Garlic and onions are in

Today we planted garlic, which will hopefully turn into 12 wonderful garlic bulbs next summer and about 26 red onions which will be ready early next year through to spring. Very exciting.

That's probably it now for planting, apart from some flower bulbs which will go in in a few months time for next year.

It's all about harvesting our homegrown produce now. Today we picked some corn on the cob, the last of the tomatoes, a few chillies, lettuce, a marrow and a pumpkin. Unfortunately the pumpkin plant has died and all bar 2 of the pumpkins split and rotted. But we have 2 which are ok and will become soup later in the week.

More giant veg

Things have been quiet at the allotment recently while veg has just been growing. Plus it's been a pretty wet few weeks.

But, today was harvest day. And very good it was too. The carrots finally came up. With a gentle tease of the folk up came some enormous carrots. There were a few ludicrously big and a few diddy ones.

We pulled up a few leeks and up-turned a monster of a potato. I did notice a few beastie holes in the potatoes so I think I need to read up on spud pests. Only one carrot had been attacked so that was ok.

And the best of the rest - The whole haul included: carrots, potatoes, a pumpkin, corn on the cob, leeks, tomatoes and lettuce.

Pumpkin for the risotto

Picked the first of the pumpkins today. I don't think it was quite ready actually, but I wanted to make a bit of space for all the others growing. The variety is Summer Ball, which you can apparently pick early like courgettes or leave to grow bigger to around 1kg. This one weighed in at about 800g, but it hadn't hollowed out and ripened yet.
Also dug up one lot of shallots and hung them up to dry.

A sudden growth spurt

Everything seems to have grown all of a sudden. I swear, a few days ago, it was half that size, but look at it now. It's become a marrow, rather than courgette. We've picked 3 and they're all quite big.

The pumpkins are on their way, all orange and lovely. The corn is getting taller and the little carrot patch it looking good too.