Over the last few weeks we have been harvesting the crops on the allotment. Strawberries, blackberries and raspberries, potatoes, onions, broad beans, spinach and courgettes too. The rhubarb also continues to be pulled occasionally. With the minimum of effort we have achieved a bountiful harvest!

If the truth is told, for the most part, we have let the allotment look after itself this year. There have been occasional days weeding (too occasional if the number of weeds still present is anything to go by) but we have let the plants do or die. To our surprise the plants have coped pretty well without our loving care and attention. Sure, some did not make it – the mange tout failed this year and the gooseberries were smothered by the weeds and have all but died. But on the whole the lack of parental guidance did not see the plot go off the rails.

However, this can’t continue. Allotmenteering requires a certain commitment. The joy that comes from the harvest is a product of the preparation of the soil and the nurturing of the crop. The joy of this year’s harvest comes from the hard work put in over the last three years and we were only able to leave the plot as much as we did because of the hard work that I have written about in previous posts on this website.

Things here are changing. Miss M and Mr S are moving away, leaving me to work the plot alone. I simply cannot put in the number of hours that is needed to maintain a high quality plot as well as fulfilling other commitments in my life. Whether I give up the plot completely or give up half the plot is yet to be decided, but the time has come to downsize in one way or another.

I’ve loved the last three years on the allotment. It’s done much more than just providing me with fruit and veg. But things move on.

As for this blog, well, I think I have said all I can say about my allotment. This will be my last post here. The blog has been an integral part of my allotment experience. I have really enjoyed using it to express my feelings on the success and failures I have encountered. But I don’t feel that I have anything more to add, so I really should stop!

The best thing about writing the blog has been the communication with the people who have read it. Blogging is fantastic in that it connects you with other bloggers, people with the same interest as you and people with whom you can share your experiences. I have loved reading other peoples blogs and the comments that people have left on my posts. Both have been sources of motivation and inspiration. Thank you to those who commented and to those who read without leaving a message.

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This is the start of the third year at the plot. Last weekend we were digging the soil over ready for planting the potatoes. Unlike with previous years digging we did not encounter any weeds (well, not proper ones like couch and bramble) and there was barely any glass. It was really enjoyable to dig.

This, of course, has come as a result of two seasons of hard work. The plot was a mess when we took it over, but now it is cultivated. The soil is easy to dig; I never thought I would be saying that two years ago!

The sprouting broccoli is in flower and ready to eat. It is the most tender broccoli that I have tasted, much better than the stuff in the supermarket (which is pretty good itself). The seed for these plants was sown at about this time last year, and it has taken a lot of love and care to get the plants to this stage. We really are reaping the benefits of last years hard work, which is a great motivation to get going and invest the time again this year.

The glorious rhubarb is back, and again, this year it is better than ever. We have four strong rhubarb plants which we have looked after for the last two seasons. Careful not to pick to much last year, our self restraint has payed off as the rhubarb is growing like rockets shooting out of the ground.

Allotmenteering is delayed gratification. It’s time for payback.

So its time to bring in the onions.

Not a bad haul this year. We put manure on the soil at the start of spring and it seems to have paid off with the onions being pretty hefty. A lot of the bulbs bolted, which means they wont store well. This was particularly a problem with the red onions, most of which bolted. I’ll have to be more careful next year when I buy the sets to get bolt-resistant sets.

So the onions will go into the greenhouse to dry before being strung up. The shallots came out a few weeks ago and have now been strung up ready for use in the kitchen.

Keen readers will know that I shifted some raspberry canes back in March this year. They were in the way of the fence we were building. I didn’t expect to get any fruit from them this year as I thought they were tricky to grow and wouldn’t have liked the manhandling.

Well, apart from weeding around them I’ve done nothing to the raspberries since planing them, but to my surprise I’m getting quite a bit of fruit off them.

I’ve not put a cage around them so the birds have been nibbling, I wont be getting a big harvest. But there are enough there to pick one or two every time I go past.

The question is what to do with them now? Do I cut them back so they fruit again next year, do I only cut back the fruiting canes, or do I not cut at all? I’ll have to get the book out…

I’ve managed to grow carrots!

So OK, carrots are really cheap to buy in the supermarket, and they are much bigger and fatter than these. That’s not the point. Growing your own carrots which are straight, long, orange and devoid of any root-fly damage is harder than it seems. Last year we failed. So to be pulling these beauties out of the soil fills my heart with joy!

The raised bed with sieved soils and coffee groundings has been a success, thanks to the wet summer we have had so far. I haven’t been to the allotment as much as would have been necessary to water it had it been dry, so the regular rain has really helped. Time will tell if the root-fly does any damage before the carrots get big enough for a proper harvest, but so far so good.

These chaps are small. Success should not be measure against the produce in the supermarket but against the standards you set yourself. By my criteria, these carrots are first class!

I’d forgotten I’d planted these spring onions. They went in a few months ago and took a while to get going; during that time my mind moved onto other plants. But as I was glancing at the shallots I spied these bulging Alliums. It was a very pleasant surprise.

So into salads and stir-fry’s they go. Now that I’ve grown some spring onions I want to grow more. I’m putting little rows of spring onion seed into gaps vacated by other harvested veg. Anything that grows succesfully without any input by me is very welcome.

It is with great joy that I have dug up the shallots. The joy is because I doubted they would ever grow, but grow they did, and they grew well. For some reason that I cannot recall we planted the shallot sets far too deep in the soil. Subsequently they did not show for well over a month. We also worried that they were planted too early – they had to put up with the late frosts. Being so deep probably saved them from the frost but also kept them cooler for longer as the soil at depth takes longer to heat up. Anyway, they eventually popped their heads above the soil and have been growing happily ever since.

They’ve grown in the bed that we spread manure on in the spring. That seemed to have worked as they have pretty large bulbs. I dug them out at the weekend and have left them to dry out before taking them home.

The main onions are coming on well and will need pulling before too long. But for now these little chaps will do.

It seems that at this time of year all of the veg bloggers out there publish photos of their vegetable harvests and writing about the successes or otherwise of the growing season. Not wanting to miss out, I thought I would start to write a few posts like this myself.

So to start off, the potatoes. Its been a fantastic year for my potatoes. I’ve written a number of posts about the fantastic growth my plants have put on, but green growth on potatoes count for nothing unless it is being converted into white growth beneath the soil. And so it has been…

This is the haul from one row, enough to fill a small paper sack. I’ve got eight rows like this, so I guess I’ll be eating a few potatoes over the coming weeks.