Lottie Booty #blogtoberfest13

It really does feel as though the season is changing fast and that it is tidy up time now for many of my beds. This week I have been taking up the dying foliage in my Rhubarb beds and digging out stubborn bramble roots so that hopefully there will be a lot less prickles there next year. This morning I put in some spring bulbs in amongst the Rhubarb which will brighten up the lottie and will have finished flowering before the Rhubarb leaves get too big and steal all of the light. The next thing to do will be to mix in some well rotted manure and cover the whole bed with wood chips, it'll be like tucking a duvet over the Rhubarb for the winter.

I brought home  a good haul from the lottie today including a tiny pumpkin that I hope to ripen off on the kitchen windowsill in time for Halloween. I've left the two bigger ones on the vine to take their chances! One of the big successes from the lottie this year is Swiss Chard which I had never eaten before I grew some. Totally delicious and totally healthy (or it would be if I didn't wilt it in a frying pan with a big know of butter). I also picked a couple of big handfuls of lovely fat pea pods and harvested the baby sweetcorn and last of the baby courgettes.

They will be for tea tonight along with chicken and pasta. Not a bad haul for October really :-D

Jolene xx

Plot 36 - a little lottie update

I brought the camera down to the lottie yesterday and took some snaps of how things are coming along so far.

To the left are some of my asparagus plants, in total there are16 plants in a double row and all are growing well now. The bed still needs building up further as the roots of these plants are under about 5 inches of soil, they eventually need to be under at least 8 inches. These are all between 1 and 2 ft high and looking all frilly and fern-ish and whippy so I shored them up with short lengths of bamboo.

Above is one of my little courgette plants which is just starting to grow it's first fruits. I also have a couple of cucumber plants growing too, the flowers and leaves look similar but in comparison the cucumber plants petals are tiny.

Top right is a snap of my brassica bed, there is a mixture of purple sprouting broccoli, savoy cabbages and a few kohl rabi in there. I've netted the whole area to keep the pigeons off, they are a bit of a pest on the lottie. To the right are a couple of my little gem lettuce.

This is my main crop potato bed, there are quite a few little white flowers showing. I've been feeding these 20 plants  with Comfrey tea and have high hopes for them seeing as my Charlottes came out so well. I'm keeping my eye out for blight as summer goes on.

Last couple of pictures to show you now, on the right my runners are starting to put out these vivid red flowers. In the pic below you can see that I have planted up the early potato bed with rainbow chard and peas. Not ideal as far as perfect crop rotation goes but the peas seem to be coming along nicely.



Have a lovely sunny weekend, Jolene xx