Anyone with an allotment?

😫😫😫 Sad times. Think the recommendations are to burn it all. @not4sale

Been a lot of it about this year. One of the big online retailers had to burn their whole stock and then burn a delivery they got to replace that stock. Thousands of plants gone to waste.

Seems to be quite a lot of it about on the spuds on our plots. Folks whose potatoes normally look flawless are have cut all the haulms back.

5 days ago they looked healthy green plants - that quick.

Our potatoes have it for sure. What’s the thinking on the spuds below? Is anything edible if it’s there? Have taken off leaves but haven’t had the inclination to dig up yet cos a bit gutted they’ve not done well.

For late blight, removing and burning the offending leaves and haulms before they spread into the potatoes is the method I've been told, then if you're worried about the spuds you can store them in sand in case any of them start rotting. The old boys up here who know all the tricks are cutting back the haulms. Not sure about early blight but I don't think its as serious.

Ok, cheers. Will get on it then and see what they’re looking like.

Lizzie made a solid haul today. That’s the first of our taters filling the sink. Was off 4 plants. Got a dozen more to pull over the next couple of weeks.
Plenty of small but tasty shallots as well.

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Nice!

Awesome. I got 2 deformed Carrots. Need more sand. Here's some from a prior pick.

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Have had some better stuff too recently... Maris Peer were delicious.

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So as she was harvesting Liz made some plans for next season, knocked 2 of our rectangular beds together into a square and got all that tarped up for now, need more cardboard tho.

Need a better structure for our toms next time as they’re collapsing under their own weight at the mo.

Does anyone have one of these? I’m considering getting one.

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What would you do with it, sieve your own soil?

Onion question! The stems on these are falling over but still green. Should I wait for the stems to wilt a bit before I lift them?

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I’ve sieved a fuck ton of soil this year by hand and it’s knackering. Been sorely tempted by one of these on several occasions.

Forum communal sieve?

You need one of these

Half joking but it's actually amazing, grades soil as fast as you can shovel it in. I ended up getting one to help me dig out the rubble filled garden soil but I plan on seeing if I can run it from an inverter at some point and put it to work on the allotment.

I’ve got a lot of horse manure and it’s in little balls. So was thinking it might break it up.

It could just be I’ve seen someone using one and thought it looked cool though

You could hook it up to a bike and have someone cycle to rotate it

Indeed, I did think about that, and made my own hand operated (without pedal drive) version from a couple of bike wheels and some mesh before buying that. Was quicker than hand sieving but was still a two man job or at least you have to keep swapping between shoveling and sieving.

Sounds awesome.

I struggled to grow celery last year. It just flopped about and did look appetising. So we left it in the ground. Naturally it bolted and is now about 4 ft tall.

I won’t be eating it because it’s going to be horrible. My question is if I let it seed will the seed fall to the ground then grow celery next year?

We did the same and it also bolted. But no downside as quite apart from a lovely display of flowers it gave a nice shield for the runner beans next to them. The flower heads are now full of seeds so we’ve collected a big bag ready for next season (to plant up in another section.) There’s going to be loads of self seeding anyway as I’d like to leave the plants up for as long as possible, too nice to cut down and they make a lovely rustling noise. So maybe plant a row from the seeds and leave a row in place if you’ve space?
Edit. Celery on the right hand side in the pic

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When your artichoke plants are done do you cut them back

Current state of celery

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