A year ago we grew winter squashes Crown Prince, Golden Hubbard and Uchiki Kuri in the school garden. When October arrived the clamour went up. Why don't you have any Halloween Pumpkins??? So this year I am happy to report that I have taken the criticism on board🙂
Another rainy day dissuades me from visiting the allotment. Instead I am tending to the plants at home waiting for their invasion of the allotment. OK these courgettes, squashes, pumpkins and cucumbers don't look quite so alien when they are in the greenhouse under natural light.
There are plenty seedlings awaiting improved weather. You might spot the tomatoes which are having a temporary excursion out of the greenhouse, and there are runner beans and peas too. I have plenty of spare alliums and a whole host of lobelia just needing to be found a final spot.
Also there are some later brassica seedlings. More than enough to fill the garden, allotment and school garden!
It is a relief to get to the direct sowing. Soon I will have to reconfigure the greenhouse for the tomatoes and cucumbers.
It is raining again today, but yesterday was a surprise sunny day. I took the opportunity to take some snaps of the allotment. First, appropriately, the potato patch.
The shaws are appearing above ground and very soon it will be time to mound them.
Beyond the potatoes is the fruit cage. The first of the three bays was strawberries. Notoriously these have to be moved around in order to avoid build up of disease. So currently this bay is garlic, Elephant to the left, ordinary to the right. In between are two rows of parsnips which are indistinguishable from the germinating weeds currently. But believe me they are there!
The remainder of the fruit cage is more conventionally raspberries and a mixture of currants and berries:
Reaching the turn at the end I am most pleasantly surprised by these autumn planted red onion sets. I had given them up for lost but come the new year they have reappeared and are thriving.
Also at that end are spring planted onion sets (tent to the left ) Carrots (temple to the right) and leeks between them. Next is onions and shallots from seed (I went a bit mad on alliums this year) and the start of the brassica patch in front of that in the picture below.
Working back to the start I have covered the ground, temporarily with weed suppressant fabric. This is going to be the the other half of the brassica patch and the legume/cucurbit patch which currently only has broad beans and a row of peas on the go along with some salads. The runner bean poles are up in readiness but the runner beans are only now germinating back at home.
Broad beans (under netting)
For the sake of completeness here is the last section with strawberries and blueberries to the left, rhubarb to the right and asparagus bed featured in my last post in the middle.
So there you have it. Together with the seedling nursery at home this is my vegetable home! Hope you enjoyed the tour.
Well winter squashes actually. Here's this year's allotment crop
The long yellow ones should be Butternut F1 Hunter, but I think there must have been a mix up with the crossing as these look more like Banana Squash or even Spaghetti Squash. I will report once it has been cut open and cooked.
Not sure whether this is Blue Uchi Kuri or Crown Prince. That will teach me to grow such similar varieties.
Size isn't everything - These cheeky Uchiki Kuri are perfectly sized and one was the first to go under the knife
On the frost carpeted grass are the last pickings of raspberries and runner beans and the remnants of the tomato harvest that has been sitting it out in an unheated greenhouse at the school garden. Ironically the one BIG pumpkin has been given away to the nursery class so is missing from the picture.
To make amends for this omission here is pretty much the entire pumpkin crop gathered from our allotment. I had a big push on cucurbits, but it looks like I chose the wrong year to do that*. The result is one fruit from each plant that survived. There is the traditional orange pumpkin (only just turning orange), Uchi Kuri, Kabotcha and Butternut squash Hunter. Oh yes, two random Sharksfin Melon also made a surprise appearance. Now they are scary. I was surprised to see these on Gardeners World a few weeks ago and even more surprised to see the intrepid presenter sampling them raw. Like a mature marrow, but more dense, they definitely need to be cooked!
*The other 2019 push was sweetcorn. I grew three varieties and ended up with a unanimous raspberry: They don't like the cold and never quite made it to edible proportions.
