Beans, Beans, Good for Your Heart..

An overcast but very muggy evening, we decided to go to the allotment for a couple of hours. Invested in a fancy new fork on the way (the last one snapped in two!) and Malcolm spent his time digging more of the top bed over, next to the shed. I concentrated on watering, and more planting.

The broad beans were looking a bit happier on 2 of the rows (starting to grow upwards rather than in weird 'S' shapes and loops), but the third row did not seem so good. So I moved any that looked reasonably healthy and replanted them among the other 2 rows. I replaced the third row of beans with chilli plants (surplus ones not being used at home - 6 Ring of Fire & 2 Super Chilli). I also reclaimed a short piece of 'path' to set up a small, four-post wigwam with cucumber plants at 3 of it's post bases (2 Marketmore, 1 Crystal Lemon). Down at the tin-surrounded compost heap, the existing pumpkin plants were joined by a marrow plant and a mystery chilli plant.

Overall, things seem to be growing well. The runner and climbing beans have got a little taller, the chard are standing more upright, the pumpkins are looking healthy despite a few nibbled leaves, and the potatoes don't look far off flowering. Only the mangetout peas and rocket plants are looking a bit sad, but there's still a chance they might pick up.

Back at home, the courgette plants are all big and healthy looking, and I picked our first 4 courgettes of the year! Lots of aphids are appearing on the chilli plants, and no sign of the hoverfly larvae that did such a good job of eating them all last year. So in addition to giving all the plants a good spray with mild washing up liquid solution, I came back from the garden centre with a selection of beautiful hoverfly-attracting flowers, and a plan to put them by the greenhouse door to try and lure a few in.

Litres or Gallons?

Got to the allotment quite late this afternoon. Malcolm continued digging over more of the top bed by the shed, and I spent most of the time watering and feeding everything, then filling up the waterbutts again. I got a bit confused with the dilution for the plant feed, and might have given the runner beans massive amounts of liquid fertiliser - hope I poured on enough water afterwards to dilute it safely!

Rocket Man

The sunny weather has been a great thing for the plants (especially the chillies!) but it was nice to have rain yesterday and today, just to give everything a good soaking before the hot weather comes back for the weekend. We visited the plot on Tuesday for a short visit, mainly to water after a hot couple of days, and we'd got more beanpoles, so I was keen to construct the rest of the supports for the runner beans row. Malcolm dug over a large section of the top bed next to the shed, which had courgettes last year. The plan is to build some kind of support 'wall' at the front of the bed to bank it up to create a step rather than a slope, once the rest of it is dug over.

I called back this evening to take the remaining runner bean plants, and the rocket plants, and put them in. Surprisingly everything seems to be still alive and as we left it - nothing eaten or dead, so fingers crossed. So we now have the full row of runner beans, and a small row of rocket.

Back at the greenhouse, the chillies seem to be very happy. Lots of flowers in bloom on the habanero and Pasila Bajio plants, with fruit starting to appear on the Pasila Bajio also. The cheyennes have lots of fruit, which might be almost full size!

Cottage Garden

The focus of today was expanding the old potato bed and getting the baby plants in. Malcolm concentrated on the digging, which was helped by the ground being covered with sheets of tin some time ago. I took care of the plants and the support structures, and general watering. When it was dug over, we dug out a trench where the runner beans would go, filled it with a layer of shredded paper, some homemade compost, and earth, and gave the whole bed a liberal sprinkling of wormcast fertiliser.


We ended up with a wonderful mini-garden about 6 yards square, with half a row of runner beans (we ran out of beanpoles!), a small row of mangetout peas, 2 small rows of rainbow chard, 3 small rows of broad beans, a small row of cos lettuce, and the existing french climbing beans and pumpkins. Despite a few of the plants looking a bit sad after their long wait to be planted, I must say I thought it looked pretty good.


Elsewhere on the plot things are doing well, because of and despite the very hot, sunny weather. Potatoes are still growing well, and the fruit on the bushes is starting to ripen. And apart from a few nibbled leaves, the pumpkins and squashes have not been stripped by slugs.

Chilli update

Still had no luck finding somewhere that sells (or has even heard of) Chilli Focus, so might have to use tomato stuff again, which would be a pity.

In the meantime the chilli plants in the greenhouse are growing at an impressive rate. Cheyenne are still alone in producing tiny green fruit, but plenty of others have flower buds about to burst open, including:

• Cheyenne
• Habanero
• Yellow Mushroom/Squash
• Hot Lemon
• Scotch Bonnet
• Pasilia Bajio

It all seems very early, I guess it's down to the heatwave we've been having up to now. Ring of Fire and Superchilli still need repotting to go outside, will have to do that over the weekend.

You say tomato..

Added some more plants to our collection of veggies. Malcolm had spotted some reduced price baby plants in a DIY shop that were looking a bit sorry for themselves, but might cheer up with a bit of water and TLC. They included broad beans, cos lettuce, rocket and broccoli. I think I heard the allotment expert on local radio saying that this year shouldn't be as bad for blight, so from another DIY place I got 3 tomato plants at full price, plus I also raided their tired looking reduced plants to find 4 small tomatoes and an aubergine.

So in all, we now have the following tomatoes:

• Yellow Peach (heritage, yellow fruit)
• Cherokee Purple (heritage, brown/purple fruit)
• Sungold (very sweet, cherry type)
• Shirley (2) (small reduced price plant)
• Totem (small reduced price plant)
• Moneymaker (small reduced price plant)

Don't know how well the 'bargain' plants will do, whether they'll survive, if they'll eventually die of blight (yet again), or if we'll end up using all of them, but as we didn't pay very much for them at all it's not too much of a problem.

We also need to get some more digging done to get the new stuff in the ground! After a week or more of scorching hot sun, it seems to have turned to rain, so fingers crossed it'll be dry and cool on Sunday.