The allotment is flush with produce despite the drought conditions. What targeted watering I have done has produced results where I want without encouraging the weeds.
Globe artichokes - Just one plant
Lush Legumes
Peas please
Blueberries starting to ripen
Coy Carrots
Potato Patch
Riotous Raspberries - bumper crop this year.
But there are still gaps that I haven't got around to filling. Just as well as I have a programme of summer/autumn sowing I want to follow this year. The beauty is that the weeds have left the bare patches bare (pretty much - lets not get to carried away and forget all weeding)
Bare patch between salads and sweetcorn
Alliums looking a bit sparse after cropping autumn planted onions and garlic
It has been extraordinarily dry, but the crops seem to have persevered. Curiously the one crop that has refused to perform is courgettes and squashes, and this despite preferential watering! I'm hoping the ones that have survived have time to play catchup.
Here's the current state of play: Looking from East to West, there are beans in the foreground, brassicas beyond.
The East End (reverse view)
In the corner the globe artichokes are showing a bit of muscle.
The blueberries are responding to winter pruning in their pen.
Here is a closer look at the brassica, each plantlet at its station 18 inches from its neighbour planted through the weed suppressant fabric. At the rear are the early planted cabbages and cauliflowers already well away.
A closer look at the early brassicas,
Moving along further West there are peas, cucurbits and sweetcorn (also through weed suppressant fabric) carrots (under nets) and alliums.
Cucurbits: Squashes and Pumpkins:
Sweetcorn with two courgettes beyond.
In the next corner the old rhubarb is looking robust
and alongside at the West End there are first signs of another robust cropper: Jerusalem artichoke.
The alliums are looking very happy.
Heading back from West to East the fruit cage now has a net over it.
and the early potatoes are flowering.
View of the potatoes and fruit East to West.
These pictures were taken yesterday 7/6/17 a dryish day between two very wet ones!
