The blog re-started

Goodness but it's been a funny year. Our attention has not been directed as thoroughly to the gardens and the allotment as it usually is. We've been busy this year with other things.

And the weather was a bit funny. A warm spring and early summer, followed by three weeks of cool, wet weather in July, followed by an unusually dry August, September and October - around us at least. Other people are complaining of a wet summer, but we certainly didn't have one after the end of July.

However, despite a benign inattention, the broad beans, peas and runner beans have been a roaring success. The onions have been wonderful. We had an amazing crop of potatoes - which we dug up earlier than usual because there was blight threatening. But we got them before the blight did. We grew carrots in boxes up on one of the picnic tables, to avoid the attentions of the carrot fly. They were delicious. And our salad leaves were lovely, until we went away in August and they died of dehydration. I did put more seeds in, but a bit late.

The sweet corn also went in late, and is now oh-so, oh-so nearly to pick. We've been lucky so far that there has only been one frost, and that a very mild one. If our luck holds another week or two, we should get quite a bit of corn as well. If it doesn't, we'll harvest anyway and I'll make broth with the immature fruits.

We did fairly well with the winter beans. I now have a jar full of dried mixed beans, including tiny soya beans from the one plant which eventually grew.

But quite what happened to the curcurbits is a mystery. We got one cucumber, two small squash, one pumpkin, no courgettes from mean and spindly plants which were simply never happy. The Builder thinks it was because we hadn't manured the plot they were in. I'm not so sure. A lack of food wouldn't mean that the plants simply didn't grow at all. And I did feed them. I gave them lots of seaweed meal. Other people also report a lack of success with courgettes and pumpkins this year, just not quite so specatcular a lack! Must just have been one of those years.

We did extremely well for fruit, apart from cherries, which were OK but not as prolific as last year. But the gooseberries more than made up for it.

Earlier in the year we were at the Lost Gardens of Heligan, where I observed their 6 year rotation cycle with interest. I've been investigating it since and it looks quite useful. The only problem is that we grow almost three times as many legumes as anything else so I couldn't quite see how I could work it. So I thought I might try two three year cycles, rotating the cycles as well as the beds, if you see what I mean.

So it would go like this

We've made a start. The Builder has manured where the courgettes etc are to go. And he is intending to start digging the potato beds on the allotment and manure those as he goes so they are ready for potatoes in May. The winter brassicas have gone in where the potatoes were this year, leaving one bed fallow, which he has covered with garden compost.

I don't know that this scheme will exactly fit what we actually grow and the quantities we grow them in. But we'll give it a go and see what happens.

Winter brassicas (so far not eaten by catterpillars, beacuse The Builder removes them on a daily basis!!):