The Food Is Starting To Ramp Up!

 5th August 2022 - The Food Is Starting To Ramp Up!

Another line of Radish sown into a piece of ground we noticed was available by the tomatoes. We are seeking to harvest and re-sow as often as possible with the salad produce. Radish takes about 4 weeks from sowing to harvesting the first crop, lettuce a bit longer, but if interspersed with the everlasting variety, there shouldn’t ever be a shortage of salad from May till October, at least 6 months.

In the raised bed all is progressing, first beets can be enjoyed soon - a welcome addition to any salad these days! Lots of vitamins and iodine too, very good for the thyroid gland so important in our good health ("eat the rainbow" and all that). Notice the black tray in the foreground? That little sprout there is ginger… the only problem with growing ginger is you have no idea what it is doing until you dig it up!

Having chopped back all the grass and de weeded around the gooseberries, we have implemented some weed control with inside-out compost bags and some concrete slabs. This will allow the butternut to run the gauntlet unhindered. The corn is now beginning to produce cobs. Quite excited about this as we haven’t grown corn before and we both like corn on the cob, boiled and coated in salty butter… 

Round at the front of the polytunnel the tomatoes are looking good, some of the black cherry ones are beginning to get ripe… looking forward to wandering around picking those and eating them straight from the vines.

The courgettes have had to be trained using stakes, as predicted they have got out of control and the space is limited here, they are invading the pathway now making it tricky to get along the path. They are producing a steady source of courgettes though, around 4 or so per day. 

Taking a wider view and stepping back, the whole of the allotment infrastructure has disappeared in a swathe of green (green is good)! The cabbages under the white netting have exploded in growth with the red cabbages taking centre stage (they need a lot of land each). Maintenance of everything that is growing, including chopping back, watering, harvesting etc. now takes up most of our time… 

When we need a break though, it is bliss, and a very enjoyable experience to be able to sit on the terrace, on some comfy (comparably so) chairs, and sip a cuppa whilst looking down at the flowers growing next to the decorative fence and tidy grass path we created this year. The Marigolds are now flowering, the Echinacea are truly coming alive (and so beautiful too) and the Alyssum showing us a splash of white too.