We Grow Our OwnThe trials and successes of life on our allotment

July is usually one of the driest months so a lot of time may be spent watering. You can reduce water loss and save yourself some time by preventing water loss. Mulching with a layer of organic matter will help preserve moisture but may encourage slugs so you will need to take action against them.

As you will have picked up from yesterday’s post, I’m a big fan of Cafe Direct’s ‘Sow Your Own’ campaign.

The lottie took a back seat this week, as I had to pot on the numerous chilli plants from the 19 different varieties of chillies that I’m growing this year.

I was worried earlier this year that the majority of the crop was going to fail, as they took such a long time to get going compared to last year. It must have been the long winter/cold spring, as they have most definitely cranked into life. It is a good job, as I’m now reaching the end of last year’s crop which were either dried, pickled or frozen, as I had more chillies than I knew what to do with at that point.

I always get a little annoyed that after a few weeks watering, the labels for all my chillies have either faded or smudged, although thankfully I can still tell which one is which.

Today was time for some long overdue weeding at the allotment, but since it was a Bank Holiday, I had to do what everyone seems to do on a Bank Holiday and do some DIY … lottie style

The chillies and tomatoes were loving the weather today, but it was too hot to do much at the allotment, and it was touching 50 degrees in the greenhouse at times today!

I potted on all my chillies, and sowed lots, including some Papalo seeds, which is used in Mexican cooking.

I still need to dig over the other half of my plot, but that will have to wait until next weekend!

I decided to bite the bullet this weekend and plant up the rest of the broad bean and sweetcorn plants that were growing too big for the greenhouse.

Since the weather was awful yesterday, I spent most of it in my greenhouse potting things on.

I wanted to experiment this year with different ways of growing the seventeen different varieties of chillies that I am growing.

This year I’m trialling the Quadgrow system from Greenhouse Sensation

… everything seems to be growing so far after the frost last week.

I was a little concerned because when I came down to water one day, the plastic on my spray gun had cracked where water had obviously expanded, so I was more than a little concerned for my poor little veggies.

The lottie is taking shape, but there is still so much work to be done.

The encouraging thing is that stuff is starting to grow, so Spring has sprung by the look of things!