Mike's Allotment Diary: October 2009

Preparing the way!

Work at the lottie has been sporadic this month due to other commitments but I do have a backlog of photos to post as a mini review of the month.

Here you can see the work I did today in preparation for planting the apple "Annie Elizabeth". I have been doing a lot of work on family history recently and have discovered that "Annie Elizabeth was the apple at the bottom of my grandparent's garden at 1 Kenton Gardens. Google Streetmap shows only too clearly the apple is no longer there - and my Uncle Peter admits to digging it out years ago as it was on it's last legs. the apple is a cooker at it's best from Christmas 'til May.

First I cleared most of the rubbish...

...peeled back the carpet...

...and dug!!! This area has been under carpet for over 10 years now and was used as a dump when the houses at the back were under construction. It feels good to reclaim it as productive land again. The soil was as expected very compacted and pretty clay-ey with no apparent weeds at all apart from copious quantities of shocking white convolvulus roots. I dug these out with a goodly quantity of rubble and was very satisfied! Now I have to get as much as possible out of the gnarled old blackberry in the right hand corner....

Turnip-tastic!

I picked a few of our lovely little golden turnips a few days ago...

...and cooked them today as part of a medley of roasted allotment veg involving: turnips, potatoes, garlic, onions, shallots and rosemary - also Black Tuscan kale cooked separately.

Pumpkin' Pickin' Day!!!

Yesterday and today I picked the first proper pumpkins and squashes since 2006! The last two summers have been far too wet and cold as Monty Don was only saying in the latest issue of some gardening mag. or other.

Tee hee - lots of lovely meals to share in the winter months when it is cold and we need warming up a bit! In fact we have often kept pumpkins and had them as part of out Mothers' Day celebrations.

Little and large!