So what will you be doing over the Bank Holiday weekend?

[retropants]

Our apples were ready very early this year, they are almost done now. Mostly windfalls unfortunately. The freezer is now full of cooked apple now, so, not all bad . Lots of tomato processing to do over the coming weeks, I already have several jars of pasta sauce made up for the winter. I roast them with garlic and any other veggies, courgettes, peppers etc then put them through my passata machine and bottle them up and pop them in the oven in a water bath to make sure they'll keep ok. Going to the plot today, but I have to take it easy, as I cracked my head open last week, and cannot go mad, and must watch out for low hanging apple tree branches!

[oldherbaceous]

Just dug up two rows of Kestrel potatoes, and I have to say, I'm over the moon with them. No slug damage at all and a third of them are plenty big enough to be used for bakers....very happy...

[Primrose]

It,s good to havesome fine bank holiday weather to be getting on with all these jobs. My husband asked me this morning if I wanted to go to a Food Festival he,d seen advertised not a massive distance away and I looked around our house with all the beans, tomatoes, apples, pears etc which have to be dealt with and thought Food Festival? Food Featival? You have one here on our doorstep ! Why block up the roads travelling to somebody else's ?

[Diane]

I shall mostly be squeezing my tomatillos...and hoping they stop growing soon - having to bend double to get into the greenhouse and the ones in the raised bed have taken over now. Can't see the soil at all so goodness knows how the baby beetroot plants are managing to grow. (I don't think I'll bother with them again )......or I'll just have to rent out a field or something. Anyway it's too hot to do anything at all down here so a good excuse to do absolutely nothing at all!.

[Pa Snip]

All plans were changed once I arrived at plot, 2 x Tumbling Tom bush tomatoes totally black with over 200 tomatoes having to be binned, not one salvageable
One plant tumbling tom bush left on plot, signs showing.

8 tumbler plants in baskets in front garden blighted but still managing to pick some good ripe toms.

Amazing isn't it, we've been remarking upon how heavy rain has been, now we are not on the plot cos its too damn hot for me up there

Might even be too hot to go to Great Dorset Steam Fair on Monday

[oldherbaceous]

Well, I have been over and bagged up the Kestrel potatoes...well over 100kg from 2.5kg of seed potatoes, over the moon with them.
Now the brick barn has that wonderful childhood memory of the smell of soil and potatoes...

[peter]

Dug up a row of Marfona, disappointed as they came up, left them in the hot sunshine and dug the intro gap.
Then sortwd them into two buckets. About half went into the same bucket as the haulms, and then the council composting bin.
About 20kg usable yield.
The rejects were varied, holes with and without visible residents, rotten and what I think is a rotting scab.

If I get to them tomorrow I'll compare the Charlotte in the next row.

Took all my onions home and did the basic top n tail removing any lssoe skin and into bread trays in front of the fans in the worksheets to finish drying. Very pleased with them, four full bread trays.

Left with a puff of fly spray as i locked the shed, there are some little white flys around them.

[retropants]

Dug a couple of king Edward spuds up yesterday, terrible, like marbles! Our neighbour grew desire, and they are a good size. We wartered ours, and he didn't! I think the garlic is ready to top and tail, it's been drying for I think a month now. Pretty good yield from them, not massive, but decent.

[tigerburnie]

It's not cold but the wind is strong, just picked todays tommies and it's 20 degrees in the greenhouse and no sun shining. Might go for a walk later possibly on the beach, it can get crowded on a bank holiday, there were a couple of dozen on a 2 mile long beach on Saturday, packed it was lol.

[oldherbaceous]

Just lifted the Rooster potatoes, 2.5kg planted and I would say roughly 100kg again, to be picked up later....a nice size but, there is the odd slug hole, but only about 1 in 20.....so very pleased again.

[peter]

Charlotte were much better than the Marfona, but that wasn't a particularly difficult achievement.
Fairly small spuds on average and still had to discard more than I was happy to.
Swings and roundabouts I guess.

That's four of eight rows cleared and the inter row dips dug over.

[Monika]

We grew just a few Estima and Wilja on the allotment, both had a decent crop, having been amply watered and fed over the months, but some of the potatoes are so huge that even a single one is too large for one meal for two people! Some also had slug damage, so next year I will revert to just growing them in large tubs at home in a mixture of potting compost and well rotted manure. When the potatoes have been harvested, the pots and the soil within are used for our winter flower tubs (mainly bulbs, wallflowers and violas), so nothing is wasted.