Smugly

                       Smugly self-sufficient-ish, for a bit.

Baked garlic with side salad

Early spinach, fresh lettuce and some of the early garlic crop, which has benefited from baking in the sun.

Après le déluge

Harvesting the last leeks and the first garlic was made easier after the torrential rain of the last couple of days, which has given the soil a proper soak for the first time in weeks. Some of the garlic seems to have a bit of white rot, so it's inadvisable to grow it in that location again and it'll need drying out and using up quickly.

Swelling underground

Garlic looks healthy, on top, but it's what's under the soil that's important and whether it gets too wet over the next few months in the heavy clay soil.

Long haul

The garlic planted last month has already put on lots of growth (some of the cloves were unearthed by curious birds, badgers or mice, hence the protection) but it'll be another eight months, around June, until it'll be ready to harvest.

Early Greek

Harvested some garlic early, as sometimes it can develop white rot in damp conditions but this, from a bulb brought back from Greece, despite being a bit small, is fine. It'll benefit from a few days drying in the sun, although with rain around, that's best done under glass if possible.

Producing

Growing up

Solstice Harvest

Pitch Inspection

Welcome back Mrs Rhubarb



Some holey spinach that survived the winter under glass.



Not sure that the garlic with protection has done any better than that without.

Garlic Jackets

Experiment to see whether protecting garlic from the worst of the cold will improve the yield.

Garlic

Not much of a garlic crop this year. A lot of it succumbed to white rot or never really got going.

Garlic & Artichokes

Now that it's warming up, things are starting to put on some growth, like the garlic and artichokes.



James Wong was using artichoke leaves and hawthorn berries to make a chewy low cholesterol bar in the last of the series of Grow Your Own Drugs last week. My Dad takes artichoke pills to lower his cholesterol and help the digestion of fatty foods.

I like combining the garlic, with artichoke heads and a bit of butter, in about three months time.

Sow when the moon is low

Peculiarly warm, dark, day, busy up the allotment :
Cycled with a bag of compost from home, dug a trench and buried it
Cleared more space and planted another 50 onion sets
Planted 24 garlic cloves
Planted a dozen broad beans in open ground & a few in a seed tray
Made a small bonfire
Skimmed off some pond weed
Harvested : a marrow shaped pumpkin, the rest of the late new potatoes, a parsnip, some rocket & the last cucumber.