best summer yet?

so things are going really well in the allotment:

our straw has helped us stay on top of weeds, we have had good seedlings, and now everything is growing really well, we have a lot of sun this summer so far, but we haven't had a good rain in about three weeks, so we have had to water a lot ...

all space on the old plot (pictured here) is now being used, we are growing in more space in the old plot than every before, its exciting!

its june!

so, i have been really bad about adding posts, once a month it seems, but june is here and there are a lot of exciting things happening in the garden (you can click on the pictures to make them bigger) ...

to start there are these:

our beautiful broccoli plants, last year we had 8 plants, none of the seedlings were ours and they were all planted at different times (three of which we thought were cauliflower), but these are all ours, they were very healthy seedlings, and are now looking great, if everything works out they could give us broccoli for months!

and then:

there is our corn and squash bed, the corn looks healthy and the squash plants (patty pan) are the healthiest squash plants we have ever had, i think it is the adding of manure to the seedlings when planting them, they look great!

then there is our strawberry patch, just transplanted last year, when it didn't really produce much, but this year there are a lot of strawberries, some not as sweet as they should be so we may have to thin the bed for next year, there are a lot of runners too so they will likely take over the paths around them as well ...

finally, you can see what a difference a month makes for our zucchini plants, they are huge with a lot of fruit on them already, we should be having fritters by the end of the week!  they were also planted with manure at the base as well, which seems to do the trick with squash ...

it's may!!!

actually, its the end of may, but a lot has been happening in the allotment, especially:

broccoli and winter squash, the incredibly pampered broccoli are under the netting, these were by far the best brassica seedlings that had ever come out of our conservatory, i couldn't believe how good they looked, and now they are the most protected thing in the plot!  the winter squash plants look much worse for wear, but hopefully they will produce at least a few squash, if i have time i will plant some radish between the plants ...

and then there are:

zucchini plants in the ground by the beginning of may and onions and beets ...  these we have planted in modules for the first time, we will see how this works, there are 18 onions in the old plot, but if these little modules produce more than that then we will do this in the future too ... slugs have been at war with the onions since they have been put in the ground, so that will affect how many we get ...

finally, slugs have been a big problem for everyone else, but with the exception of the onions, we have been relatively slug free, could it be the straw/no-dig?

weather ...

we have the earliest start of any year ever and this is what we're facing:

low temperatures and nothing but rain, sigh ...

Seedlings!

getting started early

Wow, what a way to start a new, but with the realization that you may have been doing everything all wrong the whole time ... well at least propagation ... for now at least, usually we begin to germinate things in early april so that we avoid the last frost in may, however, this year with some thinking about what we are planting in terms of varieties we have an early start that looks like this:

and what's that fan doing there? well every year our seedlings are leggy, but without a real green house what can you do? maybe ... use a fan, this is a little experiment and we will see if it actually works, but what do we have growing at the moment?

• Peas
• Spinach
• Lettuce
• "Microgreens"
• Beets
• Broccoli

This is hopefully will be a big year for broccoli because of all of the success that we had last year with simple florets, so far all 12 cells have germinated (100%), but we have never successfully gotten any broccoli from a plant that we germinated ...  

Shed shelves

finally i got to putting up new shelves in the shed:

the new ones are on the left hand side holding my new green caddy