Towering vegetables

After yesterday’s plot update, I’m staying with veg for today’s post and I’ll freely admit to a little bit of veg envy, but buckets of admiration for this fantastic display of vegetables at this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. Not only are they expertly displayed, they look fantastic, don’t they?

 I was as mesmerised by the display as ever, along with the uniformity of the produce too. While I might be able to grow veg on the allotment, with more success than others in some of our choices, I’m not sure I’ll ever rival these, or display my beans like this!

And like all good displays there’s plenty to keep your eye entertained, the more I look at these photos the more I see. Like the vine tomatoes grown on the left of the picture above, the round yellow cucumbers that really do look like lemons (also the photo above, centre bottom) and the contrasting unruliness of the rebel red peppers (top right)

But there was veg in pots too, and pots really are a viable option for veg - in fact I’m contemplating keeping some tomatoes in pots, and in the greenhouse this year, rather than on the plot in an attempt to avoid blight. 

Everything just looked so vibrant, and well, edible. I hadn’t realised that this stall was the nursery that is “home to to the mammoth onion” or else I might have paid them more attention. 

Talking of tomatoes I was pleased to see a mix of known and new-to-me varieties, the naming of the variety “big green” did make me smile, because they were big and they were green - there was no hype in that name, was there?

Actually I do have a shot of some large onions. Compare those at the bottom of the pyramid to the tomatoes alongside them, and they are pretty large.

We’ve had success with beans on our plot, and long may that continue. This year we didn’t manage any broad beans, but seeing them at the bottom of the shot below, reminds me I should add some to my shopping list soon.

So, it’s not just flowers at the Chelsea Flower Show, there’s expertly displayed veg too providing a both a smile and the inspiration to get back over to our plot and start on that digging...

A long overdue update on our plot

I should warn you, this is another of those not very pretty posts, but it is part of our journey to tame our allotment and as I'm not about just sharing the pretty stuff, here it is, warts and all.  In my defence, it was a long winter wasn't it and most of that long winter I hibernated.

It seems though it was a good winter for grass, as the beds we've previously tamed and used to grow plentiful crops had reverted to grass.  Luckily though they were relatively easy to weed, although the bed that's had potatoes in was the easiest.  I must get more potatoes!

THERE'S RHUBARB IN THERE, HONEST

Even the compost bins have grown grass this year, which isn't so good, but on the plus side if the grass and weeds can grow, so can my veg.

IT'S BEEN A GOOD WINTER FOR GRASS

Our Stihl trimmer has come into its own, it's light to carry over to the allotment (there's no way I'm leaving that there), is easy to use and has good battery life.  But the real reason I know it's good is because it's got the seal of approval from MOH, not only does he use it over our older one, but the older one has been given away.  

STRIMMING IN PROGRESS

And if he wants to use it, then I'm not going to stop him - seems the right approach don't you think?

We'd gone armed with a tarpaulin too, and once the potato bed was weeded, it was quickly covered and pinned down so that we can delay the weeds return.  This year, I have to plant something else in this bed and the beans in the greenhouse are currently vying to be planted out this weekend.

WEEDED, TAMED (FOR NOW) AND COVERED UP

It wasn't all bad though, as we weeded the potato bed above we discovered a further two brown bags of potatoes so that was an added bonus, and they've been very tasty too - small, but tasty.  The artichoke under the crab apple tree is growing as well as ever, in fact I think it's doing better than normal, maybe there'll be some decent sized artichokes on it this year.

THE ARTICHOKE'S HAPPY

We've tackled the trial raised bed too, which had also sprouted grass, again it was easy to make quick progress. We realised though that we'd made a rookie error by not putting cardboard under the new soil to act as a barrier, so that's probably something we'll rectify this year.   

MORE WEEDING DONE, AND NIBBLED RHUBARB LEAVES

We pulled about a kilo of rhubarb stems, and the good news is there's still plenty left and more to come.  I think that's kind of crumble-tastic news, and it's the time of year where I tend to keep a tub of crumble in the fridge so I can make a pudding without too much fuss.

Our strawberry plants are also looking promising.  I've read somewhere that it's supposed to be a good year for strawberries, I hope that's right, and I hope my strawberry plants are also in the know.  I've more from the garden to move over to the plot, so I should be able to edge the path that leads onto the plot.

STRAWBERRY FLOWERS

As we were weeding we came up with a master plan to avoid this scenario next year, and that's when we 'close down' the allotment next autumn to make good use of those tarpaulins over the winter.  It sounds a cunning plan doesn't it, let's just hope I remember it in time.

