed, 7 beetroot and a dismal 5 radishes.  I have only actually used 1/3 of my allotment space its taking longer than I thought to tame it. Although I am far behind my total at the moment its been a great learning curve and with the whole allotment next year I should to far better. I think a polytunnel is going to be much needed and a wise investment for my pepper, tomato and chilli production. I still have much more growing and will update later in the year.  How much veg do I need to feed my family of 6  S...

My first attempt at jam making Well there is no point growing all the produce if I cant store it for the winter, its part of my plan to make jam. My first attempt at making jam turned out to be a bit like watching Jamie Oliver cook on Tv, bung this in add a bit of that give it a stir etc.  After washing the plums I put them in a saucepan and realised I didn't know how much water to put in so I put about an inch of water in the saucepan, and "about" was the measurements from there onwards.  After the plums had cooked down to a mush and the stones were out, about half an hour, I turned them off and put them in a colander. So first thing is I kept the stones in because I read they help with the pectin, and secondly I didn't put through a sieve as I didn't want a smooth jam. After the plums had been passed through the colander and were in another saucepan I added sugar (just ordinary sugar), and again I hadn't measured the plums so I added about half su...

My first sweetcorn from the allotment  After three years of trying to grow sweetcorn I finally have success. In the previous two years they were eaten I think by the pigeons, even when they managed to get to a foot tall. This year I asked someone to build me a cage from three heras panals that I had. The last side have wire and a gate, and scaffold mesh on the top making it totally enclosed. The cage was built on ground that previously had a duck run on it so the ground had plenty of natural fertiliser on it. I have struggled with bindweed in the allotment so I laid s plastic sheet on the ground to try and stop the weed growing through. I planted the corn in pots in the greenhouse in compost three seeds to a 6inch pot. I had a great germination rate with only 3 not growing, so I had 15 plants to plant out. When the seedlings were about 6 inch high, and the weather had warmed up slightly after all the snow and rain I planted them out. The sweetcorn were planted in a grid fo...

Getting back into allotment blogging It’s been a while since I have blogged but I’m getting back into it.  What a summer we have had heatwave for most of the country and where I am we were on level 3 warnings most of the time.  Some plants have suffered greatly I almost lost my young apple tree leaves are all brown and dead, but after pouring scour buckets of water around the roots I seem to have some new shoots appearing. I lost almost all of my beetroot seedlings Just couldn’t keep up with the watering.  Some plants however have flourished in the heat. After caging my sweetcorn I have actually managed to grow some for the first time in three years. Squash and courgette have done well and my tomatoes are all outside no greenhouse required.  More blogs to follow soon about my trials and tribulations.