18th September 2016 - Best Container Garden!

Winning container garden

This week we had the allotment awards at Bradford City Hall (which, by the way is an absolutely beautiful building) and I won the best container garden for my fairy garden.  They liked that it was something different and that it had a fun factor to it.  I had also entered some of my photos into the photo competition and I had entered best plot.  My photos were shown in the run down of those that were entered and there were 27 entrants in the best plot and mine was named in the top 5 so I was super pleased with that too.  I've put my certificate up in the shed and hopefully it will be the first of many!

In the last few weeks I've been busy making jam and this week I also made a tomato sauce for pasta.  It was a very basic recipe, just some onions, garlic, herbs and the tomatoes.  The garlic wasn't from the plot but the onions and tomatoes were and I made 2 jars so will be looking forwards to making some chilli or spaghetti bolognese with those this week.  I have now bought some oranges because I've got the bug and I want to have a go at making marmalade, I also picked some more apples today because I want to make ginger marmalade.  Interestingly you make an apple jelly and then add some preserved ginger to it so I need to preserve some ginger and then make the apple jelly.  I'm really looking forward to having a go with it and hopefully I'll have some orange and some ginger marmalade to give to people at Christmas (orange and ginger together might be nice too!!)

Talking about picking apples, today I had a fledgling robin following me around and whilst I was picking the apples it was perched at my head height less than an arms length from me.  I was chatting away to him and he was chirping back at me.  It was really lovely to have him trust that I wasn't going to hurt him.  He'd also followed me around earlier while I was weeding the brassica bed - I suspect he was hoping that I'd dig up some worms but unfortunately I didn't.  I did offer him a couple of caterpillars though which he was very happy with!  I decided to take the netting off the brassica bed because they were being munched by something and it was just hard to get to them to check.  I know there are still cabbage whites around but at least now I can check more easily and therefore it's likely I'll check more regularly.  I was very pleased when I had a look at the brassica's.  The sprouts are really looking nice and whilst the leaves do look like they've been munched by something the sprouts look like they're forming well so I really do need to keep a close eye on them.  I'm not sure how the purple sprouting broccoli is going to do though; one of them did bolt a couple of weeks ago so I'm hoping they others don't follow suit.  I also seem to have some lovely looking swede in there and a couple of nice leeks although the smaller ones that were hidden under the foliage of the broccoli I've pulled up as 'baby leeks' and I'll use those because they were never going to get any bigger!

Sad news this week though is that my Christmas spuds have blight :-(  It was always a risk to put them in and leave them outside at this time of the year but I was keeping everything crossed.  I really should have bought some blight resistant ones and I didn't.  I'm going to have to scrap them but I'll use the compost on one of the beds that I had potatoes in this year so that it becomes part of the rotation.  It's also worth commenting that people seem to be confused about what to do with blighted plant material.  The roots, tubers and fruits should be burnt or disposed of without putting them on your compost.  The leaves and stalks can be composted because blight spores can only survive on live plant material and as soon as it's cut the spores die.  For those doubters amongst you, I had never heard of burning blighted plant material before I got an allotment and joined some allotment groups on facebook and so I've always composted anything with blight and yes, sometimes I do get blight but other times I don't.  I've grown tomatoes in my homemade compost for years, mostly when they're in the greenhouse I don't get blight because I keep the doors closed during blight season but occasionally I've had it when it's been very warm, prompting me to open the doors, but also very humid as it often is in Yorkshire!!

On a brighter note I found 3 actual melons on my plant today.  They're still small and it's very possible that they won't get much bigger now as the weather starts to turn but it's an interesting development in terms of learning for next year.  I'm not intending to grow tomatoes in the polytunnel next year as I don't want to have them in pots in there, there isn't really room now I have staging on the right side.  That means I could melons into the bed and make sure that the doors are kept closed most of the time; that should keep the temperature hot enough for the melons to grow and if I also grow chilli's and/or peppers in there I think they'll like the warmer temperatures too.  

We're now nearly at the end of September and my Autumn Gold raspberries are fruiting nicely.  I need to keep harvesting them to keep them fruiting.  Last week I spent some time tidying them.  I tied up a lot of the canes that I thought had actually gone bushy rather than grown up (they hadn't it was just they were all tangled up).  I also prune off any that were very very new growth because it's too late in the season for them to produce fruit.  Just as a reminder for anyone who isn't sure; summer fruiting raspberries fruit on last years new growth but autumn fruiting fruit on this years new growth so in January I will cut them all back right to the ground and they'll grow again from scratch.  I also spent quite a lot of time weeding out all of the couch grass that had worked it's way through the hops.  I used the empty and covered bed to put it all to dry before I burnt it all today.  

I am really happy with what I've achieved this year; for me gardening is a super way to relax and to exercise.  I started this time last year with a blank canvas and when I look at what I have now I am actually really impressed with the hard work both me and Mr L have put into it.  Mr L has done all of the construction for me.  All of the beds (including carrying most of the topsoil up the hill), the compost bins, the polytunnel and the shed and then I've done all of the design, planting, weeding, feeding and general gardening jobs; between us we've created a space that I view as my haven - the place I can go to unwind and relax but also provide healthy food for my kids.  What more could a person ever need?