Lavender Open day at the Lotty

Before I mention anything about the Lavender, I have to mention this great book which my mother in law bought me for my birthday

ONE MAN AND HIS DIG - BY VALENTINE LOW

If you love allotments and like a good read and a laugh then go and buy this book.

You can also visit his blog and buy the book online

www.onemanandhisdig.blogspot.com

I read it at every spare moment I have - even if only for a few minutes!

Anyway, to continue.........

This weekend 12th & 13th July they held an open day for the lavender fields that are attached to the Lotty. It was a PYO affair with some great stalls selling lavender products e.g. beauty creams, pictures, cards with Carshalton Lavender on them, sleep pillows and more importantly a Tea & Coffee stall!

It looked really busy there all day, but some of us had to work, but that started after a cup of tea and some honeycombe to keep me going!

After lot of weeding (what's new) and some admiring, lots and lots of chatting and some here and there tweaking, I had a chat with Nigel about my peas that I had put in earlier in the week.

He advised (clever him as that means a sale for the shop) some pea wire netting thingy stuff that you support with canes that you interweave and therefore create an upright structure for the peas to grow up!

OK! OK! I know some of you are going to look at this picture and say "How many peas has she planted in such a small space?" and my answer to you would be this -

(a) My space is limited and (b) this is my very first attempt at growing peas so I have to have a learning curve - if it works it works, if it doesn't I will write it up in my book and not do it again next year.

There are a few things now that the old boy flat cappers have sucked their breath in at and rubbed their chins in utter horror, but for me - ok apart from my carrots - so far so good.

Like Susan said yesterday - she planted her potatoes too deeply and they haven't given her a brilliant yield, but next year she will plant them in a more shallow trench - she will learn from this year to the next.

When Susan is at the Lotty at the same time as me we chat for England. We still weed, and tend and sow, but chatting all the way. We decided, probably not for the first time, that Susan does mystery gardening. For instance - what she thought COULD have been cabbages, or maybe brussels (from the leaves) now turn out to be Kolhrabi ! However, one thing that she knew were cauliflowers are indeed cauliflowers and very handsome chappies they are too!

Luckily Susan's friend bought her a great present - visual assistance to help identify what she has planted - pictures will follow.

After the rains......

My first rain dodging visit to the Lotty this week was on Tuesday evening. The sun was shining and the ground was wet and muddy, but things needed checking over! I checked it all - onions, beetroot, parsnips, lettuces, more onions, spring onions, tomatoes, chillis, peppers, brussels, brocolli, leeks, rocket, more baby spring onions, pumpkins, courgettes, butternut squashes, runner beans, cobra beans and more tomatoes along with a variety of herb plants, the sun flowers (3 surviving) and not to mention Tatty & Hilda - all seemed ok, all seemed to have survived the downpour! Just a little "Tweaking" needed here and there, but nothing major.

I met Mavis down there - I gave her one of my baby "snacker" cucumber plants (see picture below) and in exchange she gave me the above pictured marrow which I told her that I had spotted the other day! How kind of her. I took it home and the next day I made Qara baghli mimli bil laham - a Maltese dish that I remember from my girlhood days - Marrow stuff with seasoned minced beef. It was SO lovely and smelt so devine when it came out of the oven that I forget to take a picture of it - next time eh?

This is my first Brocolli head - I will be having this for dinner tonight along with some baked fish. It's a shame the tomatoes are ready yet - we need some sunshine for them to ripen first.

I picked another Brocolli head and gave it to Mavis as I didn't think a baby cucumber plant was a fair exchange for such a huge and delicious marrow.

This is one of the flowers on my Butternut Squash - I just had to take a picture as it looked so beautiful in the sunshine. I have now put this as my computer wallpaper, so when I am not at my Lotty I can look at this lovely flower and wish I was there!!

Last but not least - my Butternut Squash has grown since last weekend - it must be all the rain that has helped it along!!

After all that picture taking and tweaking, I decided to put in my baby cucumbers and peas. I put them in where my earlies had come out.

There are still more peas to go in, but I will have to wait until some more spuds come out.

I have only put in little canes to start them off, as I didn't have anything else to hand, but I will of course change these as the plants grow.

Last Weekend.....

I had a lovely Birthday - Two trips to the Lotty and a fish "n" chip lunch in the garden.

