8th July 2018 - It's coming home...

Unfortunately I wasn't very well this weekend so I only managed to get up to the plot for a couple of hours this afternoon.  Of course yesterday it was the World Cup Quarter Finals and for anyone living under a rock England won 2-0 against Sweden, meeting Croatia in the Semi Finals.

I had an England flag that I bought for the allotment but haven't had a chance to put it up before now.  I used an old wooden curtain rail and stapled the flag to it before I screwed the rail to the wooden arch.  As you can see from the picture it was a bit cloudy today and it's apparently forecast rain tomorrow (fingers crossed).  

Due to various things I hadn't been able to get to the plot in the week so the things in the pots and hanging baskets were looking very sad, including everything in the polytunnel, although everything in there have gone mad anyway, there is a pumpkin in there that has sprawled right across and under the staging and all of the tomatoes are looking massive, although a couple look a bit scorched on the ends of the leaves.  I'll have to try and get up this week to give everything a good soak, especially if it doesn't rain.

The good news is that after all the messing about last week with the new water butt I managed to get the leak sorted so I've been able to get it filled and in place at the back of the polytunnel.  If we do have a hosepipe ban I will at least have 3 full water butts to be able to water the things in the polytunnel.  As I understand it, even if there is a hosepipe ban one of the things you are allowed to do is fill up ponds so long as it has fish or wildlife in it.  I currently have masses of tadpoles and a few frogs that are keeping cool in there.  I pretty sure there's also at least 1 newt and so I do need to keep the pond topped up.  I filled it up today because it was very low so I'll keep an eye on it and see how long it takes for it to start to evaporate again.  I also noticed that the pump of the fountain was also a bit lower than usual so I might need to replace the battery in that next weekend as well.  

A couple of weeks ago I harvested all of the onions, some of them were still upright and probably weren't really ready to be harvested but some of them were splitting and I wanted to get the bed cleared for my summer onions.  Even though I've left them to dry for a couple of weeks you can see from the top pic on the left that some of the stalks were still quite green when I cut them so I'll need to use those ones first to avoid them going bad. 

On the plus side my garlic is looking really good, I've got 14 bulbs in various sizes but they've all got clearly defined cloves.  I'm really pleased given that it's the first time I've ever tried to grow it.  These are hard necks but next year when I have the 2nd plot I'll be able to do a whole bed of garlic so I'll probably do a mix of hard and soft neck to enable me to be able to have enough to use all season.  I'll also have at least 1 bed of winter onions but as I harvest the garlic I'll plant more summer onions so hopefully end up with enough to last me for the year.  

Of course that's assuming that I have the beds in place before autumn when I'll want to be planting them, which is my plan.  I'm also planning to have a bed of asparagus, which will need to planted in April so I'll leave the membrane on that bed until I'm ready to plant them and then I'll pull it up, remove any roots that have made their way to the top before filling with a good depth of compost and manure.  I've been busy reading what I need an funnily enough I watched the A-Z of gardens on catch up this morning and it happened to be A, and they did asparagus!  It looks fairly easy to do but I'll be sure to take photos or a video when I do it.  

As I don't have a lot to talk about in relation to gardening itself I will just take a minute to tell you all what I use for sun protection.  It's really important to be protected from the sun, even when it's not bright sunshine because you can still get burnt but it's even more important when it's so bright and sunny.  

I like to use ultrasun, which you put on in the morning and then it stays put all day.  I use a minimum of factor 30 and normally use a sports spray, rather than one of the cream ones.  The sports sprays are good because they don't come off if you're sweaty and they're a nice consistency.  You just spray it on and give it a quick rub and you're set for the day.  I also use the factor 30 face cream every day as my moisturiser.  You can get it online quite easily for just over £20 and you can also get factor 50 for the kids.  Littlest L uses it every day and can now put it on herself before school.  She's very sporty so it's not unusual for her to be out all day at sports events with school and I'm completely comfortable that she's fully protected.

I hope that's useful for you but until next time...

Happy Gardening x