Sunshine and showers

At last we’ve had a decent amount of rain on the plot. It certainly has been a long time coming. Now that the rain has started the forecast looks we’re going to have plenty more over the next week. With the rain will no doubt come a glut of slugs so we’ll need to keep an eye out for them and protect our veg before they decimate it. We made sure to have a serious weeding session at the weekend so they won’t be benefitting from the rain and causing us more problems down the line.

Flowers

Our tulips have now finished their magnificent display for the year and we’ve been dead-heading them so more energy goes back into the bulb in preparation for next year. In the meantime other flowers that we planted are coming along nicely now. We have dahlias, gladioli, sunflowers, cosmos and others to look forward to in the coming months. Oh, and some lupins and astilbe too!

Planting out

Now is the time when the contents of our greenhouse are being planted out onto every available space on the plot. It’s nice to get a bit of a free space back in the greenhouse and feel that we are moving onto the next stage of the season. We planted out a few trays of sweetcorn, some courgettes, some pak choi and a few kale plants, amongst others. We netted everything in an effort to put off the local rabbits and birds who have likely been snooping around the plot already to see what they can munch.

Tomatoes

We’ll be leaving all of the tomatoes in the greenhouse this year as every time we’ve grown them outdoors before we’ve ended up with a good deal of blight. Combine that with the fact that some of the tomatoes don’t ripen outdoors and it seems a waste of time. We’re growing cherry and plum tomatoes – a couple of plants of each – and they’re already well settled into their spot in the greenhouse and starting to really take off. In our opinion, tomatoes from your own allotment are one of the tastiest crops you can grow.