Full Of Beans

 

Cherokee Trail of Tears

Greek Gigante Soup Beans

Barlotti Beans

Runner Bean

In full flush 9th August 

Starting out June 1st

Greek Gigantes podded

This year I have had a bit of a go at climbing beans. I always grow runner beans. Barlotti beans have become a fixture too, grown for drying in the pod and storing until needed in the following 12 months. 

Two novelties this year have been Greek Giant Soup Beans (or just Greek Gigantes beans) and Cherokee Trail of Tears.  The Greek beans are white butter beans and traditionally used in a baked bean dish called Gigantes Plaki. The pods are shorter and wider than runner beans and seemed to be vary widely in the number of beans per pod.  Despite my early fears about poor yield they delivered a good crop.  The taste and texture were ample reward for the effort and we recently enjoyed our first (of many) Plakis so much that we have committed to grow them again, using our home saved seeds.

Cherokee Trail of Tears will have to wait for another post because they haven't been podded yet

 

Biblical Beans

 

Forget the Holy Trinity planting scheme (Sweetcorn/Climbing Beans/Squash) I'm going for the 4 Apostles - hopefully not the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.

For the record the 4 wigwams are Greek Soup Giant Beans, Cherokee Trail of Tears, Barlotti Tongues of Fire and a mixture of Runner beans (Scarlet Emperor, White Lady, Painted Lady) 

The Shark has Jumped...

Been a bit busy since my last post. Too much gardening, and especially weeding to do. The school had a plant sale to be prepared for. To add to the mix I was allocated a place "on the shelf" at our allotment site just as the growing season got into full swing. Happily there have been family events too. The shark is a visitor to Alnwick Castle Gardens - a great otherwise safe place to take grandchildren without foregoing horticulture! (Mind you they do have "The Poison Garden" behind a closed gate.) Excuses aside, here is the current state of play at the plot:

Pride of place goes to the potatoes.  Here's the maincrop

and here's the earlies:

The soft fruit has only recently been netted

This shot takes in the broad beans, cucurbits and bean wigwams. (There are two Shark's fin Melons amongst them!!)

And here is the reverse view of the broad beans with Jerusalem artichoke, rhubarb and peas in front

This picture shows the end of the spring cabbages with short rows of parsnip, celeriac and celery beyond

And on to the brassicas hiding under their protective netting.

and the alliums all grown from seed.  (The bed to the left is going to be carrots now that the rain has finally arrived.)

 

Hope you enjoyed this brief tour.

Summer Plot Review

 

A lovely morning of sunshine, after what seems like weeks of wind and cloud - but no rain to speak of.  So off to the plot to water.

Alliums in the foreground. The leeks onions and shallots are green, but the yellow strip is three rows of garlic.  (Digging up the first few they are rather disappointing.) The potatoes behind are looking really happy. 

And what pretty flowers on the Blue Danube!

Beside the alliums the brassica patch is looking a bit sparse, but is nearly full up now and will come into its own later when the seedlings put on some leaf.

The cucurbits are showing plenty of leaf now. Fruit will follow and an avalanche of courgettes is anticipated.

Separated by a row of broad beans that has been cropping for weeks we have celeriac, celery and runner beans. I have high hopes for all three. The runners have just reached the top of the canes and I pinched out the tops today.

One rather unsightly crop is peas  (alongside a second,later, row of broad beans). The pigeons discovered the peas, but not before they had podded. While they decimated the leaves and stems the pods were not to their taste, so we humans got them!  Next year either taller pea sticks or netting will be deployed.

Last word goes to the carrots. Not pretty due to the protective net, but they deliver for months provided you keep the net on and the root fly out.

So, all in all, I am pretty happy with progress on the vegetable plot so far this year.

Picking Up At The Plot

 I have been indulging my newfound interest in flowering plants and particularly wildflowers recently. Despite appearances I have been keeping up with the production of edibles too.  To bring the record up to date, here is a statement of the current state of play.

I went for alliums in a bigger way this year growing autumn and spring planted garlic as well as shallots and onions from seed. These were sown indoors in February .  The garlic has emerged and shallot and onion have been planted out on site yesterday and today. 

Broad beans sown in cells and planted out a month ago are now sitting pretty at the plot. 

Peas on the other hand have refused to be cajoled into germinating early. As a last resort I have started them sprouting in a jam jar in the kitchen and only "sown" them in cells after germination and exporting them to the greenhouse and then the plot.

Still on legumes I have sown 5 varieties of Dwarf French Bean into deep cells in the hope that the improved night temperatures will help them get started.

