An Organic Lifestyle (Organic Growing Pains)

 Today's harvest from the allotment, it was not very colourful until I added the carrots and beetroot from the raised bed.I cut down the Broad beans and stripped the pods which are filling the bag on the left.I just cut the stems leaving the roots to rot down in the ground as legume roots are rich in nitrogen. There are 7 courgettes! Time to start making soup I think. The carrots from the covered raised bed are really tasty, these are the Sutton's baby veg which we are using while young and tender, leaving others to mature. We are coming to the end of our new potatoes, these are old reliable Home Guard, there are more beetroot and 2 nice  size heads of Broccoli. A few weeks ago we didn't think we would have anything much to take home as we started so late but the heatwave helped and dare I say it , those nice soft summer showers!  The tomatoes in the lean to tunnel are just about OK, not a lot to harvest at all.I have almost stripped all the leaves and branc...

 We have learned over the years its a mistake to sow everything together as you end up with a glut of different veg and if it is a hot summer as this one has been (so far) then you don't want to be cooking every day to use up the veg. I had some of these seeds which are Sutton's Speedy veg they are ready to harvest in 10 weeks from sowing which would take us to the end of Sept and into Oct therefore  utilising  the ground as much as possible and for those of us paying for allotments that is the bottom line. The first early spuds, a lovely variety called Premier has just vacated its space so I have followed up with planting out my leeks and also sowed these veg varieties in any spare space. Baby beets,turnips and carrots.They are picked and used small so are tender and tasty as we can vouch for the carrots which we have been using in another bed already!  Thinnings of an earlier sowing of the Speedy baby veg and sugar snap peas with the Premier e...

If Before I start on stress, a rainbow appeared over the allotment today as we were leaving so I will take a deep breath and think beautiful thoughts!I had noticed when I tried to leave comments on some blogs over the past week or so word verification kept telling me I was putting in the wrong letters! Yesterday I spent hours visiting all of the blogs on my sidebar which had been  updated in the past month and tried to leave a comment.Any of them with word verification would not allow me, I tried each 3 times, a slow process after writing a comment.If anyone reading this and whose blog is on my sidebar has not had a comment from me then your blog will not allow me to do so.I have now removed word verification from my own blog to make things easier, I will see how much spam I get! ! This hatbox was delivered to me on Friday, I was mystified when I saw it arriving wondering had I been on Ebay in my sleep ordering frivolities! It was my beautifully w...

We seem to be getting every second day dry with some sunshine then a day of continuous rain.I spent most of Tues on the plot tidying up and doing some serious weeding! Photo is of an Iris, I bought a pack of summer flowering bulbs in Lidl some time back but so far they have been all Irises. Kathryn had dug over some of the potato bed which had been vacated and I put in the winter leeks. These were in a tray at home and I have to say they are the smallest leeks I have ever planted out, hopefully they will come on now they are in their permanent bed. The Lazy Housewife bean has recovered from its hen ordeal and there are 2 pods on it so far, I am not going to use them but save them for next year's seed. They were given to me by Matron when she visited Cork last year, I did see on her blog that they should be left to dry on the plant to prevent mould. Peas, sadly neglected by us!I should have put more raffia up the poles as they grew as they had twined around each other for support.T...

Yesterdays rain has brought about a big transformation in the garden at home and on the allotment. It was badly needed and even though we were supposed to have showers today we just had one heavy shower this morning and the sun has been shining all afternoon. According to the moon planting guide today was the last day for flowering plants for nearly a week so I took the cauliflower, broccoli and marigolds out to the plot, I can only hope I am reading it right! The cauliflower and calabrese (Broccoli) are in the brassica bed netted from pigeons and rabbits.I firmed down the soil first by doing a bit of 'surfing' with a board to compact the soil as brassicas like a firm soil.They are planted up to the bottom set of leaves but I was careful not to bury any of the leaves in the soil, no point in giving the slugs a taste!I will put collars around them during the week also, another rainy day job cutting out the circles from some old black plastic like weed membrane.I held back some o...

Yesterday was warm and dry for a few hours so I worked in the greenhouse pricking out plants and planting up into bigger pots.I planted out some of the winter cos lettuce into a tub but covered them with plastic in case of frost. Looking into greenhouse, snapdragons on the stand and broad beans on the top I pricked out over 220 antirrhinums (snap dragons)I had the seeds left over from last year and they are tiny so I sowed the lot of them never thinking they would all germinate!They came down from the bedroom windowsill yesterday and after pricking them out into trays I thought they would need some extra protection as the forecast for last night was more cold and frost. I wrapped the stand in bubble wrap inside the greenhouse and after checking them today they are all looking perky none has toppled over due to the cold so far.I am sure there will be lots of takers for any extras! The shelves on the left side have cauliflower,leeks calabrese,marigolds and on the bottom shelf Spinach and...