Heroes and zeroes - partly for future reference

Just come back from the plot and thought it would be worth reviewing what has worked well, and what has left something to be desired...

Heroes - #1 bees who do most of the work, here pollinating the raspberries:

This one was buzzing around when I was harvesting this lot:

We've been harvesting this many raspberries (variety: polka) every couple of days for the last couple of weeks, so excellent thing to grow up there. Also very successful are the squash (courgettes and pumpkins) which are working on taking over the world:

And we have actually harvested our first pumpkin (which is very early as it's still mid August):

Also here are the obligatory "we've visited the allotment so here are four courgettes" and the much less successful cabbages which have been ravaged by slugs - a zero there. On a more positive note the runner and french beans continue to be doing their stuff:

We're harvesting about this many every couple of days and have started giving them away as well as the courgettes to anyone who will take them!

In summary so far - 2016 winter allotment heroes:

• Japanese onions
• Regular onions
• Courgettes
• Raspberries
• Pumpkins
• Runner / french beans
• Black currants
• Leeks

In the middle there:

• Shallots
• Strawberries
• Beetroot

Zeroes:

• Potatoes (think it was a duff year for spuds)
• Cabbages (later on, were good earlier in the year)

Heroes not at the plot:

• Tomatoes - particularly garden pearl
• Chillies
• Blueberries - as below, have been getting about this many every few days though we're now at the end of the season...

Toms and Chillis

So we have the greenhouse filled with tomato and chilli plants - these have been a real success this year:

These chillis are "cherry bomb" (around 5k Scoville units, though varies substantially from fruit to fruit) and the tomatoes here are mostly "garden pearl" which are fantastic. Got to grow these again next year, prolific fruit, excellent flavour and texture. Got more chillis on the way "ring of fire" but these are coming rather slower...

Sunflowers

The sunflowers in our garden are doing really well. We planted two types: Velvet Queen and Goldy Double. Somehow we have also ended up with 2 plants that are neither of these varieties but seem to be a more traditional type. Since high winds were forecast and some of the plants have reached 7 foot tall I cut a bunch of stems to reduce the chances of the branches snapping and put them in a vase:

Above you can see Goldy Double plus the unknown variety. Below is Velvet Queen:

 And this is another pic of the unknown variety:

Pumpkin patchwork

Been quiet at the allotment lately however things are happening. One is that we have a lot of pumpkins coming on two plants which are trying to cover the county:

Some of these are nearly ripe (in August!!) and most of these are big enough to carve. Only question is who's going to make 8 Jack 'o' lanterns?

Latest harvest

Been rather quiet on the allotment blog lately - still busy sorting out the garden so the allotment is generally ticking over though we are still working up there. Collected a bit of a harvest today, more courgettes (10 lb this week so far!) a slightly slug-eaten cabbage:

and a beetroot:

Also harvested some shallots - had much of this for tea as home-made coleslaw and beetroot in salad, nice. The pumpkins seem keen on taking over Oxfordshire:

Though we have some decent size fruit:

(phone to give a sense of scale)

Need to catch up on some weeding there tomorrow...

Our first decent harvest...

A lovely golden acre cabbage, new potatoes, lollo rosso lettuce, 4 courgettes and a small tub of blackcurrants. The potato harvest was not great. The spuds pictured here are the sum total of one of our rows of 10 tubers. Looking back at previous blog posts it looks like these might be Charlotte which we have'nt grown before. We were pleased with our yield of blackcurrants considering the plants were essentially twigs last year! They now look like bushes and have lots of new growth so I think we can expect a much bigger crop next year.

General update

Its been a while but we have'nt been idle honest! Currently we are splitting what little free time we have between our back garden and the allotment. Today we dug a patch in front of the raspberries (which are looking very promising), mixed in some manure and planted some of our leeks:

 

So far we have put in 25 leeks but we still need to prepare some more ground for another 30 or 40....
The Japanese onions planted last September were ready for harvesting:

Most are Spanish-onion sized. Here's a close-up of one:

We were very impressed with the size and quality of these onions, and it will be interesting to see how well they store. 100% success growing from set to onion (51 onions in total).
Some of our Golden Acre cabbages are nearly ready for picking, here they are uncovered after weeding:

And here is a close-up of one of the nearly-ready ones:

All have a bit of slug damage on the outer leaves but the hearts look pristine.
The potatoes are flowering but are not ready yet. We pulled a root last weekend and the spuds were still very tiny:

The courgettes (in the foreground of the below pic) have been very slow to get going and we have yet to harvest any fruit:

One of the plants (on the left) has been completely decimated by slugs. The pumpkins in the background appear to be doing well though.
The shallots (variety Topper) have been a disappointment:

Quite a few simply rotted so the gaps were filled with lettuce. The remaining plants are still quite small. I don't think they like being in the raised bed and I think it has been too wet for them.