October allotment harvests

We got the last of our onions in during September, but you can still be harvesting them this month. Fortunately we’d already worked out where and how we were going to store them, as we didn’t have a single onion fail to come good this year – we’ve gone for placing them on mesh shelves in our dry and airy shed at home rather than hanging them in the one on the allotment which is still prone to springing new leaks in the roof. We’ve cut off all the foliage, just as the do in the supermarket, and they’ll be kept cool and dark. They are separated from each other so that there’s no chance one diseased onion will spread its problems to others.

We don’t have to worry about storing potatoes as our maincrops were so paltry, but we can see our neighbours lifting and storing their maincrops, sometimes in big paper sacks, sometimes in boxes of peat.

We’ve also stripped, blanched and frozen all our corn cobs to see us through the winter – although they take up a lot of room in the freezer, we think it’s worth it to have that delicious summer sweetcorn taste in the middle of winter.

We didn’t have outdoor tomatoes this year, but all the ones on the site have gone, after a very cold night this week, so the plants are being dug up and removed. If your tomatoes had blight, don’t compost them, as you risk overwintering the spores for next summer.

We've also been storing pears, taking them from the tree before they fall, checking them for blemishes, then setting them in paper nests (recycling old printing paper) in the shed. They will be delicious for several months.

And soon it will be time to plant the broad beans and start all over again!

Labels: allotment-broad-beans, allotment-onions, allotment-pears, allotment-sweetcorn

Allotment harvests, and waiting for harvests

While we could spend all day, every day, picking French beans and still find when we got to the end that some beans had magically matured at the other end of the row, there are other crops that don’t quite want to get there.

I know that we have a while to wait for our borlotti beans. In fact, I’m wondering whether it was a good idea to grow them in the UK at all, given that they apparently have to be dried on the plant and given that our September, last year, was notable for its peculiar blend of rain and fog, meaning that sometimes you got wet vertically and sometimes you got wet horizontally, but either way, you got wet – that doesn’t bode well for beans drying on the plant at all. They are shy beasts too, given how colourful they are, it took me ages to find any to photograph.

The other crop that is keeping us hanging on is the sweetcorn. Whenever I think about it, my mouth waters, but each time I peel back some of the covering leaves and pierce a kernel with my nail, it still runs clear, not milky, which is the sign that the cob is ripe. It’s Lark Early which should be ripe by now, I’m sure, but it simply isn’t and I’m not sure if:

1. I’m impatient
2. We’ve done something wrong
3. Our corn is jinxed.

Okay, I know that last one isn’t true, but never having grown corn before, and having had only a 50% germination rate, I can’t help expecting the worst all the time. Is everybody else’s corn ripe, or am I jumping the gun, sweetcorn-wise?

Labels: allotment-borlotti-beans, allotment-french-beans, allotment-sweetcorn

Allotment harvest: mainly red

I’ve hardly been able to get to the plot this week, owing to swine flu and me still struggling to get over my surgery (gosh, don’t we sound like a house of crocks and invalids) but I did manage to shoot up for an hour yesterday to:

-- water the monster cucumbers (variety Bushy – temperament: productive)
-- and to pick some beans (variety Scarlet Emperor – temperament: productive)
-- as well as pulling a row of the heritage beetroot we grew from Seedy Sunday seed (variety Ukraine – temperament: expansive).






Our sweetcorn is within a couple of days of being harvestable, apparently. Once the silks begin to brown and fold, then you peel back some covering and pierce a corn kernel with your fingernail: watery is not ripe, creamy is ripe, like raw dough is overripe (hope we don’t get to that point).






Our red chicory has gone very red indeed, it’s a gorgeous shade although, to be blunt, we are getting a little bit sick of eating it.



On the whole though, we’re very happy with our summer harvest, after slightly less than a year of allotment-holding.

