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Wellington Fields Allotments - Hixon. |
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More Plough Field Allotments at Amerton
Gardening
Tips
Unusual
& Old
Unusual Environmental Issues And Going Green.
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A
Glut Of Everything! My
purple dwarf French beans have cropped very impressively producing
pounds and pounds of small, round beans that do not seem to go stringy
however big they get. The plants themselves don’t look very big in the
ground, but get absolutely covered with beans, so much so, that mom has
been topping and tailing them before blanching and freezing bags and
bags of surplus. Consequently, when I wanted a little space to make room
for some autumn planting vegetables, I removed the earlier planted row,
leaving the later planting to go on a bit longer. One of the local
garden centres was giving vouchers away and had a promotional offer on
Autumn vegetables as well, so being lazy, we got some trays instead of
sowing seed! These included some varieties of Cauliflowers, Cabbage and
Broccoli that can be planted now along with some rather “late”
Spring Onions, as I call them, White Lisbon, that will just crop before
the winter. Curly
Kale will grow through the winter as well, but mine went in far too
early on in the season and it would have been much better to have
planted only few at time. It has matured far too early and in such
quantity that we are having difficulty finding enough people to eat it.
We have even resorted to giving the odd plant to a neighbour for her
Guinea Pigs that has developed quite a taste for it. However, I think it
would probably live on one plant for a week and we have dozens! What I
have done is cut the tops off the plants, leaving just the stalk in the
hopes that they will shoot again with some nice, soft, fresh, new growth
through the winter. Even
the beetroot has developed into nice sized roots, although they were
sewn in cells with 3 seeds to each for an early start and then
transplanted, which the gardening aficionados always used to say you
shouldn’t do with “Root Vegetables.” We have been pulling a couple
of clumps of beetroot at a time to fill a saucepan and boiling them up
so that they last for a few days at a time and we can have fresh,
cooked, beetroot every day instead of pickled. The
Pumpkins have been growing everywhere as they have gone rampant and
would have covered half of the surrounding plots and paths if they
hadn’t been ruthlessly hacked back and composted! We are still a few
weeks from Halloween, but are finding willing takers for them. One local
school was having a harvest festival and all the little children were
carrying in cans vegetables of this and that, when a Lady teacher I know
walked in with a rather large Pumpkin I had given her. She said that the
children’s faces were a picture! Another Pumpkin went to a local shop
for a Halloween display. I think some people have tried eating them, but
they take a bit of eating as they are so big and we have a half eaten
one in the fridge that has been there for over a week! Now
that the weather has turned a little cooler and wetter, (ignoring our
short “Indian Summer!”) the Leeks are coming on better and the
“Runner Beans” are still flowering, but one, odd, cold night, a
couple of weeks ago, did tip them causing many of the top leaves to
shrivel. The
change in weather also brought on the red and yellow Autumn Rasberry
canes that were planted very late on in the season. I lost all the
yellow canes at my other allotment site and 2 out of the 6 at Hixon.
However, when I dug up the remaining 4 canes, I Actually ended up with
10 nicely growing plants! The Autumn “Red’s” all ended up being
given away as I had far too many canes. I made a lot of friends on the
site that day!
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