Long time no see...

...I'm sorry, I really haven't got to grips with blogging properly yet. I sit at the computer thinking what should I write about today and come up with a blank until I leave and go somewhere and then typically the ideas come flooding in and I haven't remembered once to write the ideas down. There is definitely an art to this blogging and hats off to everyone who manages it every day.

A lot has happened since my last blog entry (over a month ago!) and a lot of things that I want to note down for future reference so please bear with me as I bounce around various things I want to remember for next year.

PEAS & BEANS
Firstly separating sugar snaps and peas. It seemed a really good idea to have them in a neat line side by side but they have grown so much that they have intertwined with each other and I am having great fun working out which is which (yes, you can tell I am new to this allotment lark!).

On the topic of peas, I was happily podding peas the other evening when I got the shock of my life - a load of tiny maggoty things came out of one. Thinking it was just a one-off I carried on but unfortunately over half of the peas I had picked had got them in. After googling I have now found out that peas can be affected by Pea Moths who lay their eggs on the surface and their maggoty offspring burrow into the pod before emerging as caterpillars. From what I read I think I might net the peas next year rather than share my dinner with maggots.

NETTING
I am experimenting this year with a different type of netting. Last year our Brassicas were devastated by caterpillars so this year I wanted to net them. I looked around various garden centres and online and all the butterfly netting was so expensive but after trawling various forums to see what everyone else was doing I came across someone who was using scaffolding netting. It is much cheaper than standard netting and is has a much tighter mesh than butterfly netting so we shall see how it works - so far so good though.

SOWING
A couple of things I have learnt this year. Firstly after vowing to go completing slug pellet free, I have lost so many seedlings to slugs this year (2 rows and pretty much a whole pot of carrots and a couple of rows of beetroot) that I think I am going to go back to them for next year. Yes, I know I shouldn't, but it is so disheartening to have a lovely row of seedlings one minute and have them gone the next.
I need to get the hang of successional sowing. Once again I have missed the boat on quite a few things I wanted to plant more than one row of. Albeit they are long rows but I still have only managed (after the slugs) 3 rows of carrots (some rows with only about 5 in them!), 2 rows of parsnips (again one row only has about 6 as this one was planted with the radishes, which is another story), 1 row of swede and 1 row of turnips. I quickly planted another row of swede (my reckoning that it's not that far past June!) and 2 rows of turnips tonight so we shall see how they fare.
Lettuces. I know I can carry on sowing them now but I just need to get my finger out and do it! I have none, then a glut, then use them all and then realise I haven't planted anymore, hopeless!

Right I think that's it on the things to remember for the time being. On the positive side, everything is growing and I am now harvesting loads of raspberries (my favourite!), I have just finished harvesting the blackcurrrants (I have frozen the whole 2lbs for desserts later in the year as we still haven't eaten the jam from last year) and redcurrants (8 jars of redcurrant jelly and the rest I have frozen. On the veggie side we have an abundance of potatoes, all the Red Duke of York are ready and have started dying down as are the Marie Peer. The Maris Piper and Rooster have flowered but are still growing. The are absolutely delicious although I think I may have planted too much. At the moment I am just digging them up when I need them but I think I will have to reach the stage where I dig the whole lot up and store them.
I am also harvesting peas (and maggots!), sugar snaps, the first lot of my dwarf french beans, lettuce, and all the shallots, which after a couple of failed attempts are now plaited and hung in my garage along with my supermarket grown garlic which produced 4 decent big garlic bulbs in the end (not bad for 39p!). In the greenhouse baby tomatoes are appearing so fingers crossed for a good crop. That's it for now. I am going to try really hard to try and blog at least every couple of days so hopefully my next entry will not be too long coming.