Long Time No Post!!!

Here I am! The last month has been sooooo busy that I have failed to record my progress here. I have been generally watering everything because of the hot weather, and harvesting what is ready to eat, and enjoying what I have done.....but there was no time for photos and posting.

This morning I thought I ought to have a look at the Square Foot bed I sowed a couple of months ago. The beetroot are ready to pull, and will be eaten in the next couple of days. The sugar snap peas....."Super Sweet" from Kings Seeds...were all of a tangle because I had forgotten to stake them. They were absolutely loaded. I had to pull them up to get at the peas.....which was a shame as I think I could have left them and had a few more. Next year I'll make a wigwam for them....

Some of the other seeds I planted in that bed either never showed or were only sparse.....I should have gone back and re-sown....but life wasn't like that last month. I caught some kind of summer flu that wiped me out for a fortnight, and then we had visitors.....! (DH believes it was Swine Flu, and I am inclined to think he was right. Two days before it came out I was in Coventry.....which is right next door to one of the the hotbeds, Birmingham.)

We harvested one of the bags of potatoes two weeks ago....very sparse results. We decided they needed a bit longer and a lot more water. I harvested another bag yesterday and that was a bit better....still nothing like the results they show in the adverts.......but I reckon there were 10 spuds from each seed potato.....which I suppose isn't bad. This bag was damper than the first so I think we are getting the watering right at last. Next year I will stand each of the bags in an old washing up bowl so that the water doesn't run away before it has a chance to soak in.

The onion bed has been harvested. These (onions, garlic and shallots) were planted last Autumn and have made a middling crop. The shallots are terrific, the onions are so-so....some large (huge actually....5" diameter), some small, and some were trying to flower so we must eat them soon as they won't keep! The garlic was also so-so....some beautiful....some rotted away under the soil.
The bed was very dry and rock solid (the soil at home here is not spectacular...unlike my wonderful allotment. But I had to do the onion crops at home this year as my whole crop got white rot last year and most had to be thrown away. The crop at home was fine.....so that seems to be the way to go. I have started to give the deep beds at home a wetting solution dose once a month so that the water actually goes into the soil and spreads rather than the soil setting like concrete.

Later today I am off to the plot....the weather is dull and damp today so I can cope. There was just too much sun there last week for me to be comfortable....
Pictures later.