Silly Seasons

Having not been up the allotment for 3 weeks due to a holiday, I was expecting a wilderness of weeds. Thankfully, the recent cold weather seems to have halted their development.

This weekend I harvested the last of the tomatoes (3), some leeks and PURPLE SPROUTING!!!!

Strange but true. Don't think I have ever picked purple spouting this early in the season.

I spent about 3 hours tidying and digging and managed to totally tire myself out. I kept thinking "I'll go home now" and then I would think "I'll just take down the runner bean canes" or other such jobs. It wasn't until I started the walk home that I realised how tired I was. In fact if the OH had been home, I would have called him to drive up and pick me up.

Got in first this time

Well the allotment didn't happen this weekend. We were out all day on Sunday and Saturday I actually did some housework and shopping.

However I did make a rare trip up tonight. Spurred into action by a report on the news that there could be a pumpkin problem. Apparently a lot of the commercial growers are stuck with a lot of green ones which haven't had enough sun to make them grow orange.

Now this is where I feel particularly smug. For some reason I planted out my pumpkins early and actually harvested a couple the other week. In fact I ate some for my lunch today. I had seven still up the allotment, and after hearing that particular news item, decided to venture up tonight and remove them to a place of safety.

Normally I remove them from the allotment before mid-October before the 'Bastard Children' from the neighbouring estate decided to liberate them. But decided that they might decided to strike earlier in the month if they had heard the same news report as I.

Also managed to collect the last two courgettes and picked a good handful of the French Beans that had been belatedly planted. The flat podded variety doing far better than the pencil ones (really wish I was better organised and labelled things properly).