Manure

Yesterday I had two large tractor loads of Manure delivered by a local farmer. One load on each of my two plots. It has been dumped on an empty patch at the end of each plot (see above and below) until I'm ready to use it.


While I was at the allotment I also picked 6 pumpkins that were fully ripe. They are now stored in the garage at home (see below). There are another 3 pumpkins still on the plot which aren't quite ripe yet, so hopefully there will be enough sunshine over the next few weeks to ripen those as well. We've already picked and eaten 2 pumpkins this years, so that makes a total of 11 pumpkins from four plants.


Unfortunately I discovered that somebody had pulled up several potatoe plants and a couple of leeks. Thankfully there are still pleanty more of both, so I'm just hoping I don't get any more damage or theft.

The Onions, Shallots and Garlic I ordered a few months ago have now arrived (see below). Although I didn't have enough time to plant them this weekend, I pulled up the french bean and sweetcorn plants and dug over that area ready for planting out the onions next time I visit the allotment. I also added the last of my previous years manure to the ground in the hope that I might get a better crop on onions next year.



Also in the garage at home are the squashes that I picked last weekend. They look fantastic on the shelves and we've already eaten several of them.

I've already started looking in seed catalogues to find some different squash varietys to try next year. We'll definitely grow the Festival (orange/yellow stripe) squashes again, and some kind of Butternut variety, but won't bother with the Sweet Dumpling (green/white stripe) ones as they're not as nice as the Festivals. I was also pleased to discover that although some of the Butternuts had blemished skins, they were absolutely fine inside.