Home made cheese and garlic loaf

Wholemeal cheese and elephant garlic loaf, should go well with Mediterranean style veg.

Looking good

Everything's suddenly picked up.

First aubergines of the season

Seared the slices on a cast iron griddle and served with goats cheese and pasta. Warmed toms and beans with garlic to bring out the flavour.

Tunnel update

Tunnel's doing well to date. Currently harvesting carrots, spring onion, cukes, french beans and the odd hot wax chilli. Aubergines and toms are coming along nicely.

Onion Golden Bear

We're trying Golden Bear onions which are said to be resistant to white rot. So far only one has had the rot but unfortunately, despite leaving them under enviromesh until mid May, some have been attacked by the allium leaf miner. (It's only supposed to lay eggs until mid April).

Spuds so far

Just an update on the spuds. The potatoes planted under leaf mulch showed before those under wood chips (probably the wood was slower in warming up) but all are looking good.

Leaf mulched potatoes are nearest

Maincrop Kiflis mulched with woodchip are nearest with celeriac in the foreground

Garlic Harvest

We struggle with white rot on our allotment and have yet to find an area that isn't affected to some degree.
Very dry conditions in April helped in holding it back this year but eventually the garlic started to show signs so it was a case of lift it or lose it. In the end 20% of the crop was affected which for us is quite low and leaves us with 138 bulbs of various sizes. Sounds a lot but taking into account small bulbs and cloves for next years seed it should be about right.
As an experiment one bed was split into three bands with compost mulch in the centre and wood chip at the ends. I can't say there was any noticeable differences in the crop.