What happened to last week? I’m sure the weeks are flying past quicker than I can count at the moment! Anyhow, welcome to my Six on Saturday.
- First we have the allotment Cucamelon plant.
My ‘gardening assistant’ (dad) had told me there weren’t any Cucamelons growing yet… I think he must have missed all of these!
. - On to the strawberries in three different raised beds now, and first we have the top raised bed which has a few of my original Strawberry Something-or-other (there’s two or three left after the majority died), plus this year’s additions of Sweet Collossus, Florence and Beltran.
Moving on to the third raised bed, the Snow White plants are looking really healthy (and sending out runners)…
Just Add Cream shares this raised bed, and I’m going to have to sort out these runners, otherwise I’ll get in a muddle with which plant is which!
Moving on to the second raised bed, and Strawberry Something-or-other really isn’t happy – using the square foot gardening idea, I had 36 plants in here last year, and now I have about 5 or 6 plants…
. - Runner Beans tend to work really well on our allotment, providing we net the base to stop the Roe Deer nibbling the young plants. The bean plants don’t seem quite so leafy this year though, but maybe that’ll be a positive, as it should mean they aren’t heavy enough to bring the bamboo supports down!
. - Moving on to Raspberry Jungle, I did some thorough weeding in here this week. The grass might not have grown with all the blazing hot sunshine we’ve had, but the bindweed is proving to be even more of a pain than usual.
Wondering why I call it Raspberry Jungle? This is the “weeding view” of the raspberry patch…
They’re Autumn raspberries, but they grow semi-wild across part of the allotment site, so I’ve no idea what variety they are.
. - Something a little less wild-looking is my mini celery patch. It seems to have taken a little while to get going (I bought the plug-sized plants from Homebase earlier in the year), but hopefully now we’ve had some less-hot weather, they’ll grow quicker!
And if my Mum is reading this, yes I will try and get a better (straighter) edge to this bit before the grass grows too much!
. - And finally the blackberries have finished, but it proved that our new blackberry support was worth making – we had loads more fruit than in all the previous years combined!
I just need to check when to prune the branches back, and also get the new growth tied into the supports ready for next year!
Don’t forget to check out the Propagator’s Six on Saturday and read through the comments section for more blogs to check out!
Lovely shot of the raspberries against the blue sky. Do you make jam with them or just eat a bowl with cream?
I will admit the most adventurous I’ve got with the raspberries so far, is eating them with ice cream! But I did like the idea of making raspberry ice lollies (if I can make enough space in the freezer!)
You’ve a lot of delicious things growing at your allotment. Are you almost self sufficient? The raspberry looks delicious!
We’re a long way off self sufficient! This year we’ve tried to stick with things that would cost a lot more to buy from the greengrocer’s than growing, so broad beans, runner beans and potatoes, with a few extra things just for fun (plus the fruit plants that stays on the plot every year).
There’s certainly a lot of good eating coming out of your allotment. Glad to see the strawberries decided to get w/the program. How’re you liking the cucumelons? I’m a real convert, myself.
I still haven’t tried one yet! *hangs head* This week will be the week…. actually, my cucamelon plant’s leaves are going yellow – do you think that means it’s hungry?