Category: Uncategorised

After a couple of handfuls of rocket over the last few weeks and three or four asparagus spears, last night I picked the first decent crop of the year: my broadbeans (you can see the lovely flowers and how they looked last week)! They are still smallish, but enough to make a lovely pasta sauce.…

Last night I arrived on the plot with the mission to sow some more seeds, as I do not have much time to get the next generation of veg ready to plant out. However, on opening the shed I realised I had no working clothes! Going home and back was out of the question: too…

I had not been at the allotment for a couple of days and I should know how it works by now: rain and warmish weather are good! Still I was surprised but how fast vegetation is growing. Especially weeds. But I found another sage seedling, and a bronze fennel one. I wish I could express…

My potato picking technique must be rubbish. Either that or potato is such a terrible weed that it is difficult to imagine how famine may ever have occured. Or both. This I say because I have potato shoots sprouting up everywhere, among strawberries, broadbeans, garlic and even cardoon, in the greenhouse and outside. I also…

After two years and a half on the allotment I have just realised in a frightening eureka moment that I have been killing my best friends: ground beetle larvae – notorious slug predators – because I was not sure whether they might be chafer grubs. Well, they are not! How could I be so silly?!?

As I was digging a little space for my courgettes & pumpkins I found a lovely moth that I had never seen before and goes by the intriguing name “ruby tiger” (Phragmatobia fuliginosa). It was very friendly indeed, climbing on my glove to be moved away, and I discovered later that my patch must be…