OOPS, THE BENCH DIDN'T SURVIVE THE WINTER

Our storage bench was a casualty of winter too, it's collapsed.  We've had a couple of attempts to piece it back together, but it's way past that and this weekend a new smart wooden small shed is arriving and I'm hoping will be easy to assemble so our plot looks slightly less ramshackle, and we might even get some veg in it soon too.

Wish me luck!

Highlights of my Chelsea (part 2)

In this second highlights post from my visit to the Chelsea Flower Show on Monday I'm sharing my highlights from inside the Great Pavilion (read part one to see my highlights from the show gardens, artisan gardens and the space to grow gardens).

The Great Pavilion is huge.  Two football pitches worth of flowery gorgeousness.  I started off with a methodical up and down each row approach and then got distracted and that plan went out of the window.  I *thought* I'd seen everything it had to offer, but I've since realised I didn't - not sure how, but I did see a lot...

One of the corners was dedicated to floral displays, there were floral thrones and floral arches, and there was a definite nod to the Royal Wedding.  I'll share more in a future post, but for now there's a close up of one of the arches, which also had a heart-shaped "window" built in.

ALLIUMS, AGAPANTHUS, TULIPS, ROSES AND MORE

THE HEART SHAPED 'WINDOW' WITH ADDED SUCCULENTS

There was the usual display of neatly arranged alliums, and instead of the more usual purple ones I thought I'd share this pale pink version.  Even looking at this picture I'm making a mental note to get more alliums for my own garden next year.

I think this floral horse and cart was one of the areas where my logical plan went awry - I was quite literally drawn to it, it's beautiful isn't it?

I'm a fan of the wire mesh type sculptures and the figures on this stand were fantastic.  The planting was evocative of a journey through a pretty meadow, and the smell here was fantastic.  As I've been editing my photos I've realised that a sure fire way of seeing just how much I liked a stand was by the number of photos I've taken, and I've a few of these, so you can expect to see more of this at a future date.

You knew there'd be cacti at some point didn't you?  And you're right a highlights post wouldn't be mine without some, these ones have the added bonus of having brightly coloured flowers too, so a double win in my books.

While we're talking bright colours, just look at the colour of this plant in the greenhouse, which I snuck myself into. The leaves have an almost waxy, succulent like look about them, but the flowers have a touch of asters about them don't they?  I'll be doing some detective work on this one I think.

Actually while we're on colour this Flower Market made me smile, as where else would you have blooms laid out to resemble veg (and with real veg there too)?

I mentioned in my first post that there was a fair bit of corten steel on show and in the Stihl inspired garden by Hillier Nurseries, there was more - and I'm really not complaining. 

I quite randomly appear to have chosen both sides of these pots for this post, but doesn't the blue of the ceanothus look great against the steel backdrop in the photo below? 

This iris, and those around it also caught my eye, isn't the colour exquisite?  Almost golden. I think I might need some irises in my garden at some point...

The planting at Chelsea is often dense and that's a style I love - I'm not keen on seeing earth between plants - I was pleased to spot these upturned, and crooked sleepers, and it reminded me that this was very much our preferred approach to our gabion basket area on one point, now though I can't imagine anything other than our quirkily filled wire baskets.

The Great Pavilion was also good for some celeb spotting, the lady of the left is Beverley Knight and she was a good sport trying out the Steel Drum, she admitted after the photos she had no idea but quite enjoyed herself. I bumped into her a few times around the show and the lady next to her was always with her.  I don't know who the man is on the end of the photo, but I did recognise the man with the medals.  Me being me had no idea of his name until later, it's Johnson Beharry who in 2005 was awarded the Victoria Cross for valour in Iraq, and was the first living recipient of the award in thirty years.

He was, as you'd expect, super nice and I was proud to shake his hand and in fact he was one of the few people (or celebs) that I spoke to.  I also learnt later on that he was born in Grenada which explained why he was at the Grenada stand. I'm not a fan of the celebrity culture, and I do think that we should aspire and recognise people that achieve great things, rather than those that don't, if you know what I mean.

Anyway, back to the flower show.  As you can see I'm back at the greenhouse from earlier, but this time it's a much more refined affair, with greens and succulents for lunch, and a soft cushioned chair to sit on.

Actually the chairs reminded me of something similar from my 2015 visit - remember my Bumping into Alice in the Chelsea Wonderland post, if not pop over and have a look, it's definitely fairy tale.

I've a couple more photos to share in this post (and plenty more for a few other days) but I couldn't end without a peony shot, and not just any old peony shot, the colours of the petals here had me fascinated.

As did one of the clematis displays, there were wave after wave of clematis on these structures lapping at the beach.  It was a great way to display them and fun too, and yes you've guessed it there'll be more of these photos at some point too.

So there's my highlights in sixteen or so photos, I tell you narrowing it down took quite some doing!