My Tiny Plot

mtp is on holiday. Normal digging, weeding and planting will resume soon. Be patient.

I harvested my onions around a week ago and they have been drying out on the floor of the outhouse ever since. There are fewer onions than last year. I decided not to plant so many this year because we couldn’t eat all of last year’s onions before they started to rot and so consequently a lot of them went to waste - which is heartbreaking after you have put in so much effort. So this year I planted a few super early ones (Radar) which did very well, then around 20 white onions and another 10-12 red onions (Red Baron). I also planted around 8-9 sets of shallots which, despite the foul weather, have harvested very well (even if some of them are a little small).
Onions are a staple crop of the allotmenteer. They’re like potatoes - you kind of have to grow them just because they’re pretty easy and everyone else does it. I must admit I’m hard pressed to tell the difference in taste between a store-bought onion and my own. Maybe my taste buds are faulty but I really can’t! Some would say, ‘well what’s the point in growing them if you can buy the same thing in the shops?’ But of course it’s the sense of achievement that growing them gives you. With all that weeding, feeding, harvesting, drying, hanging, onions are time intensive when you really think about it. But there’s nothing more satisfying than making French onion soup with ‘my own onions’ and bringing it to the dinner table with a flourish - ta-da! It makes all the hard work worthwhile.

Meet Mr Toad, the frog. He lives in the small pond in my garden. Sometimes he pops his head out of the water but mostly he stays out of sight until nightfall - unless it really, really rains, and then he makes an exception and comes out in the daytime. At the moment he’s really hot and is busy cooling down under cover of his pond weed. He eats slugs (when he feels like it) and bugs and stuff. He preferred it when the garden was nice and messy - he’s not so sure about the new, neater regime. He doesn’t like hoes. He did have a friend who he used to hang with in the weed but not so long ago his friend lay very still for days. Then the tall man came along, scooped him up and buried him in a corner of the garden. He hasn’t seem him since. Occasionally he tries to find Mr Frog, the toad, but Mr Frog is very difficult to find mainly because he doesn’t have a permanent address. So mostly he just chills, in his pond, by himself.

After my success with the carrots in the old coldframe I have decided to sow some more carrots - this time in a small pot in my garden. I never seem to have any luck when I sow carrots directly into the ground so I’ll stick with the container idea for now. They seem to be doing okay for now. The variety is Autmun King but I will probably pull them when they are quite small as the pot isn’t big enough to let them grow to full length.

This is what happens to leeks if you let them go to seed and flower. This one was planted around this time last year and it has just rewarded us with this beautiful flower which the bees absolutely love. They are actually great as a cut flower as this one has lasted for over a week. Great, if you can put up with the oniony smell!

I harvested a basketful of raspberries this weekend from our row of Autumn raspberries. In my experience Autumn raspberries tend to give bigger yields and the fruit are larger too. I planted this row of ten Autumn Bliss canes in December 2005 with four golden raspberries (I forget the variety now). They are all doing very well - even though only one golden variety made it through. We have more than enough raspberries for the two of us. I’d recommend planting some raspberries this November if you haven’t already. They are very easy to maintain. Just cut them back to the ground in the winter and they will spring back and fruit like crazy!

Hollyhock’s really are a beautiful flower. Totally useless for cutting however, as the flower stem is so large that by the time the bottom flower has finished blooming and is dying away the top flowers are only just thinking about opening. They are also huge plants that take up lots of room. Maybe next year I will only grow them at the allotment. Don’t forget the stakes!