Beans are easy to grow, but if you don’t plant them in the correct place, they can be a bit hard to harvest.
I did put up a nice bamboo frame, but then got mixed up with what beans I’d sown and by the time I noticed, the runner beans had turned into a creeping mass.
Still, it out competed the bindweed. Next year, if there’s bare ground, it’s getting a bean plant in it.
Despite the hot, dry weather the corn has done remarkably well. It started off pretty straggly and limp, but over the past month it’s really shot up.
It’s also produced decent cobs. Previously the cobs I’ve managed to grow have been malformed and inedible.
I might have picked these a bit early, I’ve left the rest to continue developing. The birds and creatures haven’t noticed yet.
There’s all sorts of creatures living amongst the plants.
Everything from wasps and flies to frogs, slugs and centipedes.
Also saw this growing amongst the chillies at home…
Now we’re harvesting the various crops that have been growing, it’s a good time to do some tidying.
After harvesting all the potatoes, I’ve dug the bed over ready for next year. At some point I’ll throw some fertiliser on it, and let the weather have a go at it too.
It’s also been a chance to tidy up the piles of plant pots and boxes allotments seem to accumulate.
And then finally some weeding to help the corn and beans keep growing.
Potatoes are the easiest thing to grow on an allotment. There’s all sorts of fussing and tales people have about how you’re supposed to do it.
Dig a trench, fill it with well rotted manure, chit your potatoes, don’t chit them, mound them up, don’t mound them up. The advice is endless and contradictory.
All I did was bury them and ignore the plants until the tops died off.
I think we’ve easily got 20 kilos here. To grow this I used three bags of seed potatoes from B&Q.
“what’s this nice blue flowering thing in my garden? Oh it’s something called Borage and bees like it. Well that’s nice, it can stay…”
Borage…
At least it’s helping keep the strawberry runners, cat mint and nasturtiums under control.
Now the weather has cooled down a bit and there’s been some rain, the corn has grown pretty quickly.
The beans have also gone a bit mad. I think next year I’ll remember where I’ve planted them and put up a little frame for them to grow up.
Our existing shed was given to us free when we first had the plot.
Slowly over time it has fallen apart and is less a shed and more a pile of semi rotten wood. The roof doesn’t really exist any more.
A rather large amount of bindweed had tried making the place its home, but I also think it’s structural.
Our “new” shed isn’t much better, it’s an old metal thing I bought after moving house and needed somewhere to store things while we moved in.
It’s spent the past year in a pile but has mostly gone back together.
