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Another excellent day in the allotment. A kind friend made me these beautiful boxes and I’ve had fun filling them with worm speckled home made compost. I must have missed out on the mud pie stage of my development but I’m making up for it now.  I do wear my Marigolds thought, just to prove I’m an adult.

Water, water everywhere

What is this weather like?! July, and you need head to toe waterproofs to put a foot over the door. But no flooding in my area and for that I am grateful.

The allotment is fairing remarkably well.  I lost my big daddy courgette to crown rot. No other casualties worth mentioning. I have a day of the triphids green pea crop and a very acceptable sweet pea crop. I have beans coming out of every orifice and a rather shy purple sprouting broccoli.  Who knew you could grown coriander outside in Scotland? Amazing!  As is my thyme collection.  Nothing like having thyme on your hands…

In the polytunnel my tomatoes collapsed for lack of support.  I hadn’t realised that innocent little tomato seeding would become a tree.  Fortunately I have two others on which  boughs of miniature yellow tomatoes are beginning to form. My lemon grass and ginger sprout merrily next to some rather bedraggled chilli plants.  Seemingly they like to go to bed dry whilst their bed mates, the tomatoes, like to go to bed wet.  I’m with the chillies, every time.

I’m not really up to speed with what to plant next. After lifting my rusty garlic, which survived surprisingly well, I dug in lots of mature horse manure and popped in some Florence fennel.  This is supposed to be a voraciously greedy and aggressive feeder. Looks so innocent when you see it rotting on the supermarket shelves.

On the subject of horse manure, I have a wonderful source in a riding stable nearby.  Beautifully rotted over many moons and starred with many wiggly worms.  All I have to do is go shovel shit. A bit like being at work really…