I received an email the other week from the allotment committee telling us that we must all destroy all our potatoes and tomatoes as blight had been spotted on the site. When isn’t blight about, I thought, and ignored the instruction and took up any tomato plants that were looking a bit blighty. As it happens, having got rid of two or three plants, the rest were fine. Today I decided to pick the remaining tomatoes (all red) and clear space for over wintering onions to go in. The unexpected hot September has allowed all the tomatoes to ripen. The tomatoes in the garden have done better than the ones at the plot, but they have provided tomatoes all the same.

I covered the now bare soil with spent compost from the garden that we used to grow potatoes in pots, and hoed it in, giving it a bit of blood, fish, and bone mix. At this point, the sunny morning suddenly turned dark with heavy rain, thunder and lightning. We retreated back to the car and eventually decided we would go home to have lunch rather than sit it out. By the afternoon, it was hot and sunny.

I have put in around four rows of white and red onions which are between the two lots of leeks. The leeks, once again, are taking way too long to grow and remain very small and thin. I covered the onions with netting to stop any birds from picking them out.

I also sowed broad beans, a couple of rows this year as we lost all our produce when the freezer decided to defrost it’s contents (it’s been fine since). I had a lot of problem with mice eating them last year, so by planting them a bit earlier might hopefully give them more of a chance to get going. I covered all that I could with bottles to help prevent mice, we need to drink more orange squash at home to be able to cover the rest.

Various bits of hoe, weeding, tidying… I came home with courgettes and a cucumber.