{Green Lane Allotments} August #4

Harvesting has been the predominant activity this week. The second largest of our Brandywine tomatoes weighed in at 700g or 1½ lbs. It provided a thick slice of fruit - with some to spare - for each of three sandwiches. There is an even larger sister awaiting harvest. Both of our monster tomatoes were growing in our garden greenhouse which has been blight free, and in the plot greenhouse the removal of all leaves from the blight affected tomatoes appears to be working. The fruits are ripening well.Many have been gathered, roasted and made into a passata which we have frozen.

Sarpo Mira potatoes are still growing in spite of being affected by blight. The roots that we have dug have produced a good crop of large red potatoes.

Mid week we visited Clumber Park and were comforted to note that even the professionals had potato crops which had been affected with blight and that they had done exactly as we had to try and prevent the disease reaching the tubers.

There is still an abundance of fruit. Especially prolific has been the plum tree – Oullins Gage. Most of the remaining plums are now out of reach even of the fishing net and extended lopper method of cropping. We are now picking gages – Reine Claude and Mannings. The sweetness and colour of the fruit are seemingly at odds with one another.

Our four varieties of blueberries fruit at slightly different times, however the fruits on each bush ripen over a long period so rather than providing a glut have provided a constant steady supply of berries.

Work continues on tidying the strawberry beds and removing runners. Flamenco is a perpetual fruiting variety and is still providing us with a few berries. Some runners are being planted up in pots and will later fill any gaps in the beds. I wanted to increase stocks of Flamenco and Florence, however Marshmello is producing by far the largest number of runners, Florence produced none at all and I haven’t tackled Flamenco yet.

Sweet peas are now looking rather shabby but still providing a few flowers albeit with much shorter stems. Dahlias and sunflowers are providing plenty of cut flowers and need very regular dead heading. Some of the chrysanthemums that we have planted in large pots to provide later flowers have defied us and are producing flowers now. The weather seems to have confused them too.

In the garden the John Downie crab apple also has a good crop of ripe fruits. The fig suddenly has begun producing fruit which seems to be growing at a surprising rate.

Harvested this week:

Vegetables:

Runner beans – Lady Di, Enorma & Desiree
French Climbing Beans – Cosse Violette
Carrots – Ideal Red & Yellowstone
Sweet Corn – Sweet Nugget
Potatoes – Sarpo Mira
Spring Onions – Guardsman
Cabbage – Primo 2
Salad Leaves – Tuscany & Provence

Tomatoes – Shirley, Brandywine, Rainbow Beefsteak, All Blacks, Gardeners’ Delight, Moneymaker, Yellow Perfection, Roma, Amish Paste & Japanese Trifle Black
Cucumber – Burpless Tasty Green

Fruit: