Onions & Shallots

I hear (& see) that other people have had a bad year with onions. Luckily I can say it’s been a fantastic year for both my onions and shallots, even my dad complimented them which is a compliment indeed! My girlfriend; the recently converted allotment novice has claimed it was down to her green fingers but I won’t go there with that one!

onions

So why have they done so well? I planted them towards the end of the March, the majority in early April and a few stragglers in mid-April, the weather at the time was ideal but by pure coincidence I planted the first two lots in their ideal moon cycle. This is something I’ve just started looking into (and will be following much closer from now on) but the latter plantings in mid-April were planted at the wrong time and are much smaller and not so vigorous; maybe it’s just bad luck or perhaps it shows that there’s more to it than coincidence? I’d like to think it’s the latter.

shallots

A few small shallots drying out

First squash

So here's the first visible signs of a squash; the rain managed to rot the earlier ones but this ones seems to be getting going. I've got a couple of plants, which with the sun of the last few days are starting to creep through the other plants, last year it ...


Garlic drying off

So, here's my garlic drying off in my shed (the shed smells lovely!). Planted in late December and early Jan it's all done pretty well, perhaps the least successful but I was aware that it can be harder to grow than other types, Solent Wight and Purple Wight seem to ...


View of the Allotment

Whom, the weather's been pretty bad but at least it's every thing's well watered. Here's a view of the allotment, taken from our bedroom window. Our plot is the third one in, it's the one with the black bin nearset the left of the picture with the massive patch of ...


My plot

So here's the plot (not the best picture I know - it was taken with my mobile phone). The main bed at the front shows a collection of bottles; no I'm not growing them, they make for great protection for my French beans against a pesky rabbit - and act ...


It’s all Rhubarb

There's a surplus of rhubarb at the moment. So sticking to what I know I've made plenty of rhubarb and ginger crumble. All very nice but there's only so much of that you can eat, so with a bit of research I found something simple, yet very, very tatsy; stewed ...