Jo and I have not long returned from an eight-day break down in beautiful Devon and Cornwall, touring gardens, sampling the regional cuisine (particularly the ice cream section of the menu) and quaffing a few of the local ales. I’ll be talking more about the rather wonderful gardens we visited – RHS Rosemoor, The Lost […]
Tag: garlic
A year has rolled on by since I posted the first Year in Review piece here on Notes From the Allotment, and a lot has changed down on Plot #59. After three years of hard graft, we’ve finally reached the point where almost the entire plot has been transformed from a weed-choked, debris-strewn nightmare into […]
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It’s Garlic Planting Time
One of my very favourite jobs of Autumn is planting out next year’s garlic crop. For me, it marks the first step towards growing a whole new year’s worth of tasty food, even though this year’s are still very much in evidence and harvesting will continue for some time. For the past few years I’ve […]
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Plot #59 Update: June 2016
June was a quieter month than you might think, down on Plot #59, thanks to a combination of wet weather and exam revision. Nevertheless, Jo and I forged ahead as best we could and kept things moving on several fronts. Projects / Maintenance The ground was too wet for most of the month to allow […]
Summer is here! Although you wouldn’t know it to look at the weather records of late. But the crops are starting to come in down on Plot #59 and we’re beginning to enjoy a wider range of the fruits of our labour. Here’s a quick photo-montage of the foodstuffs that we’ve been able to harvest […]
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Lifting This Year’s Garlic
Last week I decided to lift the bulk of this year’s garlic crop. It’s technically a little early – according to a recent email from The Garlic Farm, at least – but as you can see below, one variety was quite badly hit with allium rust and I’d spotted signs of onion white rot in […]
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A Quick Mid-June Plot #59 Photo Update
Phew! That’s the exams done and dusted. Until I start the next RHS Level Two course in September and sit the next set of exams in February 2017, that is. My pre-exam weekend was spent down the allotment, on the grounds that I’d already crammed about as much into my head as was going to […]
It’s been a while since I posted a Harvest Monday piece, mainly because about all we were harvesting from Plot #59 from February through until early May was the last of last year’s leeks. But finally, I have something new to report. Garlic Scapes As seasonal delicacies go, you can’t get much more seasonal than […]
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Plot #59 Update: May 2016
May was a manic month down on Plot #59, and no mistake. My plate is particularly full at the moment with revision for my RHS Level 2 exams in mid June, so please do excuse me if I whizz through this month’s update. Projects / Maintenance As well as sorting out an old compost bed […]
January is the traditional time to post a year-in-review piece, but for me, the start of the sowing and growing season – with the last of the previous year’s over-wintered veg crops being harvested or cleared away and the first of this year’s plants being sown and planted out – seems a good time to […]