Let's start offering you some encouragement. Despite much of this blog being about the trials of growing your own, with a dash of anticipation thrown in, I can start to tell you that the harvest season has started on BG Veg.
It's 10-12 weeks so I started sowing in earnest, so that's your first marker then. You don't get instant results (although you do get radishes in 6 weeks!). And you will get disappointments - this year it seems to be parsnips (which won't germinate) and sweetcorn, which I will come to later.
I've also found that despite the extra 'time' that lockdown has presented me with, the challenges of the plot are still great when you can only get dedicate one day a week to your project. Nature is frequently undoing what I do and bringing me back to square one. Take the bed below. 6 weeks ago we cleared it from weeds, but, because of other priorities in the busy months of May and June (and because there's been very little rain) we haven't been able to get back to it. When we were ready last weekend, the picture on the left is what we came back to (yes mostly my bindweed nemesis again!). So it takes out another 90 minutes of re-digging by not just me, but my now (becoming vital) apprentice helper, daughter Emily, to turn it back into something we can use (right).
And the point about the rain is... well, that as we actually had some in the week before (!), there was a small window whilst the soil is workable and before it starts to turn back into its clay boulders, when we could get some planting done. So, that's what we did. Cabbages, purple sprouting brocolli, kale, swede and leeks all now in the ground.
The plot is about three quarters full now. Two beds of potatoes, now recovering pretty well from early frost damage;
Two beds of brassicas, (although not where I'd originally intended them to be because of the amount of digging I haven't been able to do!). Squash and courgettes on another bed, and most of the raised beds currently taken up by onions and garlic from last autumn or a few carrot, spinach and salad beds. Not forgetting also my sweet potato experiment for this year.
However, the big news is we've started harvesting!
Backcurrants (top picture and below) from my fruit area are now ripening and we've grabbed most of the rest of the onions and garlics before they bolt too. Plus our first (of no doubt many) courgettes and some new perpetual spinach which has emerged from the raised bed we thought we'd put parsnip seed in - really not sure how that happened!
It won't be too long before I lift the first spuds and there'll be some strawberries, lettuce and beetroot next weekend too.
And finally, I said I wasn't having much luck with parsnip (because it won't germinate) and sweetcorn too. Well if you followed an earlier blog post you'll know how I had to resow my sweetcorn in April because something got to it in the greenhouse. Well my second sowings were really healthy and were planted out last week, but no sooner were they in the ground than they were visited by the allotment's resident peacock...and shredded (right, below). So it doesn't look as if we'll be having many corn on the cob this year.
There's actually even more harvesting going on in the garden so I'll cover that in the next blog. In the meantime, enjoy the weather, but keep watering!
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