June Tour

Come and have a tour round the allotment in June. It is all coming to life. There are plenty of blousey poppies scattered about.

The raspberries have been cropping heavily we need to build a proper cage for them later on. We're going to cover the asparagus and the raspberries together so hopefully you can walk in to pick them instead of garotting yourself or getting entangled in the net.

Onion bed. My parsnips are coming up along the side as well and the leeks are ready to get replanted into the potato bed when all the earlies have been dug up.

This is the view from my bench.

We've had enough lettuce to feed Flash for the whole of June. There are plenty more for his July feast although he has getting through a lettuce a day as he is solar powered.

Runner bean bed, looking pretty good, I can see that the different varieties growing have worked as we've got purple and red pods forming on the plants.

Mary and Sam's patch has been attracting the bees. No frog in the pond but we have had a bird getting a sneaky bath.

These are the peas and the sweet peas. The sweet peas at the allotment haven't done too well this year, the plants at home are abundant and I have been really cruel to them and not watered them.

We've got lots of peas but not had any pods yet. We have a few mange touts though, three to be precise.

The courgettes are enjoying the sun and rain they've been having.

This is the sweetcorn and courgette bed, there is a pumpkin plant in there somewhere too. The all look the same at the moment but once the fruits come I'm sure I'll be able to tell which is which.

Slugs eye view of the sweetcorn. This looks more impressive from underneath than it does from on top.

The cabbages and cauliflowers are looking pretty healthy so far. I've planted some nasturtiums underneath them as this is suppose to deter the white fly. The nasturtiums I planted last year were covered in blackfly so it must work but I forgot to plant them early enough to be ready with the broad beans. The man next to our plot looks like an expert, well he's old and he's got lots of stuff growing. He's put them with his cabbages too so it can't hurt.

I forgot to show you the strawberry bed, herbs and the potatoes but you get the idea. I think we've made pretty good progress since we took over. Don't you?

Spudtastic mate

We harvested our earlies this week. We got more out of one plant this year than we did from our whole potato crop last year.

They were nice with some chorizo, garlic and shallots.

Beans

We had our first broad bean harvest yesterday. They were great in a stir fry. Blackfly nil, me one.

Gardeners World Live

I went to the gardeners world live show on 12th June with Chris. There were some great inspirational flower displays there. Angelica and astrantia are a couple of plants I would like to get growing in my garden next year. The RHS tent had some great displays in although it was not as big as the one at Tatton.

All the big names were there. Carol Klein was surrounded by a huge crowd so it was hard to hear her speak.

We listened to Alys Fowler talking about thrify gardening.

Toby Buckland was there too. The only one we didn't see was Monty Don who was there on a different day. Oh and Joe Swift but we saw him at Tatton last year so we didn't care about him. Sorry Joe.

Yum

Flash has been enjoying the lettuces. He's had most of them so far. Look at him licking his lips, he knows a good lettuce when he sees one.

We've had a good crop of strawberries. Can you spot the slug? Not so appetising.

Strawberry picking is one job that everyone volunteers to help with.

They soon picked plenty, although quite a few of the plumpest didn't make it home. Yum.

Professor Yaffle

This is the woodpecker who has been visiting our garden.

New Paths

We are looking quite posh now as we've sorted out the majority of the paths. The woodchips have been put down and it is looking a bit more organised. I need to go and do some weeding but apart from that we are starting to look pretty good.

Beans

The broad beans have started forming. Should be plenty of broad beans to eat soon!