Soupy

Sweet crunch

Ready, set, go!

Choggia beetroot, carrots and spinach beet all survived, even thrived over the mild winter, providing a traffic light of colours and food for the pot. The rain's here now, just in time after a dry month, but the accompanying high winds, which often seem to occur around equinoxes, would be damaging to any seedlings waiting to be planted outside. At this time of year there are never enough sunny window ledges and warm spots indoors to bring on seedlings and young plants.

August Fayre

Little Roots

Harvested the first baby carrots, more climbing/french beans and some lettuce.

Roots up

Root tips

 

At last, after years of trying, successful carrots. Usually they get attacked by carrot root fly that can supposedly smell a carrot from half a mile away and burrow beneath the soil into the carrot to lay their eggs. They don't fly very high above ground level, so having raised beds can help, as can horticultural fleece. Another remedy is to confuse the little blighters by putting mint and lavender between the rows - especially after you've pulled a few carrots up and disturbed the soil - and it's best to harvest or thin them on a windy or wet day, when they'll probably not be flying. Even if the fly doesn't get them, the badgers might.

Producing

Multivitamins

Roots Manoeuvred

Roots & climbers

Rootsman

First & Last

Shed Load

Bountiful Harvests

Do Cricketers Eat Carrots?

Or do they prefer a dolphin / tuna sandwich?

Up slightly later than the crack of dawn to harvest stuff from the allotment for the cricket tea. It means less time in the supermarket and that's got to be a good thing. Someone else was handling the carnivores.

But would anyone fancy carrots, beetroot, mangetout, gherkins, lettuce, red onions and redcurrants? Yeah, yeah, there was bread and cheese and a few onion bhajis, muffins and chocolate brownies too.

See the next post.

Red Green & Gold

Brock's About

The badger's been at the carrots early this year. Can't do much about it, apart from grow them in a cage and all the cage material is going around the sweetcorn.

As forecast ...

An Indian Summer

Food For Thought