St Ives Allotment - Summer Crops

After a slow start to the growing season - due to the exceptionally cold Spring weather - things are now looking pretty good on my plot.

Lots of plants starting to come through. Potatoes are lifted and stored - soon I'll have more crops.

Enjoy the pics - click on each to enlarge.

The first cucumbers are appearing - ready for first picking in a week or two I think.

Some courgettes already picked (and converted into ratatouille) - more - probably lots more - on the way.

Carrots - variety Autumn King - coming on well for an October / November harvest.

Pumpkins starting to swell out - hopefully will be ripe and ready for Halloween.

French Beans - variety Blauhilde - flowering nicely.

I also have Firetongue Borlotti Beans growing - slightly behind but flower buds appearing.

Looking forward to the harvest - must start emptying the freezer !

Storing Potatoes

The Potato Harvest is coming in - and unlike last year I've got a really good yield.

So time to get them safely into storage - so that we can enjoy them over the coming weeks. Also - one of the reasons why I grow stuff - to save money - as we can cross spuds of the shopping list - hopefully until Christmas at the earliest.

The potential problem with potatoes is that they may sprout, turn green or rot in storage - so its worth taking a few steps to keep them in good condition.

Step 1 - get them dried out - preferably in full sunlight.

I lifted mine the evening before a day forecast to be hot and sunny - and was rewarded with a nice morning as predicted.

I spread the spuds out on a tray set out in the sunniest part of the garden and left them for a few hours.

Step 2 - remove any tubers that are damaged - either with "fork damage" - inevitable when lifting the crop - slug damage or anything else.

There is a danger that these will be susceptible to rot and spread this to their neighbours. Keep them for consumption in the next few days.

Step 3 - Transfer the potatoes to hessian sacks - then store somewhere dry and dark - mine are in the garage.

They should then store ok for a few months - but do keep checking the sacks regularly. If one potato starts to rot this can quickly spread to the others - potentially ruining a whole sackful.

Sunday On The Allotment - Winter Cabbages

Out to the allotment on a lovely warm sunny summer morning in St Ives Cornwall.

Today's main job - planting out my Winter Cabbages - raised from seed and nurtured in the greenhouse for the last two months.

I'm trying two winter-hardy varieties - Tundra and January King. It will be nice to have something growing on the plot through Autumn - and something to look forward to for Christmas and beyond.

The seed packet for Tundra showed some huge healthy looking cabbages growing away covered in snow and sheets of ice.

Conditions like that are rare in Cornwall - so I have high hopes for my little plants.

But - as ever - we'll see. I'll post progress reports here.

Before planting I added a bit of my home-made compost to each hole, watered.

I then popped each plant in - pleased to see good root development - and watered again.

Finally - I covered the row with a net cloche - to provide some protection from pests - including butterflies, pigeons and rabbits.

My summer planting is now pretty much done. So I can sit back and enjoy for a bit - and look forward to the next harvests. Coming soon - Courgettes, Cucumbers and French Beans.

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Harvesting Potatoes

Potato harvest time has arrived - long awaited and anticipated since I started preparing the ground last October.

I planted two varieties this year - Charlotte First Early and Wilja Second Early. Chosen because they are two varieties that I like to eat and taste great. Also chosen because I wanted to avoid the worst ravages of potato blight by harvesting early - so I avoided maincrop varieties.



My plot and our allotment site as a whole seems to suffer badly from blight. I'm not sure why - we get plenty of wind - maybe its the damp Cornish weather.

I lifted the last of the Charlotte potatoes a couple of weeks go - so this week it was the Wilja. After looking really good for weeks they were struck by blight about 10 days ago - and it spread fast. I cut off all the foliage and binned it. Blighted potato haulms should not be composted as this risks spreading the disease and storing it up for next year.

I was really pleased with both the yield and the size of the spuds - enough to keep us supplied in the kitchen for several weeks. Also a surplus to share with our neighbours - which is something that I enjoy.

Two beds cleared - one more to go - then I can move on to preparing the beds for the next crop. Under my crop rotation system they will be sown with peas and beans - starting with Broad Beans sown in October.