Soilman's Allotment Blog

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The speed freeze race

Went away for a few days and came back to this. Extraordinary how fast everything grows when you're not there to harvest it.

So now it's a dash to get it all in the freezer. Can't possibly eat a whole bucket of vegetables fresh – more's the pity.

Corn porn

Anticipation – probably better than reality, most of the time. Most of life's supposed pleasures fail, ultimately, to deliver the goods.

Not so sweetcorn. It delivers big time. And now my plants are flowering I'm starting to twitch with expectation.

* Caution: food porn warning. For adults only*

Can there be anything more utterly sensual and delicious than sinking your fangs into a ripe corn cob and feeling the butter running down your chin?

Get thee behind me, Photoshop

A bit bloody late, these. Better than never, I guess.

It's difficult keeping an allotment blog honest. Airbrushing is horribly easy, and I confess I was tempted to, er, 'improve' these gherkins digitally. I'm ashamed to have such piffling ones in late July.

Anyone got any good cucumbers or gherkins yet?

Baffling success

Pessimism. Terrible thing.

Turns out the remaining onions are, in fact, A1. Not at all the foetid, suppurating horrors I confidently predicted. They'll store fine.

Fancy that, eh? Wrong again. And I don't even know what I did right.

Late, late leeks

Only just got the leeks out. I've become a languid and slovenly gardener.

These will just about be ready for late October, but I'm pushing it. Anyone ever planted leeks later than this and still got a crop before Christmas?

Mad dogs and Englishmen

Don't know if leek flowers are edible, but they certainly look good enough to eat.

Had a day off work, so did three hours at the plot today. Goes against my principles to stay that long, as a rule, but today was so beautiful that the time flew.

I've even got a bit sunburned. Who says this summer's a write-off?

Weeding hell

Weeding vegetables on an allotment in midsummer

Blink and you miss 'em

Look great, don't they?

How deceptive looks can be. I harvested these early because they looked so plump and perfect. Turns out hardly any will store; they're all soft and some are already showing signs of rot.

I suspect manure as the cause. I dug a lot into the soil in the autumn. Probably too much nitrogen.

Whatever. End result is that I have these and roughly another 40kg of onions that need eating, like, immediately.

Fancy an onion party?

Divine joke

Amazing how well vegetables grow when you don't like them much. Though I eat beetroot, I can't pretend it's my favourite. So naturally it grows like a weed for me.

Carrots, on the other hand, I'm passionate about. And of course they grow feebly.

This is God's wicked sense of humour at work.