Autumn in the Allotment

Gosh, it has been a while since I have posted on the blog! Have been pretty active on Twitter and been spending a lot of time sorting through photographs taken whilst on holiday in Cumbria, near Kirkby Stephen, of which more another time. 

I also have been doing some website and social media volunteering for https://futureoftheamazon.org/ , a non-profit foundation helping indigenous people in northern Brazil restore and protect rainforest. 

We've also made several bags up of mini sweetcorn, the variety is called Minipop and it does seem to do very well in our allotment. We start them off in sterilised compost in toilet roll tubes and then plant it in a block as it is wind pollinated. 

One thing that did benefit from the absurdly high temperatures this summer was the grape vine. Although the grapes aren't massive, it is outdoors, the quantity was significantly higher than usual and there's a huge bag in the freezer waiting for me to have chance to start off some wine. 

This Autumn we have had a lot of apples and pears, and I mean.... a lot! We have three minarette apple trees, a Gala, a Chiver's Delight and a Falstaff. There's also two minarette pear trees, a Conference and a Comice, the latter of which does ripen very quickly in storage and so I have had to preserve a lot of them in sugar solution, great in porridge!

We've had some lovely Cosmos in the allotment, and indeed sunflowers, nasturtiums and marigolds. We also leave some weeds to grow into flowers, mainly to see what they are, but also as you never know what wildlife will turn up on them and indeed depend on them for nectar etc. 

Earlier in the year, whilst it was so dry, we were really worried about the size of the potatoes. However, the dry and hot weather have meant no blight this year so we have been able to leave the potatoes in the ground for much longer which has meant they are now a decent size. They make great chips though some of them do fragment easily when boiled. The nasturtiums are taking over where the potatoes were!