Down on the Allotment

Matron grows vegetables and fruit in a Hampshire garden. I've been growing veggies since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Some traditional varieties and old favourites as well as new ideas. I share my garden with my allotment assistant Daisy the Labrador. On Twitter as @MatronsVeggies

Wednesday, January 09, 2019

Happy New Year

 Happy New Year everyone!  I am thrilled to say that the dreaded leek moth has not yet found my garden!  Even on a fairly poor, sandy soil this year I was able to grow a respectable crop of Musselburgh leeks.  With the addition of some more compost and manure this next season I hope to continue to do well.
 No success in 2018 with my pot grown purple sweet potatoes, I had a very late start due to my house move.  But I managed to take a couple of slips and rooted them in water on a windowsill.  I will pot them up and keep them going until I can plant them out.
 Chickens are doing well!  It seems like a convenient arrangement for me, they eat all my excess veggies and kitchen waste as well as slugs, snails and other critters - then they give me lovely manure for the compost heap, AND they lay eggs!  Well done Girls.
 A lovely surprise in the garden this year was growing these physalis.  Again, a very late addition to the garden they grew and grew producing lots of fruit, but sadly many of them did not ripen.  What I did get was really lovely.  A real recommendation if you haven't grown them before.
 So, on Christmas Day I had a wonderful harvest of specially prepared Charlotte new potatoes.  Autumn sown in a container in the greenhouse, this bag has many more to come.  Well worth the space in the greenhouse to make an extra Winter crop.
These chillis caught my eye on Twitter last week.  These are wonderful bright orange cayenne chilli from the Czech republic called Kilian.  A standard cayene type chilli which ripen to orange. I found them at Sea Spring Seeds if you fancy trying them.

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