Allotment quirks

Action figures suspended from pea netting - it can only be a British allotment. The Allotment Blogger posted recently about 'Allotment Psychology and what other people's plots say about them. In another allotment lull (busy busy weekend of Other Things coming up) I looked back over photos taken last summer when the sun shone and people had time and lightness of heart to be quirky in their allotment gardening. Her are some more:

Broccoli frustration

It's just as well that I over-planted with purple sprouting broccoli. In the week since planting the snails and slugs have had a merry time with the soft new growth. I'm assuming it was mollusc damage rather than pigeons at this early stage in the autumn, but all the same we're researching a frame for a netting cage over the winter. Last year as a frame for netting we used lengths of aluminium tubing cut down from the children's old climbing frame, but there won't be enough of it to cover what we've planted this year. Somehow it feels like a betrayal of the whole recycling ethos of allotment gardening, but since we're in this for the long haul it's equipment that will be used again and again.

Strangely the spring cabbages weren't as badly affected. Fingers crossed that it wasn't just because the munching hordes hadn't worked their way round to them yet.

For Thomas

When Thomas-from-Salzburg was here in the summer we had happy conversations about our respective tomato growing. My tomatoes were just starting to fruit at that point, in mid-August. Now that the days are growing shorter, and snow on high ground is forecast in Scotland, my tomatoes have at last put on a spurt and started to colour. I imagine I'm going to be ripening most of them inside shortly, or making the classic green tomato chutney.

So for Thomas, a photo of Scottish tomatoes in October.