Been away and the plot has suffered

Well folks, I’ve been away, the weather’s not been very kind and the plot suffered. The picture below shows the SFG as it was before the current rain. The seeds planted in June have not germinated, or germinated and were eaten by slugs, so there are 3 vacant plots.

However, I have picked some beetroot (picture below), and carrots (next picture). One beetroot was large whilst most were smaller. The carrots are small and sweet with a lovely flavour, but need thinning out so that they grow a little bigger.

The French beans are a mystery, as the plants are very small and the beans, which I left to grow, have not grown! Compare them to some plants from the same batch of seedlings, planted in another part of the allotment (second picture below): good sized and healthy plants with a heavy crop. I don’t have any answers: I just hope yours were good.

Over the next few days I’m going to cut back the stalks of the broad and French beans, lift the onions, clear any weeds and begin to plant the vacant plots for the autumn and winter. Any suggestions would be welcome.

While I was away I saw a display of vegetables grown in containers at a National Trust Garden and thought you might like to see them for inspiration. The pictures below show pak choi, parsnip, runner beans, peas and lettuce and the last picture is a square metre given over almost entirely to beetroot. So, there’s no excuse even if you only have a window box!

Another inspiration recently has been from Garden Organic. Their web site http://www.gardenorganic.org.uk/ has lots of ideas for SFG and the summer edition of their magazine “The Organic Way” has a really interesting article by Colin Shaw entitled ‘What a lot of veg!’ where he explores alternative ways of using SFGs. For example planting 56 carrots in one square meter and harvesting 9kg!

Don’t forget, suggestions please for winter planting on the SFG.