Flowers, Peas and Tomatoes!

We try growing different things each year; sometimes they work, and sometimes they don't. This year we have had some limited success with some wild flowers, peas, and tomatoes, for the first time.

Whilst the flowers that have emerged looked nice, there was plenty of room in the flowerbed for more to emerge:

We have tried to grow peas on a couple of occasions, and have never been particularly successful. Although they start off well, they soon get eaten (I think by birds). Nonetheless, this year has seen a couple of plants survive:

Until now the highlight of the year has been the courgettes, however they have now been superseded by the tomatoes. Whilst lots have grown, only a few have ripened (a problem everyone seems to be having):

Nonetheless, there is nothing quite like growing something you can eat there and then:

We have even managed to get some to grow in our front room!!

Blogs are Great!

Blogs are a great record of things that change over time, unfortunately they are only really great if they are updated regularly! I have been too busy to update my allotment blog regularly, so here is a quick update of the last two months. Last time I blogged seedlings were growing, and a little green house had been put up. Since then most of the seedlings have been eaten and the greenhouse was blown over (and broken beyond repair). Such is the lot of the allotmenteer.

The squashes (see photo below), cucumbers and courgettes were all planted out.

Although they have since been battered by slugs and the weather. Only a couple of the courgettes seem to have survived so far, whilst it was a bit disappointing to discover yesterday that some of the cucumber plants that were beginning to show cucumbers had been broken by the weather. This is the largest this particular plant will get:


Nonetheless overall things seem to be improving with every passing year.

Hopefully we will have tomatoes this year for the first time:

Since this photo was taken we have planted out even more plants, and probably have about 70 in total. If we get just one tomato off of each we will probably be happy.

As always beans continue to be the lifeblood of our allotment, and last night we added some runner beans to our collection broad beans:


We even, occasionally get time for some more cosmetic work, such as the adding of borders around the flower beds:


Irregular blog postings don't really show all the highs and lows of the allotment life, so my next post will try to be a much more methodical catchup of everything that is going on. After which I will attempt to post more regularly.