End of week catch up

In the past week since I last posted things have been moving on quite a bit, both at the allotment and at home, and I have had a major catastrophe too.

On Sunday afternoon I was relaxing in my hot tub after a few hard hours at the allotment when one of our cats knocked my mobile phone into the water.

Needless to say it was a complete write off, so I haven't been able to post up any more pictures since, which has kind of put me off writing anything.

So - what has been going on this week at home?

I have harvested a few more rhubarb stems which were stewed down with some sugar and a bit of water - very nice, but it really needed a bit more sugar.  All right - a lot more, to be honest.

The first few raspberries of the year have been eaten too - they didn't need any extra sweetener as they were gorgeous by themselves.  There is another handful ready too, looking forwards to picking those tomorrow.

I have also harvested a few Rainbow Chard leaves and steamed them with some cabbage given to me by a very generous allotment neighbour.  Not sure if I prefer them to spinach right now, but I will have plenty more opportunities to decide as the chard has really started to fill out and develop into really big plants.  I'm glad I decided to give them plenty of room when I planted them out six weeks ago!

The lettuce tub by the front door has also been raided quite a lot this week, but as they are starting to show signs of bolting we will be eating them as fast as we can before they turn bitter.

I have also picked up a young melon plant and stuck it into my largest pot - you never know, we might actually get some sun over the next few weeks to allow fruit to develop.  I am thinking of building up a frame for it to climb up - apparently this will encourage it to set more fruit along the length of the vine rather than just at the end as it would if I let it crawl along the floor.

The borlotti and mange tout on the windowsill desperately need planting out - the borlotti is now nearly four foot tall and looking for something to climb up, the mange tout has flopped over and is rapidly spreading along the windowsill.  I have a space picked out in the front garden in front of the trellis for them, so hopefully they will be able to handle the shock of being outdoors for the first time

The two tomato seedilngs in one pot have been separated into their own pots and are coming on well.  The chillis have now got four leaves each, and are slowly getting stronger.

The spinach grown in the gel is doing remarkably well, the only problem I forsee is trying to get the plants out of their cells without losing half of the root system which is now well established within the gel itself.  I am going to plant these inbetween the leeks in the raised bed - they should be picked and eaten long before I need to get at the leeks.

Not too sure about the radish at the moment - the majority of the first leaves have withered and died, but only a couple of the plants have well developed true leaves as yet.  It may be that I am going to lose a lot of these plants.  The plan is to plant them out below the brassicas in the bed in front of the trellis once they have all got good true leaves showing.

In the blow away it is like looking through a jungle, the plants are doing so well.

I am considering bringing some of the trays out and leaving them on some greenhouse staging just to give a bit of room to the others left behind.

I am very pleased with the pumpkins - both are getting quite big now, so I will have to look at potting them up into bigger containers as they really don't like being cramped.

One disappointment so far has been the onions.  They have been pricked out into individual modules for some time now, but there is virtually no signs of growth from any of them as yet.

With the weather having been so bad this week I haven't had much time to get down to the allotment, but I have had 8 tonnes of cow manure delivered in anticipation of some nice weather that will allow me to rotivate part of the plot and get it all mixed in.

I have spent an hour tonight moving the first of it off the path where it was dumped - 11 barrows-full and I have hardly dinted the pile!  I reckon there is about another 150-200 barrows-full to go, so at my curent speed it will take me 10-15 more hours!  I just hope that I will speed up as I get more used to the work.