Wheels at the plot: bicycles & trains.

Everything abounds at the allotment, though yesterday we were puzzled by the absence of the robin, who we suspect was off on some other plot searching worms on overturned ground.

The main water connection has been fixed for all the other water tanks – but ours does not fill and we still await a time to get busy with fixing it.  It’s been a super drag, but we soldier on and the big guy tirelessly carries up from the bottom path jugs of water.  It’s heavy work.

Loganberry – from blossom to fruit. (15 May 2020)

Despite the virtual drought we’ve been doing our best to water all the fruiting shrubs and vines.

We’ve already harvested from the first cropping strawberries – yum!

Future fruits include the gooseberries, loganberries, raspberries – red & golden – and also blueberries and blackberries.  Loganberry are swelling on their canes – this picture shows the pollinated spent flowers, which in time, with water and more sun, will swell to create a dark, sweet, soft-fleshed fruit.

Blueberries (15 May 2020)

Our ‘Jersey Blue’ blueberries swell in clusters on their stalks.  The fruits vary in sizes and are mainly pale, but in time will grow, swell, and darken into sweet fresh fruity treats.

The little self-seeded blueberry has not set flower this year.  Maybe next year? Gardening’s a patience game, and in the meantime it’s a nice looking tidy little plant.

Of our two gooseberry bushes, one has a nice amount of fruit and the other is rather bare.  I’m thinking of planting them both directly into the box planter and getting rid of the plastic pots.  But I’ll wait until they’ve finished fruiting for this year before I disturb the bushes yet again this growing year.  (We moved the gooseberry into their new planter in March, with one already in a pot and the other had been planted directly into the raspberry bed and was transplanted into a pot at that time.)

Bee on a raspberry flower. (15 May 2020)

The raspberries are doing very well now that they are all tied into cane supports and standing fairly straight.

The patch of golden raspberry grow lower than the taller red raspberries, but are also doing very well and have many brackets of flower heads – promising lots of future fruit harvesting to come!

The blackberry bushes are rampant this year as usual – though this year I’ve not put any manure on them.  They’re in rich enough ground as they need.

Honeybee on Loganberry blossom, with fruit setting below. (15 May 2020)

Although the nights are still cool, I left both zucchini plants uncovered, along with most of the purple king french beans and all of the tomatoes.  One of the taller yellow cherry tomato plant that was inside the shed was dug in (with its pot), to the tomato bed yesterday.  I’ll transplant it properly in due course, adding lots of extra manure.  The corn patch is now also left without protection cloches.  Only the very small broadbean seedlings were left covered yesterday.

I took a few tomato stem cuttings yesterday – so now have 4 stem cuttings in the shed on a trial basis.  I also took two cuttings from the pink Gertrude Jeckyl rose that grows along the top ridge in front of the newt pond on H’s side.  And had a bag of cuttings from fuschia in the back patch, which I also prepared and left in the allotment shed.  Here’s to green fingers (and rooting hormone) working their magic!

Yesterday I didn’t start any seeds at all, except to sprinkle a few more coriander seeds into the ground at the top, and to transplant a handful of nasturtium from the ground and into the top of the faded tulip pot at the top of our stairs.  Also did some good shed sorting.  Must get back at it!