Salad days

Seem to have a lot of Lettuce at the moment with more coming on behind and some more sown at the weekend to cover the Shows I am attending Also my Giant Onions are now 13.5" Circumference. NOT DIAMETER LIKE SMITHYS!! http://smithyveg.blogspot.com/ The Giant Red ones are not far behind.I also managed to pick half a dozen Tomatoes for the table

8oz Onions

just harvested 4 more 8 oz Onions Vento I now have 6 ripening see what happens they are all around 9.75" in circumference and look fairly uniform still 8 to harvest so should get a nice set

Wow Grandad

Wow Grandad thats the biggest Onion iv'e ever seen

Tea Time Me Thinks

8oz Onions Potatoes Kohl Rabbi

Potatoes are really motoring now the first ones are getting ready to flower. My first 8oz Onion has reached 9+ 3/4 " so has been lifted I have never showed Onions or dressed any so it Will be a learning exercise. I have some Kohl Rabbi nearly ready and today I sowed 2 more rows of Peas.

Celery Japanese Onions leeks cue

Got the Celery wrapped in Brown Paper to blanch them. I also put some longer pipes on the Leeks and constructed some patented supports for the flags using Rocket sticks (we have a firework factory nearby) and wire. The first of the Cucumbers should be ready by the weekend and i have my first ripe Tomato, Strawberries and Courgettes. I am going through 3 wheelie bins of water a day at the moment keeping everything watered. Hope it is worth it come Show time.

Phew its Hot !!!!

I took the cover off the micro tunnel today as it needed weeding and some of the onions needed straightening up this would have been difficult with the cover on as I nearly got stuck in there last time. The Onions look to be coming along nicely and I decided to leave the cover off as these are mainly for Kitchen use, there are 2 types of Onion in here Kelsae and Ailsa Craig there does not seem to be any difference in size or shape at this stage.To straighten them I carefully scraped away the soil from one side then eased them over and packing the soil underneath again to hold them straight . I am also keeping an eye on the 8oz onions as they are starting to bulb up now and need to be lifted when they reach 9 and 3/4 inches in circumference, this should give me the correct weight according to The various articles I have read.I have a mountain of Lettuce so its salad every night at the moment, I have some more coming on and some just been sown for the class in our local show I have sown some Turnips in plastic tubs for the Turnip class.Shallots have started secondary growth before they reached the required size so I won't be exibiting any this year although the ones I grew from seed look ok I have not got enough for a set.

Romanesco

Never grown any of these before they seem to have turned out OK. Remaining onions are starting to bulb now. Apparently today (longest day of the year ) they change from growing leaves to growing bulb, if this is true they should end up a reasonable size. I have just read on smithy veg that they need to be upright to grow evenly so this will be my task today plus blanching the celery. I've decided to use corrugated cardboard and string as I have never done this before but I am open to alternative suggestions.

Intruders and Largest onion

Been away working all week ,before I left I had to dig up my Largest onion it had started to split and I am glad I bit the bullet as it was a lot worse underneath than it looked from the top.

Also we had intruders on the allotment they systematically broke in to everyones shed causing loads of damage, thankfully I do not lock my shed so escaped the damage However I do have to thank them for trampling a row of show leeks. On a more psitive note things have really started to fly onions seem to have really started to bulb up potatoes are massive and ready to flower every thing else is doing nicely. This weekend I am going to start tying cardboard round the Celery to Blanch it, they are now nearly 2 foot tall and looking good.

Onions

Onions are coming on nicely hopefully some nice ones to show the Red ones are now catching up with the others

Celery

I dodged the rain today and removed the 4" soil pipe collars from the Redstar Celery as you can see they are doing well. I removed the bad outer leaves and watered the crowns with Calcium Nitrate this is supposed to help combat Celery heart rot then re covered the stems to make them grow taller and start Blanching. The plants in the back row are a different variety they are not as far on so the 4" pipes were placed on these.

It's amaizing what you find on your travels

I found this in a stream at the side of the road my next tunnel will have yellow hoops me thinks

Progress Report

Been busy this week with work but in between I have managed to plant out 100 leeks some lettuce ,beetroot and some coriander for Kitchen use. the show stuff is doing well largest onion 9.5" round with the Red ones not far behind shallots have another 5mm to go and they will be 50mm one has started secondary growth so fingers crossed the others make it (I need a set of 6) celery is doing great 1 foot tall. The spuds are coming on cabbages are also doing well hope it keeps going this way.!!!!

Here come the Girls

I took Delivery of a second Chicken house today in readyness for the arrival of another 8 ex battery hens. It came in flat pack mode as most things do these days, As you can see there was no shortage of help mainly from my existing ex batts. I Will be re homing my new ones on the 12th of this month and have also built a wire mesh barrier between the 2 runs so that they can see each other without fighting I will leave the barrier up for 3 weeks so they get used to each other then let them mix hopefully this will work and and I will have one group with 2 houses at the end .

Shallots

Does anyone know if this is secondary growth on my shallot, this is the only one doing this at the moment answers on a postcard please cheers Paul

Pumpkin Bed

Got round to building a bed behind the tunnel for my Pumpkins , Courgettes and Squash this area used to be the tip for all the Allotments therefore it was very stony and full of all kinds of rubbish. I did have a go at digging it over last year but gave up and covered it with Black Polythene to keep the weeds down. I constructed the bed out of scaffold boards then set about digging it over before adding some well rotted Manure and mixing it all up with my Mantis Tiller

I then planted 2 Atlantic Giant Pumpkins at about 3 feet apart 2 Squash Butter Boy 1 Marrow Zebra and 1 Pumpkin Jack Of All Trades this is for Halloween Pumpkins.