Labels: allotment-beans, allotment-beetroot, allotment-chicory, allotment-sweetcorn

Allotment new potatoes and running repairs in the rain

Today we got everything the wrong way round. We arrived at the plot with a short list of necessary chores, the most important of which was getting the new lid on the cold frame. But we got seduced by the glories of sweetcorn. We have never grown sweetcorn before and it was not the best germinator in the greenhouse so we never really expected to see this on our plot. It’s amazing. Sweetcorn. Wow! If it tastes half as good as it looks I shall be one happy allotment holder – fresh corn on the cob is one of my greatest pleasures, as are barbecued cobs with a black pepper and butter dressing.
Anyway, back to what we were supposed to be doing. Regular readers will remember that a couple of weeks ago, when we had the lids propped open to allow our nascent cucumbers some air circulation, a rogue breeze (of about gale force seven!) smashed the heavy glass-glazed lids down onto the frames, causing massive damage. So Himself has spent the last couple of weeks reglazing the panelled lids, moaning on a regular basis about the fact that they were made (by the original plot-holders, not by us) from soft wood so they have warped and twisted in the heat and rain, and today we took the second one up to replace on the frame.

But as I say, the sweetcorn seduced us, so then we had a good look at everything, and then we had a chat with June who was walking past, and they we decided to dig a couple of potato plants and then …

This happened. The reason that the church in the distance looks blurry is the heavy, heavy rain. The reason the sky looks so leaden is the heavy thunderclouds that were hammering and, well, thundering, overhead. I couldn’t manage to get a picture of the lightning, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
And you can see the second lid to the cold frame, leaning against the raspberry supports, can’t you? So you will understand that we had to stand, with icy rain sliding down the back of our necks (me) or hitting us right in the eyes (Himself), with thunder deafening us and lightning making us jump out of our skins, until each of the six fiddly little screws was fastened on the fiddly little hinges and the lid could be lowered into place. On the plus side we didn’t have to water the cucumbers, the rain did it for us. On the minus side we did have to empty out our shoes before getting in the van. Yes, it rained that much … summer, isn’t it fun?

Labels: allotment-cold-frame, allotment-cucumbers, allotment-potatoes, allotment-sweetcorn

Allotment Sweetcorn: a new growing experience

We’re growing sweetcorn for the first time this year. I’d have to describe it, thus far, as a mixed experience. To begin with the germination was good, about 80% of the first batch of corn we put in. But the second lot (as previously discussed) was planted by himself and only 2 of the 14 kernels germinated because he planted them too deeply. The third lot didn’t come up at all, so we had around dozen seedlings, which grew beautifully in the greenhouse.

Second disaster – when we brought them outside to harden them off, things went well for a couple of days and then our idiot dog (as opposed to our intelligent dog) managed to knock the tray of seedlings to the ground, breaking four of them. Two have recovered, but are a bit stunted, two just gave up the will to live.

Then we planted the corn out at the allotment and although we knew that there was something we were supposed to do, we couldn’t quite remember what it was. The answer? Net the corn for a few weeks to keep the pigeons from pecking it out of the ground. So the next day we went back and found some of our biggest seedlings had been pecked at, and replanted them and rather belatedly, netted them.

So I’m not wholly impressed by our somewhat feeble block of corn, although I can fully recognise that the problem is with us, not with the corn itself, and I’m wondering if we’ve just been jinxed or if the reason we’ve never grown corn before is that it’s a bit of a faff and a fiddle?

Labels: allotment-sweetcorn, growing sweetcorn

Sweetcorn

We didn’t plant any corn this year, and I’ve got to be honest, I have a real sense that this is some kind of grown-up specialist crop that relative allotment novices like us shouldn’t be growing – does that make any sense?

Anyway, I’ve been peering and peeking around the site, to see how other people are growing sweetcorn and it’s obvious that it’s not a crop that really loves the strong Sussex winds (locals call them breezes, I call them gales, but we can compromise on winds) that buffet the allotment site. But it’s also obvious that some people have got the sweetcorn growing gene, and produce oodles of the stuff, even using sucessional sowing to get early and late crops. I love sweetcorn and think the supermarket prices are just daft, I’m definitely going to have to give it a go next year. But that means we really, really, really have to get some fences up so that we can shelter this tall crop.

The couple of allotmenteers that were using the Three Sisters method don’t seem to have had much success, but I can’t work out why – it seems that their squashes probably got away faster than their corn and smothered the growth: that’s how it looks, anyway. I shall have to think long and hard about this … anybody care to share sweetcorn raising tips?

Labels: allotment-corn, allotment-sweetcorn, allotment-three-sisters