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Wellington Fields Allotments - Hixon.

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Wellington Field Allotments Hixon

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Hartley.

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Late Planting & Hot Weather.

It was not until the end of the 2nd week of May that I planted out my Courgettes, but I still started harvesting them by the end of June. On my Allotment I was also late planting out my tender, Runner and Dwarf French Beans, as well as my Squashes and a few other things, in part due to the fact that I was waiting for our Plant Sale to be over, but also because we had some cold nights in Mid-May and we kept on getting them until nearly into June when a couple of cold nights were very close to a Frost. I kept covering my more delicate plants with upturned pots and buckets, but others didn’t and sadly several Plot Holders lost some Vegetable Plants.
For the most part the dry Spring continued though and just when I thought that my Broad Beans were struggling, we had some Rain that was in time to bulk them out a bit. At the start of June I took out my all of my Broad Beans discarding the plants onto my Compost Heap. Inside the Pods many of the Beans were big and had tough skins which resulted in a lot of Plot Holders throwing away Beans like this, but if you double skin them, or cook them and mash them with butter, removing their skins at the same time, they turn into a most delightful, sweet, green paste. All in all, I had an excellent harvest, and in the end, I picked 4 Buckets full, of fat, green, Pods.

As I often do, after growing Broad Beans, I re-planted the Bed with other vegetables that would harvest later in the year. I put in some Leeks that I had been holding back, some Turnips and Beetroot that I had sown in Cellular Trays, and a few more Yacon. It was very late to be planting, but as I told other people, at the time, there was more than 12 weeks growing time left and many vegetables mature in 12-16 weeks.
I repeated this thought, a little later, when they were throwing out some bags of Seed Potatoes at work. Around the middle of June, the Manageress at Work decided it was getting too late to be planting Potatoes and the Charity had been donated a great number of Packets of them to sell. She was going to just bin them, but first asked the staff/volunteers if anybody could make use of them. She also asked me if the Allotments might like them, so I took about 20 packets home. They had been stored in the cool and were in perfect condition and only had tiny “Eyes,” just starting to form. Putting them outside on a large Tray on the Allotment, they soon disappeared, but I was told not to take any more, so I offered about another 35 Packets to the larger Allotments in the next village and they were delighted.

As for my own Plot, I had another empty bed that was still waiting to be planted, so I took the opportunity of planting some of the free bags of Potatoes. The ones that I had sown weeks before, were nearly ready and just starting to flower, which is always a good sign, so I thought that the others would follow on quite nicely. By the start of July, I removed the blackened tops from the first batch and left them because leaving them in the ground afterwards for a couple of weeks is said to thicken the skins which helps them keep better. Taking the Tops off also helps to prevent the spread of Blight that normally appears around the start of July.
I was a little concerned that the batch of Potatoes, which were planted late, would not grow properly and might just go to seed, but by the end of July they looked good with big bushy tops on them. The variety that I put in was one of the newer ones called “Twister,” which is said to be “Blight,” resistant. They have a yellow skin and firm yellow flesh so they will be different to the earlier planting of red skinned ones and the knobbly, “Pink Fir Apple.” I am not a big Potato fan, but like everyone else I do eat them, and like so many Veg, they have gone up a lot in price in recent times.

At the start of June it rained and rained for a few days before going very hot again with several additional short heat-waves going into July, but by mid-July we also had several more wet days. This brought on my Runner Beans and by Mid July I had started picking them in earnest. The crazy weather was also to blame for the Figs starting to ripen about the same time. Picking Figs in Mid-July is just crazy as normally it is not until the start of September before they are ready. However, I have to admit that once or twice, in recent years, I have picked the first Figs in August.

I am sure the Weather is also responsible for the picking of my first real harvest of Apricots from my Allotment. I have had the tree for quite a few years after it replaced a Peach tree that suddenly died. The Tree has been trained “Espalier,” style and looked good in recent years, but never had more than one, or two Apricots on it. After all the heat this year, I was able to pick a very large Punnet full! There must have been over 1 Pound in weight, so, I decided to do something a little bit special with some of them. I didn’t use a recipe, but, managed to make an Apricot Tart. I made my own Pastry case for it, and I didn’t have any Apricot Jam to add to the filling, but de-stoned and Blitzed up, a few fruit with a little water and sugar before heating the mix to make a paste. Then I sliced some more Apricots to go on the Pastry and added the paste. A little while in the Oven and it was ready to serve. With a scoop of Ice Cream, it went down very well with my Brother at Lunchtime on a hot day. It was a little lighter than the usual Fruit Crumble that he usually likes me to make when he comes.

