The bad, the good and the tasty
Well at the weekend I went up to the allotment to assess the damage. At first my heart sank as the whole plot looked awful. There were plenty of weeds and my peas and beans had completely dried out and died off which I was surprised about as I had been told it did nothing but rain while I was away. I also had tomato blight (like the rest of the world it seems!). Poor Keith had put so much into his tomatoes this year and very few survived - he was pretty distraught.
I spent a long old day sorting everything out. Weeding throughout and cutting back some of the herbs, which have done very well. I dug out all my onions and shallots so I could dig over that area completely, and got a pretty good crop of them. By the end of the day I looked back at it and felt excited about the whole allotment again. The soil in some areas is getting really good. I certainly won't be rotavating again, but where I clear I'll be digging over by hand and getting as many roots out as possible. Some areas I'll plant up with new crops and some will be left till the spring.Â
On my rounds I harvested whatever was ripe. I took home a nice box full of squash, potatoes, raspberries, a few strawberries, carrots and some (hugely) oversized courgettes. Some of my sweetcorn had been nibbled by birds, but I still came home with a cob each, which we had that night. Oh my Lord, did it taste amazing. I have to say it was by far the best sweetcorn I have ever tasted and it was so sweet and juicy it didn't need any seasoning whatsoever. It made it all worth while again.Â
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