I was then treated to a night away at a lovely hotel Buxted Park in Uckfield

Sunday was a washout and as I don't do mud - I had to wait to get back down to the Lotty.

This happened on Monday. I was going to the postbox anyway, and although it had been raining pretty much all day, it was in fact worse that Sundays' washout, I popped to the Lotty as I needed some spring onions and a courgette - fortunately it wasn't THAT muddy.

To my surprise - this is what a wet weekend can do......

Yes, these are my 1st ever tomatoes - They are the Marmande variety. I am SO excited - just think, I will soon be able to stop buying tomatoes from the supermarket! How very exciting.

I also noticed lots of flowers on my chilli plants and peppers, so hopefully they won't be too far behing the Tomatoes.

Then this happened - Yes, this is my butternut squash - the one I grew from seed from the gourd that had been in the fridge for a week. I was searching through the leaves for a courgette to take home and I found this instead!

Last but not least - This is Susan's latest harvest - yes a straight carrot!

Well done Susan.

Scrap Green Garden Waste Collection Charges in SUTTON!

If you live in Sutton, and oppose the new £35 per bag charge for clearing your garden waste (a great idea from the Lib Dems NOT!!) please sign the petition by clicking on the link and then pass it on to all your friends and neighbours that this effects.

Scrap Green Garden Waste Collection Charges!

Sunflower goes down.......

I took this picture of the Sunflowers last weekend - they have got soooooo big they are nearly as tall as I am! I was very pleased to note that the flower head seems to be forming too, but unfortunately there is a sad end to this tale.

When I went to the lotty last night (1st July) the smaller one of the two - the one to the right of the photo - was on the floor! I don't know how this had happened as it was securely fastened to an 8ft cane! I have put it in my watering can full of water to see if it revives. I will know later when I pop back there tonight to get some bits for dinner.

Now these two lovely purple things are my first Beetroot harvest. I only pulled up 2 as I didn't know what to expect really - I have only eaten beetroot that has come from a jar before now. Well I have to say that I just peeled and sliced and enjoyed them (well one of them) in it's natural state and it was sweet and delicious. So now, if I ever feel peckish down on the Lotty again I will just pick one, wash it, peel it with my pen knife and devour one!

Here they are again, laying on some freshly picked salad leaves (cut and come again variety) and along side a couple of spring onions. I have never been known to cry when cutting spring onions, but these little tikes did exactly that to me! I was blubbering and sniffing away within seconds of putting the knife in. They are strong and full of flavour. Lucky that I have another 2 lots growing - sown a few weeks apart - so I will have a pretty good supply.

Now, one person I have to mention is George - Yes the laughing Jamaican George. He was offering some Pak Choy the other day, but as i didn't have any space I innocently said "Oh George, I will just have to wait till yours grow and then we can have a swap!" to which his cheeky reply was "yes, OK, but I may not want any vegetables!!!!"

What could he be implying here?

HE LOOKS LIKE ONE OF THOSE "WANTED" POSTERS!!

Another mention is my friend Susan. We do bump into each other down at the Lotty quite a lot - sometimes during the week and sometimes at weekends. It's all a matter of timing you see. We have a good laugh and a chat. The other day Susan told me that she offered to water Mavis's plot as Mavis was away for the weekend and it was a scorcher. After getting all the beans done (that's just the one plot) she went on a bit further down. The pressure from the tap is not brilliant, so she did quite well with the trickle that was coming out of the end. However on her way back to the tap, I said to Susan - "Oh, are you only going to do those bits then?" Little did she realise that Mavis works 4 plots!!! hahaha 1 hour later and Susan had finished - bless. She deserved the manicure that she had booked after that!

We have decided that she is going to write a book - Susan's Guide to Gardening. It will show you how to plant things and not tag them, so when the little rows start to appear, you haven't a clue as to what they are. She will also add a section on dropping seeds willy nilly e.g. "I don't know how that courgette plant got there!" and also "What the hell is that?" would be another favourite. She makes me die with laughter as her happy go lucky approach to allotment garden is so funny. She grows better weeds than I do too - lucky thing - as they are easier to pull out. Susan has had loads of harvesting success with this novel approach - peas (some of the first on the whole plot to be harvested I have to add) Broad Beans, courgettes, carrots (which are lovely and straight not like my curly ones) and there was another one but I can't remember - haha - I doubt if she will either! She has Rhubarb growing and has just planted some mange tout !