Almost a year

We have had our allotment for almost a year now and this weekend we were as busy as ever. We are still harvesting and eating our produce. With our Sunday roast we had butternut squash, parsnips and our first brussels sprouts, and today we had spinach. Quite amazing really.

Last weekend I picked 10kg of butternut squash which is currently ripening in the kitchen. We have eaten quite a lot and I hope it will keep well for a couple of months.

Even though I talked about the sad fate of the sweetcorn in my last post, I thought I would add a photo of one of the cobs we did manage to eat - and it was a delicious as it looks.
The weather has been a bit unpredictable recently, but the rain did allow the tame photographer to get this rather fetching shot of a damp cabbage leaf. We are still eating the cabbage, and there are some January Kings hearting up nicely, as well as several spring cabbages which I have just transplanted. They look a bit feeble at the moment, but hopefully they will start growing soon. All the sprouting broccoli looks healthy, but I don't think it can be harvested until later in the winter. There are plenty of brussels sprouts, though.
Last weekend I did quite a lot of weeding, and some winter digging, while the tame photographer started work on the french window cloches. If they ever get finished, I will post a picture. The job was quite difficult as the windows are hugely heavy. This weekend, I carried on digging and then planted two rows of onions and some garlic. Having watched Gardeners World last weekend, we followed their instructions and planted the onion sets at the top of little ridges. This is supposed to keep them out of the damp, and to allow more sunshine to get to them. We'll see. As the weather is getting colder, I covered the lettuce plants with some fleece. It might be a bit late for lettuce, but they should grow if it remains reasonably mild.

Today, I collected the shelving from a school library that was being thrown away. There are loads of metal uprights and I thought the metal shelving might make good edges for some raised beds. It seemed like too good an opportunity to miss. Unfortunately, as the car was full of this stuff, we had to take it to the allotment this evening in the pouring rain. It's a good thing the tame photographer has a reasonably mild temperament!

Finally this following is a view of the allotments, that has a really autumnal feel about it.