A long, overdue catch up post on our allotment this year. I think this is our fifth summer with it?! And we love it more than ever. To have our own piece of land to nurture and cultivate, to switch off from everything, to sow and to water and to harvest. My favourite part is the harvesting but we just love spending time there. It feels different to our garden and it's an evening ritual to walk there most days. Everybody asks how we find the time, it's very much Ben's project so I can't really take much credit other than choosing what to grow and picking the produce! But it doesn't take too much once it gets going. It's his version of going to the gym, I go running, he goes to the allotment. This year with the hot weather it's gone CRAZY. Most things are flourishing, the paths are overflowing. Luckily it's next to a river so the water table has remained high enough that we don't need to stress about watering everything all the time. If you're new to allotmenting or this blog, you can find all of my past posts on it here, here, here and here. This is more of a photo catch up from the season so far for us to look back upon, and that you might want to have a look at if you're into that kind of thing...

The start of the year when all was bare.

With the freezing cold and long winter, we didn't get going with anything especially early this year. The ground was far too wet and cold for a long time. So we started everything in our greenhouse {see this post and this} and other than clearing weeds ready for the soil to warm up, we left it until around May time.

Where gradually the soil was ok to start planting out. Some things stay in the ground year round like the fruit - raspberries, strawberries, rhubarb, apple trees, jostaberries etc. But with everything else we crop rotate each year and plant in different places to avoid depleting the soil.

Kale ready to be planted out.

We used plastic cloches to protect seedlings at the start from birds and extreme weather.

This year we've pretty much grown the same as always, lots of kale, a LOT of pumpkins and squashes, beetroot and fruit. We don't bother with beans or potatoes like typical allotmenters as we just want to grow lots of what we love and will use. 

- we grew all of these pumpkins from seed. The labels are from old plants just for us to remember which is which!

We've planted some of the sqaushes into compost mounds this year which they've loved and have thrived on, they're v heavy feeders. And they like things to climb up/around so have a few structures again.

Planting sweet peas. 

Waiting to be planted out. We planted all of these around the middle of May I think.

Over time the days got longer and everything started growing at lightning speed. We feed everything regularly with a comfrey/nettle feed that Ben makes.

So fresh and green. The sweet peas have done really well this year.

Larkspur.

Getting bigger...

The first sweet peas.

My favourite ever rose.

Raspberries.

The dahlias have just started flowering over the past few weeks.

We've been picking armfuls of kale.

I love this pretty frilly variety but our favourite to eat/grow is cavolo nero.

Courgettes! 

Very quickly the allotment beds filled up and it's hard to walk through the paths.

We love growing at least 3 different types of courgettes each summer, yellow, stripey green and regular.

L E A F Y

Wild fennel growing in amongst.

Picking 5 courgettes every other day right now.

And finally... some photos of some of flowers we've picked from our little plot so far.