The greenhouse has been stuffed full each night with the paraffin heater lit on any night when the threat of frost is flagged up by the weatherman.  The main beneficiaries are flowers: Cosmos, Marigold, Lobelia, but also tomato, cucumber and pepper 

Tomatoes and Cucumber

Pepper Hungarian Hot Wax

I have attempted direct sowing at the allotment but tend to hedge my bets by using up remnant seed supplies (open packets from last year or out of date ones).  This way I don't get upset when they fail - although failure is also more likely as a result!  Parsnip, carrot, Swish chard have been experimented with in this way - and have all been resown recently..

Good Friday is a traditional potato planting day.  Easter Saturday and Sunday saw me getting all but the maincrop Rooster in. 

Potatoes in waiting

The patch allocated to potatoes in my rotational plan still had "spring" cabbages at one end and leeks at the other.  Now that's what I call bad planning! The leeks are going into the cookpot.

The ground for runner beans, celery and celeriac has been thoroughly prepped with plenty of buried organic matter.  The celery and celeriac have been growing on at home

Celery and Celeriac  - Can you tell which is which?

 but the runner beans have yet to be sown.  The courgettes squashes and sweetcorn haven't been sown either yet, but I have recently prepared a bed for them too.  My method is to bag all my weeds and trimmings in old black lined compost bags and leave them for a year or two to rot down in the hope that after another year buried underground any weed seeds will not be viable.  This keeps all the nutrients recycled on the site - all except the edible part of any crops.  

Weed suppression is something I take very seriously.  The best method is to have a crop growing but failing that deployment of weed suppressant fabric in the early part of the growing season saves hours of repetitive weeding.  As the sowing season progresses so the aesthetically unpleasing fabric gets rolled back. 

Brassicas tend to be at their best late in the growing year. None more so than purple sprouting broccoli which is currently in full production mode. 

 One again my lack of planning means the row of PSB plants is right in the middle of this year's carrot patch (under the fine mesh).  The PSB needs nets to keep the pigeons off while the carrots need fine netting to keep the carrot root fly off. so it is a bit of a logistic nightmare to cater for them both simultaneously.  As the early carrot sowing show no sign of germination yet perhaps there is no imminent prospect of running out of space just yet - the main crop carrots can wait until the PSB harvesting season is over.

This years brassicas and leeks are coming on at home in readiness for planting out. It iis going to be busy for the next month or two!

Early season brassicas

Leeks

 

Autumn Watch

 

November is not far off and it is time to gather in produce that is susceptible to the cold nights ahead.

Surprisingly the runner bean stand is still green and still producing some edible beans (in addition to the few swollen pods left to mature and produce seed for next year)

Next door the blueberries have definitely got the message that autumn is here and are putting on a fiery display.  Still one or two berries have persisted or rather have been overlooked.  These have been left for the birds, particularly as we had a bumper crop over the summer.

Jack frost has not appeared yet this year, as proven by the beans. But it won.'t be long now.

Allotment Tour Summer 2021

It is a sure sign of summer progressing when your fennel is ready for harvest.  After a summer where my focus has been elsewhere I realise it is time to do my "warts and all" tour of the plot. 

The parsnips are progressing steadily regardless of the stop start weather.  Alongside I have some second sowing of  autumn crops where the elephant garlic was.

The fruit cage is looking very green where the gooseberries and redcurrants are, A really good redcurrant crop but only a few gooseberries. I might have been a bit vigorous with my winter pruning?  The blackberries and autumn raspberries behind are yet to come. The two summer varieties are finished

Spring planted Onion from sets are flopping over of their own accord.  The early leeks behind show no such tendancy. 

For the first time I have tried to grow onions from seed too.  They are behind the celery and celeriac in this bed.  (It is also the first time I have tried to grow celery)

Moving along to the brassica patch there are three distinct phases as indicated by the height of the plants. The early cabbages and cauliflower are all gone but the Brussels remain tall and now suitably distanced. 

Further along the beans are hitting their peak.  Both Runners.

and Dwarf French

The winter squashes are the sea of green next door to the beans - although there are some flowers.  Fruits?  So far three marrow sized courgettes.

The foreground bare patch here is where the peas were and are now sown with winter leaves (Land Cress , Claytonia and Lamb's Lettuce.

Bringing up the rear I have hedged my bets trying to establish an asparagus bed but growing strawberries in between - at least until the asparagus gets going. It was grown from seed. (The rhubarb blueberries and globe artichoke just get on with their business year after year.)    

The final area is not very pretty,  It is the potato patch with nearly all of the tops cut off.  It looked like this in the middle of June.

But now it looks like this.

Hope you enjoyed the tour around my patch.