Our main crops

Our two most important vegetable crops are potatoes and onions. We are using a considerable amount of space to grow them. The onions (plus garlic and shallots) take up two thirds of the smaller bed on Dad's allotment and the whole of the raised bed on our main allotment. Potatoes take up the whole of the biggest bed on the main allotment and will soon fill the whole of the biggest bed on Dad's allotment. I spent a good part of this afternoon planting more potatoes but the big bed on Dad's allotment, on which I was working, is still heavily overgrown in parts with weeds. I had hoped to get rid of them today but it was not to be. I will need to finish the job later this week. The job of planting our biggest ever crop of potatoes will therefore be completed.



Meanwhile, all the onions have now been planted. And again, this is the biggest crop we have ever grown. The photo above was taken this afternoon on Dad's allotment. The runner beans are in the background and behind them is a stretch of overgrown land which needs to be cleared of weeds. We need it for growing cabbages, cauliflowers and possibly broad beans and more runner beans.

We have, however, a very large number of strawberry plants than need planting out. Most have been dug out of Dad's allotment where we planted them last year (and where they spread like wildfire). They are being temporarily stored at our main allotment. We planted some under a frame that is acting as a temporary fruitcage to keep off the hens. We still have a large number in the greenhouse and in the back garden. We will try to get as many as possible into our main fruitcage but we are likely still to have some left over. We are yet to solve the problem of where to put them but we had an amusing incident this morning when we went to a local nursery and discovered they were selling strawberry plants for £1 each. We calculated that our stock in the greenhouse was worth a good sum of money!