Anyone with an allotment?

51 bhut jolokias in 2 minutes!

about 10 of us shared one of mine at wests.

this is what mine mostly look like now, and it's gone pretty cold now

am I a bit fecked? think we should have started everything earlier =(

Tomatoes are almost here... :)

We're getting a good handful of runner beans and a few courgettes a day. Good radish & rocket too. Strawbs not doing quite so well.

I think mine will be moving indoors to finish 'em off.

Sainsbury's have quite healthy looking British strawberry plants at 2 for £3 at the mo too.

We have millions of tomatoes now, although I was starting to get a little impatient at one point. That photo is from mid-July. 4 weeks later and we were picking a bowl full of lovely ripe ones each day.

@Fox, just give them some feed & some sunshine and they'll ripen any day :)

In other good news, the famous Big Richie Hot Chillis from last year live again...

yeah! that is good news.

the line of kings that was broken, has been remade.

btw - do you mind if we keep the ladder a little bit longer?

the sun has got his hat on!

bo. I'll get the fertilizer out when I get home too.

@Fox, just give them some feed & some sunshine and they'll ripen any day :)

what can i still plant now... i have lots of space and want to fill it again!!!!

There's still some time for salads (there's always time for salads) if you're wanting eating things.

salads are good. might try some oriental types....

Corn salad/lambs lettuce grows fine all year round. Nice mild tasting salad leaf, which the slugs are not interested in.

Sarah/Hops meant to say, thanks for the plants, they were awesome!

The tomatoes are enormous and have taken over the roof terrace, assuming they do ripen we're going to have a bumper crop. We've also been eating loads of runner beans and we finally got a male flower on our courgette too.

At my allotment, got bitten yesterday on back of both lower calves by a small black fly, thin, 3-4mm long, didn't think much of it.

Woke up this morning and both ankles are swelled up horribly and is painful to walk. By midday there were small blisters developing around the bites, and they have been constantly seeping yellow pus since then (see attached). According to the limited info on the web, can take a few weeks to get better.

Googled it as this is not what usually happens when I get bitten, and it appears that what bit me is a Blandford fly, which is not really supposed to live in London, but apparently is spreading...

Anyway - don't think it is likely to be widespread in London, but have painful evidence that it is living in West London allotment sites.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A6756519

I shall be wearing long trousers there for the foreseeable, or insect repellent on lower limbs...although it should be too cold for them soon.

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There is some info on those flies on another thread - in the track forum? people at herne hill getting bitten.

thanks, checked it out, definitely same ones.

(the one time I thought I could get away without needing to UTFS....the forum is becoming all encompassing as a knowledge repository, wikipedia watch out)

Ha, I think you are forgiven.

As Harry Hill would say, what are the chances of that happening?

My tomatoes have been busy ripening, even though half the plants themselves look dead. Every day is producing more ripe yummy tomatoes, good stuff.

Just hoping our (now pollinated) courgette also performs. We pollinated it by keeping a male flower in the fridge for a day or two then sticking the male flower into the female, it was like some kind of weird plant based porn film.

I got badly fucked up by those flies when I was in spain. Im not normally bitten by mozzies and such. But my legs were lumpy and oozing puss.

Just hoping our (now pollinated) courgette also performs. We pollinated it by keeping a male flower in the fridge for a day or two then sticking the male flower into the female, it was like some kind of weird plant based porn film.

ahem...I'd be interested in getting a copy, you know, only for scientific research reasons and the like...

anyway back on topic - i had a shit year allotment wise - was scuppered by having to go to the US for most of May and June, basically the day before I flew i just threw a load of seeds in the (badly prepared) ground and then crossed my fingers and waited 5 weeks till i got back - amazingly got some sort of crop (Rooster potatoes-fantastic roasties, Charlotte potatoes, a whole bunch of Crown Prince Squash, Butternut Squash, and some other sort that I don't remember the (japanese) name of, nice leeks, purple and white sprouting broccolis, red russian kale, black kale.

and a shitload of weeds that i am still battling with

Big Red Dude, you got any of those chillies left??

only dried ones.

sarah and dave have one of the plants. if that hasn't been too cross polinated, it will be the saviour of the race.

Our Olaf Chillies are turning into Big African Sunset shades.
Went to the community garden in Brockwell Park for the first time in months this weekend... they've got more chillies than you can shake a stick at - including some similar to Richey's - so you may want to ask for some clippings / seeds big man.

They have also got (in the greenhouses towards the back) a massive selection of Brixton Market vegetables, yams, pumpkins, some strange green things that are about 3 foot long, a stone in weigh and suspended on the tiniest stems I've seen.

Oh and sushi rice. They're growing sushi rice. Madness.

I'm already planning hay bale planting next year, having seen the size of their pumpkins.

Sushi rice? That's brilliant. When I volunteered there just before I moved away, one of the others was gettting into growing Japanese veg (I managed to get my Japanese flat mate to bring back some seeds) - didn't realise it had gone this far though.

The Greenhouses are a great place.

Glad the chillis are going well. A fair few of mine got grey mould and died (too many in a small area). Will grow a few fewer next year. As for 'exotic' veg a mate got me some Pimentos De Padron seeds from Spain. I can't wait to see if they work - I love them!

Everything of mine has still got loads of growing left to do, going to run out of time this year I think :( Loads of green tomatoes, chillies, and peppers flatly refusing to grow, ripen, or do anything interesting at all in this weather.

Ive got about 12 aubergine plants which I gingerly raised from seed. They got to the right size and even flowered. But late summer just went so cold and rainy that nothings grown on em yet! And its get winter like cold now.

Better give them away to people with indoor space.

i thought i was early enough with the aubergines this year (after being late last year) and 3 plants have done really well, but the other 4 flowered but have done nothing :( next year am going to plant them super early inside and have them on the windowsill..... if that fails i'll give up.

tomatoes, chillis and peppers have done really well, now just need to do something with them! made loads of pasata, maybe tomato chilli jam tomorrow.