Gotta get me one of them: azadas

Our allotment neighbour John has a new toy:

which turns out to be really neat for lifting the turf on soil you want to dig - it's an azada or grub / trenching hoe. Essentially you whirl it around and dig it in sideways below the grass roots then lift the turf off, ideally while leaving your shins in tact. Wear your boots! I had a go with this for clearing some turf on an area which is due for digging:

which worked very well indeed, so the ground can then be dug with a regular spade for weeding etc. Could also have used the tool for digging the ground and think I will get one to aid with breaking soil elsewhere. End result after digging in some more manure:

quite satisfactory! We have a chunk more ground to clear so will be good to get one of these to aid with clearing the soil before digging. Amazing thing about the plot is the massive range of soil types across a very small area - in the picture above the spade is in quite nice light soil, but half way between there and the raised bed is heavy clay - go figure... Next job is to continue clearing this area for potato planting next year...

A lovely day

for a spot of weeding and digging:

This autumn we are planning to cultivate the last strip of our allotment:

I made a start by cutting the old raspberry canes down and cutting the grass:

The plan is to dig manure into this patch and plant spuds next year. I also dug up the strawberry plants that were next to the leeks and moved them near the blackcurrant bushes. The old strawberry patch (which is good for throwing pots) will be dug over with some manure. Here are the strawberries in their new (soil improved) home:

Finally, I noticed that something had (very neatly) stripped the skin off this courgette:

I wonder what type of animal did this (a bear perhaps, John?!).

Muck!

Went up to the allotment at the weekend and discovered this next to our plot:

A lovely pile of 1-year old horse manure to spread on the plot; should keep us quiet! The farmer in the neighbouring field delivers trailer loads of the stuff to the site every 2 years. It was recommended that we also chuck in a handful of lime for every shovelful of horse manure. Apparently horse manure increases the acidity of the soil. I'm not sure what the pH of our soil is (must get a kit) but apparently clay soils tend to be acidic.

We are not harvesting as much veg now. The courgettes and beans have finished. I have stripped the butternut squash plants of their leaves so the skins of the remaining fruit can harden off for storage. We are still picking lettuces, small quantities of peas and some leeks:

The middle leek in the above pic had bolted. The flower-spike takes up most of the internal structure of the leek making it largely inedible. Thankfully this is the only leek that has bolted so far. At home I have started to take down the tomato plants and salvage any remaining fruit to ripen indoors. The chillis are still doing well, we have lots of Cayennes drying on a tray:

Today I picked the first Trindad Perfume chilli. Here it is next to an average-sized Cayenne:

The plant is quite compact - less than half the height of a Cayenne so maybe this accounts for the smallness of the fruit? It is a mild chilli so will be interesting to see what it tastes like.

Exterminate!

Our black compost dalek was feeling lonely, and fortunately a colleague had a spare so we have now got it a friend:

This should help when we start pulling down the beans etc. in a couple of weeks. Other than that I have been doing a little weed exterminating and digging in of "soil improver" to prepare the ground for next year's planting:

Should help the digging in future - currently the soil is very heavy. The patch to the top left of this picture needs clearing next for the spuds next year - that will need a lot of improvement! Should help burn off mince pies etc. over the winter :o)

Leek rust and other diseases

Since the weekend leek rust seems to have spread throughout our crop of leeks. These are orange (rust-like) spots and can infect any member of the onion family:

According to the RHS there are no approved chemicals to control it. I just removed the worst affected leaves and hope that it won't do too much damage to the crop. It probably does'nt help that we planted the leeks quite close together.

Powdery mildew is also evident on the plot. Some of the pea plants are affected:

The courgettes (which have nearly finished now) are also affected.

Finally, our lobjoits cos (left of below pic) have yellowing outer leaves:

I have no idea whether this is a disease or not? The lettuce on the right have grown a little bit but it is not likely that they will make it to adulthood with the cooler weather.

Sweetcorn and peas

Today's harvest:

This is the first and last of the sweetcorn. Originally there were 9 plants. Most of them just sat in the soil and sulked. Several plants collapsed and only two or three of them grew sufficiently to produce fruit. Although the tops of these two cobs were a bit nibbled the sweetcorn was lovely and sweet. I'm not sure why they did so badly ... maybe the cold summer is to blame or the lack of nutrients in the soil? I definitely want to try growing these again next year though! Our late sowing of peas is producing plenty of pods, some of which are now ready, so peas will be featuring in meals over the next couple of weeks.

In other news the 4 blackcurrant bushes that dad gave me as cuttings last October have finally been moved to a new home on the RHS of the below pic, along the windbreak:

The soil here has been enriched with lots of well-rotten manure so hopefully this will give the plants a boost and maybe we will get a few blackcurrants next year. Alongside the blackcurrants we will also move the strawberry plants seen in front of the raised bed in this pic:

Once we have moved the strawberries we will be able to dig and manure this area and extend the plot a couple of feet further (the bit covered by grass in the foreground).