200 ornamental gourds is a lot of gourds
Matt and I spent a couple of hours looking through my LJ archive on Sunday night. We had a lovely time, remembering little unimportant events that we hadn't thought of for years. Life before children: simpler, easier, a little more self-absorbed. Recently it's felt as if our days are spent running triage. What's the next most urgent, overdue task? Panic! There's always a basket of damp laundry to hang up, and dry laundry to put away, and toddler crises to fix, and food to prepare, and dishes to wash, and bills to pay, and and and. I'm back doing part-time teaching again now as well, which has put a lot of pressure on Matt (I'm back to full-time in January, which I'm dreading).
But reading my old LJ entries reminded me what a great resource this is. With the chronic sleep deprivation I've had since February 2010 my memory is basically knackered. I can barely recall what we had for tea last night, never mind what wonderful, "memorable" thing might have happened last week. So I'm going to try and make more frequent, regular posts here.
So, how's the allotment been this year?
I think we were right to do as much prep work as possible before Willow came along. And covering all the available ground with potatoes and ornamental gourds obviously helped to keep most of the weeds under control.
We had huge crops of cucumbers, courgettes, French beans, peas, chard, aubergines (!), raspberries, turnips, carrots. The onions looked amazing but, on digging them up, we discovered that all but 9 had been infested with onion fly. Luckily they are so big that the hole-y bits can be cut away and we'll still have a lot of onion to use. And we use onions every day so there's no need to worry about how well they'll store: they'll all be gone by Christmas.
The tomatoes were very overcrowded in our little greenhouse tent. We had 4 cordon and 2 bush varieties in there, as well as 2 cucumber vines, 3 aubergine plants, and 8 or 9 chili pepper plants. After a few weeks it was so overgrown in there that you couldn't actually get inside. I lost track of the essential pinching-out job with the cordon tomatoes, one cordon plant got blight, and the bush tomato plants just grew enormous with no visible fruit on them. At the end of the season I cleared out the tent and found all the bush tomato fruit lying on the ground under the plants. Lesson learnt: next year we're going to grow 4 Gardener's Delight (cordon variety) and nothing else. Despite my complaining, it was still a pretty good crop. We've had several big bowls full of tomatoes and, even now, there's a fruit bowl piled high with ripe ones, and half a bucket of green ones that I might turn into chutney (or I met let them ripen -- some are already turning). But I didn't like seeing the greenhouse go out of control like that, so next year will be simpler and better.
We grew some sunflowers, just for fun, and they got up to near ten feet tall! It's all such a contrast with the last few years. What a difference a load of horse poo and a decent, hot summer makes.
River has blown hot and cold with the allotment. She has frequently protested loudly about having to go there, and on several visits she spent most of the time playing in the nearby church (not as weird as it sounds as there's a box of toys in there, although she also really enjoys hiding under the altar). Sometimes she'll happily play with her little gardening set, filling a plastic bag with soil, pouring it into her wheelbarrow and generally bustling about.
But her favourite activity there -- and how I will always picture her -- is foraging among the fruit plants, little white plastic pot in hand, eating all the berries.
But reading my old LJ entries reminded me what a great resource this is. With the chronic sleep deprivation I've had since February 2010 my memory is basically knackered. I can barely recall what we had for tea last night, never mind what wonderful, "memorable" thing might have happened last week. So I'm going to try and make more frequent, regular posts here.
So, how's the allotment been this year?
I think we were right to do as much prep work as possible before Willow came along. And covering all the available ground with potatoes and ornamental gourds obviously helped to keep most of the weeds under control.
We had huge crops of cucumbers, courgettes, French beans, peas, chard, aubergines (!), raspberries, turnips, carrots. The onions looked amazing but, on digging them up, we discovered that all but 9 had been infested with onion fly. Luckily they are so big that the hole-y bits can be cut away and we'll still have a lot of onion to use. And we use onions every day so there's no need to worry about how well they'll store: they'll all be gone by Christmas.
The tomatoes were very overcrowded in our little greenhouse tent. We had 4 cordon and 2 bush varieties in there, as well as 2 cucumber vines, 3 aubergine plants, and 8 or 9 chili pepper plants. After a few weeks it was so overgrown in there that you couldn't actually get inside. I lost track of the essential pinching-out job with the cordon tomatoes, one cordon plant got blight, and the bush tomato plants just grew enormous with no visible fruit on them. At the end of the season I cleared out the tent and found all the bush tomato fruit lying on the ground under the plants. Lesson learnt: next year we're going to grow 4 Gardener's Delight (cordon variety) and nothing else. Despite my complaining, it was still a pretty good crop. We've had several big bowls full of tomatoes and, even now, there's a fruit bowl piled high with ripe ones, and half a bucket of green ones that I might turn into chutney (or I met let them ripen -- some are already turning). But I didn't like seeing the greenhouse go out of control like that, so next year will be simpler and better.
We grew some sunflowers, just for fun, and they got up to near ten feet tall! It's all such a contrast with the last few years. What a difference a load of horse poo and a decent, hot summer makes.
River has blown hot and cold with the allotment. She has frequently protested loudly about having to go there, and on several visits she spent most of the time playing in the nearby church (not as weird as it sounds as there's a box of toys in there, although she also really enjoys hiding under the altar). Sometimes she'll happily play with her little gardening set, filling a plastic bag with soil, pouring it into her wheelbarrow and generally bustling about.
But her favourite activity there -- and how I will always picture her -- is foraging among the fruit plants, little white plastic pot in hand, eating all the berries.