16 Aug - Onions & Early Potatoes Dug

We've had some lovely weather over the past fortnight with very little rain. The Winter squashes are doing well in the dry heat, better than last year as the Summer of 2015 was relatively cool. I've got a decent pumpkin for Halloween, a fair number of Butternuts and Crown Prince plus some nice sized Turks Turban which appear to be bigger than last season. (Pic - Turks Turban Winter squash).

(Pic- three silver skinned Crown Prince enjoying the hot sunshine).

The courgette Summer squash meanwhile have gone a bit silly. I knew I was asking for trouble when I put in five plants when three are usually ample. There have just been too many courgettes to eat and I ended up not picking them and before I knew it I had lovely marrows - oops! (Pic - yellow Atena and green Defender courgettes which have turned into monsters).

Last week I took the nets off the leeks and was appalled at the amount of weeds choking the crop. While enviromesh does a good job of protecting the plants it does obscure problems too. Anyway, the leeks were cleared of weeds and I noticed that one are two have a yellow tinge. This could be because they have been shaded by the high weeds or are lacking a bit of nutrition; the weeds are gone and I'll give them a dressing of Growmore to give them a boost.

Two days a go the Sturon onions were taken up as they had rapidly 'gone over' in the past week or so. The forecast has promised three days of hot weather so I'll leave them outside to dry a little in the sunshine then will store them in the shed for a month or two until the green leaves wither. I usually clean them up a little then place them in a large net sack and bring them indoors before the frosts.

The last of the Rocket early potatoes have also been taken up now; they are a large size at this point and are filling a bucket in the shed. The ground they occupied has been weeded and dug over. This area suffers from seeding by a near-by sycamore in the early Autumn so I'll be covering the bed before the end of the Summer.

That's it for now. Catch you next time.

02 Aug - Almost A Chicken Takeaway

What a start to August! It was pouring down with rain last night when I went to the allotment to shut up the chickens for the night. As I approached the coop I thought one of my Crested Legbars was sitting in the coop doorway looking very bedraggled. A double-take later and I saw it was a buzzard looking very unhappy with life. There was clearly something wrong here and where were my chickens?

I donned some thick gardening gloves and managed to get the clearly injured bird into a sack where it played possum while I went in search of my chickens. My two Legbars were nervously huddled up inside the coop but my Light Sussex was lying shocked in a heap down the other end of the run. I grabbed her without too much trouble and a brief once over told me that she had lost virtually all her tail feathers and had a deep bloody gash down her rear. (Pic - buzzard behind bars; doing 'stir' for GBH to poultry).

By now it was getting dark and the rain was still hammering down so, happy that the Light Sussex looked alive and 'with it' despite some wounds, I settled her down with the Legbars in a warm, straw-filled nest box to see if she would recover overnight. Meanwhile, the soaking wet buzzard was taken home and unceremoniously dumped in pet carrier where it glared malevolently at everyone. It didn't take long to see that the raptor was limping badly and had probably been struggling to hunt for a while which drove it to take on a full-sized chicken.

Today the chicken, 'Mrs Clucky', (yes I know), looked a little roughed up with a lot of feathers missing and some nasty scabs but she seemed perky enough and was eating and drinking which is always a good sign. The buzzard was dropped off at the local vet to pass on to a licensed raptor handler. Phew! What a saga all that was.

Back to the more (thankfully mundane) allotment stuff now. The end of July saw the broad beans picked and the ground cleared. A great crop this year weighing in at nearly 6 lb when removed from the pods; they have been blanched and added to the freezer to be used in vegetable pasta sauces when needed.

I'm still digging early spuds and there's plenty remaining which will last me into September when the main crop potatoes will be ready. The brassicas and carrots aren't looking particularly brilliant this year but there will be a crop to harvest. The warmer weather has really got the Winter squashes going and all four varieties; Big Max pumpkin, Hunter butternut, Turks Turban and Crown Prince are producing fruits - fingers crossed for a decent crop in the Autumn. The onions are just 'going over' now and have swollen nicely - these will be taken up in the next week or two when the leaves have turned a little more brown.

The salad crops are going to seed with the lettuces turning into conical towers. I'm pulling these up and feeding them to the poultry. There are few White Lisbon onions left and the greenhouse is producing pounds of tomatoes as well as sweet peppers - all is well in there. When I open the shed door the garlic smell blows my socks off as I've got a bunch hanging up drying off nicely.

That's it for this update, see you soon. Bye.