All about alliums

Two weeks ago we planted some onions. The below pic is so I have a reminder of the varieties:

Although not specified on the pack I think they are a mix of "Snowball", "Red Baron" and Japanese onions since these are the varieties that can also  be purchased individually from Wilkos. We have just finished eating all the Japanese onions from this years July harvest, some of which have gone soft and several had rotted. Perhaps not for long-term storage then. The Sturon onions harvested early August seem fine at the moment and the shallots "Topper" are also storing well.
Usually we don't grow garlic but since it is creeping more and more into our cooking I thought it would be fun to grow some. I chose a soft-neck variety called Germidour:

Reading about on the internet, soft-neck varieties are less prone to bolting in the spring than the hard-neck types (unless stressed) and also store better. The recommendation for clay/heavy soils is planting each clove 1 inch below the soil surface so that the tip of the clove is just below the soil (for sandy soils they can be planted deeper). I planted two rows between the leeks and spring cabbages and marked the beginning and end of each row with a cane. The row nearest the leeks has 10 cloves, the other row has 9:

In other allium news I have pulled the first of our leeks:

So far we have not succumbed to leek rust first spotted on 7th October last year. This years variety is Musselburgh, last year we grew Autumn Giant 3 -I'm not sure if that makes a difference? I have spaced the plants out further this year which probably helps.

Pumpkin Harvest

Pulled up the pumpkin plants (Jack 'o' lantern I think) yesterday - got a few decent fruit from them given that we have already harvested a couple to give away:

Also still getting courgettes... the largest pumpkin is around a foot across, so not too bad. Actually all these came from a single plant it turns out and was still flowering.

The lettuce we planted the other day are looking good & ready for harvesting:

We also planted out some winter veg - onions from Wilco's:

(literally a bit of a mixed bag - white, brown and red onions, 49 in total) and cabbages:

Should keep the plot looking busy while the weather is lousy...

Noteworthy that the soil which we improved to plant the spuds in is now really nice to dig over and plant stuff in - never underestimate the power of horse poo!

Flower garden

Back in April we sowed some flower seeds to create a border in our back garden that currently looks like this:

We will probably widen the border a bit more and are almost ready to turf - hurrah! Almost everything we grew from seed has done well including the sunflowers:

Above left: "Goldy Double", below pic "Velvet Queen":

 

The sunflowers have been vigorous and required lots of staking to prevent branches snapping off in the wind. Saying that, the weight of some of the flowers has caused some of the side branches to snap off anyway even with no wind! Most of the plants are about 7-8ft tall! Their vase life is not brilliant, approx 3-4 days. I plan to save a few of the seed-heads and have a go at extracting the sunflower seeds.
The Sarah Raven cut flower seed mix has been successful though many of the plants I have yet to identify:

Any ideas? I have been able to identify Coreopsis in the below pic but not the plant with pink flowers (also in orange in the above pic):

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I have no idea how many of the plants I have grown are perennials, although I believe Coreopsis is. I will cut them all down after they have finished flowering and see which pop up again in the spring! I don't think most of the Sarah Raven plants I have grown are ideal for cut flowers... many have lots of branching stems and are too short for cutting. The Cosmos "Psyche White" has been suitable for cutting with flowers in abundance! I only have the one plant but plan to grow more next year:

The white "frothy" plant in the foreground is Gypsophilia "Baby's Breath" and in the background is Verbena Bonariensis. The Verbena has done fantastically .... I bought a tiny plant at a charity sale at the allotment shop and it has grown to a very large size with many branching stems.
A favourite plant for butterflies (particularly the red admirals) is the Rudbeckia "Marmalade":

I think there are a total of about 7 plants here. One of my favourite plants that I picked up at Gardeners World Live in June was this Pennisetum "Karley Rose" that started off life with a single pink flower but has since filled out:

In the foreground you can see some lupins also grown from seed that should flower next year. Finally, a little triangle of soil between the patio and house has also been planted up:

 

In the above pic there are 3 Stipa Tennuissima (grown from seed), 3 geraniums (the pink one is called "Patricia" purchased at a charity plant sale, the other 2 are cuttings from a friend), a dryopteris fern (found growing in my blueberry container 2 years ago) and 3 aquilegias (grown from seed).
Now is a good time to think about sowing flowers for next year too to get earlier flowers. I'm going to sow these:

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?