Early June allotment

The foxgloves are in the back garden and belong with the previous post of flowers out at the moment. These are amongst my very favourite flowers and were once difficult to grow here but they appear to have found their locations and are becoming quite common in both back and front gardens.

The post is really about the trip Joseph and I took to the allotment yesterday in the evening and we spent an enjoyable couple of hours sowing, strimming and watering. Joseph loves it and has benefitted from the allotment club they ran at his school in Cranborne. It has given him both the interest and the confidence to get stuck in.

The first photo has the first produce picked this summer with a few radishes nicely plumped up and the first broad beans which came from the autumn sowing and have suddenly cropped well.

Then we have Joseph and his patch which has been planted with sunflowers, parsnips, lettuce, beetroot and a courgette. Joseph gave it a good digging a few weeks back and raked it again before getting it planted up and watered.

The runner bean seedlings are up, as are lots of peas which is very exciting. There is then a photo of the leeks which are growing well after transplanting. The rabbits initially took the tops off a few but they have recovered and look likely to give us some good results later in the year.

You can also see the broad beans. I will grow a lot more of them next autumn. The next photo is a real mixture with a bed of greens, chard, and spinach, carrot, peas, turnips and swedes. 

The potatoes are showing very well now and I am looking forward to picking some of them in a month or so. The final photo is of the garlic which is close to being cropped. You can see bulbs fattening up well in many cases and I am excited to see how they come out, never having grown them before. 

The plot is a real success at the moment. It has so much potential for crops over the next months but we will see how it all goes. There is plenty of time for things to go awry but I have protected things far more effectively for now and it could be we have a real range of things over the coming months. 

I do wish I had onions on the go. They are simple enough to grow and I won't worry about seeds again. I need to get the sets and get them in number as we use onions a lot at home.