JULY - Not such a jolly July :-(

Hi, once again the tales of woe begin as all our crops have suffered from the rain and wind and increased humidity. The cubes are looking sad, overgrown, and very windswept.

I have undergone drastic cutting back measures and have been sadly removing many diseased and damaged plants. I had gone down to find someone’s compost bin had blown onto one of the cubes and de-headed my flowers, breaking stems and part of a home-made greenhouse roof which had also landed on the top of a cube stifling and damaging all the herb growth on top. I quickly removed it and tried to save what I could. Sadly the camera was unavailable to use and phone battery died when I was trying to photograph the disasters outlined so no photos of this I’m afraid

Some successes this month with more carrots, herbs like chervil did not grow as much as I’d liked but were cut and added to meals and proved a culinary delight.

Baby beetroots were a great success too and I used them to make a lovely beetroot tart tatin which was incredibly tasty (courtesy of my River Cottage Veg cookbook). It truly has to be tasted to be believed. I have been enjoying the baby spinach, spring onions and rocket from the cube and such lovely parsley, sorrel, basil and oregano.

Anyway, it has been all go at the allotment with all efforts focussed on trying to save potatoes and tomatoes from blight, keep all the weeds down and keep dry in the awful weather. It’s great to finally have some sunshine and dry soil from time to time.  I’m sure next month will improve on that front enormously as I am sick to my back teeth of losing crops to slugs and snails. Some of the specimens I have encountered are as long as slow worms and twice as fat.

Battling against the many surrounding overgrown abandoned plot weeds and related wildlife not to mention the pigeons kept in a house by my plot have really gotten me down. So that has somewhat taken the attention off the cubes for a while.

I will plant more next week to include and comment on in next months report. Hope Kay is having more success.

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