I normally put Greenhouse Shading on my 10x6 as the Summer comes, but this year I was thinking about putting on the shading as soon as I took the Bubble Polythene down in early May. The day-time heat was getting quite intense even with the odd cold night, so I searched out the Sachets of Greenhouse Whitewash Powder that I normally keep. There are quite a few Packets in a Box, you only use one at a time and they keep from one year to the next, so one box will last for years. Powder is the cheapest form of making a whitewash, but I couldn’t find any and the local Garden Centre hadn’t got any in stock. The days went by and it was getting hotter and hotter, so in desperation I bought some very expensive Liquid Whitewash which was all they had got. It did the job though and brought the temperature down to a more respectable level. My Brother decided to use cheap Decorators paint that was used regularly to Whitewash house walls with on his Greenhouse. However, this doesn’t wash off as easily as the proper shading. There are other alternatives though, such as putting up green poly netting on the outside of the Greenhouse to keep the heat out, or, putting green polythene on the inside using the same clips that you use for the Insulating Bubble Polythene in the colder Months.

A lot of People remember the freekily hot summer of 1976 and the wide-spread drought that went with it. Well, it hasn’t been quite like that, although we have undoubtedly had a lot of hot days and much more sunshine than we normally get and several water authorities have declared a drought, but we are getting a few wet days occasionally. Indeed, in one or two areas they got so much rain at times which was torrential, there was even some flooding. However, for us, there was not really enough rain to do much good, but the showers did provide a little relief from time to time. The long-term forecast is for more hot spells, so I have been watering like never before - especially on the Pots of Plants for the Sale. However, I have noticed that where lots of fibre from compost and manure has been added to the soil on my Plots, it is holding on to what moisture there is, far better. Also, where it has not been dug the ground seems more moist, and where it has been dug, it is very difficult to wet the soil again once it has dried out. The hot and dry weather has been good for hoeing the weeds though as somehow they seem to able to grow whatever the conditions!
With this in mind I have been trying to mulch everywhere a lot more with garden shreddings of one sort, or another, to supress weeds so that I don’t have to dig and disturb the soil. When I trimmed my Bay Trees, both at Home and on my allotment, I even used some of the trimmings as a mulch, although at home, I did give some sprays of Bay to my various neighbours who appreciated them.

Some Plants have enjoyed the hot Spring and early Summer that we have had and one of them is my Banana Plant. I have had it for quite a few years after being given a “Pup,” by someone at work who had got a big one. Most years I put it outside as things warm up, but for some reason this year I left it in my Greenhouse and it has rewarded me. For the first time ever, by the end of May, and right though until now, (the end of July) it has been in flower! I have never seen one in flower in this country before, although I have heard of it happening in places like Kew Gardens! The variety is Musa Basjoo which, in sheltered sites, such as big Cities, is said to be almost hardy here in the UK. On one of the Gardening programs someone had one in their garden that they left in over-winter and they claimed it had flowered. Apparently, the flower can result in Fruit, but I don’t suppose mine will. I always thought of bunches of Bananas growing at height and hanging down, but my flower is coming up from low down and from the centre of the plant. There is another popular variety of Banana which is readily available and much more attractive with deep red leaves called “Musa Ensete,” – “The Red Abyssinian Banana.” It looks much more exotic than my plain green one, but is not quite as hardy and more difficult to keep through the winter.
I did take some divisions off my banana last Summer and sold a couple in our last Plant Sale. A few weeks ago, I sold one of the few remaining, but I also divided another exotic and that was my Cannas Lilies. I have 3 distinctly different ones at the moment that I keep trying to multiply up for each years Sales. However, my Red leafed ones wouldn’t split this time and I just divided the Lovely yellow variegated leaf ones and the plain green leaved, yellow flowered ones. They have loved the heat, but needed constant watering. Most of them have been sold already though, before we have our Autumn Plant Sale! This year we are planning an Open Day as well so we will have to see how things go.