Hello again! 👋
Welcome to the this edition of The Anaesthetist’s Allotment. I hope you enjoy it.
Please feel free to follow, like or comment and I look forward to getting some of your feedback.
Disclaimer: I’m a professional anaesthetist, not a professional gardener. I do a bit of gardening and cycling in my spare time. I have grown veggies for many years and have learnt what works for me (sometimes!). These are my ramblings! I would be honoured to be corrected / advised by those with more knowledge than me!
General:
This is the 13th post of 2024 in this year’s series of “The Anaesthetist’s Allotment”. It has been over two months since my last post. Firstly, my apologies for the long silence. It was not a deliberate intention to deprive you of your favourite blog. It was instead another week away on holiday, along with the compulsory pre-holiday preparation chaos. Then, on our return, there was the even bigger chaos of dealing with the backlog of paperwork, family issues and of course, trying to get the garden back under control. Our youngest son started University in Edinburgh this last week, so we had to prepare for that and get him down there for the all-important Freshers Week – oops, they dont call it that any more, its “Welcome Week” now! The weather has been “Scottish” all summer. It has been a particularly cold and wet summer, even by Scottish standards. The Veggie Garden / Allotment has reflected this and everything is either very far behind where it would usually be or not doing very well at all. In my last blog, I mentioned how we had just passed the summer solstice and the nights would be starting to draw in. Well, time flies, next week is the Equinox. After that the nights will be longer than the days and get progressively longer each day until mid-December. We are on the downhill slope. “Winter is Coming”.
Enough about the weather……….
Let’s get back to the garden then……….
I’m going to start things slightly differently in this post. I have taken a few photos during the last couple of months so will try to bring you up to date in a chronological manner, hopefully finishing with the current state of affairs.
14th July 2024
The Shallots have been harvested and are drying on racks in the greenhouse roof.
Harvest of:
Broad Beans
Turnip
Broccoli
Sweet Peas . Beautiful in both appearance and perfume!
25th July 2024
Gooseberry harvest
The red gooseberries being turned into a lovely jam.
Shortly afterwards the redcurrants were harvested and turned into the famous redcurrant jelly. Delicious with everything!
15th September 2024 (today)
Harvest:
Courgette – yellow
Courgette – green
Leek – Below Zero
Chilli
Beetroot
Butternut
Gemsquash
Potatoes
It’s going to be an awfully fine Sunday roast tonight!
Current State of Affairs
Now! A wee tour around. To see the current state of affairs.
In the greenhouse:
The Gemsquash plants have done us nicely. We have had only a couple to date, but as you can see there are lots of Gemsquash on the plants, so we will be getting quite a few over the next few weeks.
The Gemsquash at the far end of the greenhouse have climbed all the way up their trellis’s. Again a few fruits so far.
Our Cucumber (Mini Munch) have done very well, despite their dismal start. We have had a huge abundance of delicious wee cucumbers from the three plants.
The chilli plant I bought at our local B&Q has also grown up quite nicely. Lots of huge chilli’s forming.
Tomatoes – Gardeners Delight. Interestingly the two plants I bought from our local B&Q, due to late arrival of the on-line “fancy” plants, have done extremely well. They are huge and have produced loads of of delicious tasty fruit. The “fancy” grafted on-line plant, in the centre, however is a disaster. It’s still tiny and has hardly any tomatoes on it. Maybe 🤔 there’s a lesson in there somewhere!
Our only pumpkin in the greenhouse this year. We normally get two or three. It’s small, but looks good. Will be harvesting this soon.
Onions Rhumba have been harvested. They are now drying in the roof of the greenhouse. Although not a bad crop, it is not as good as the last couple of years when we had huge onions 🧅. Ok, I must admit, they were a different variety, which was not available this year for some reason.
Cabbages – Spring Hero.
And so it all begins! The cycle of life! This is my first planting for next year (ie 2025). These wee plants will be planted out into thee veggie garden and left out in the open, right the way through the Scottish winter to be harvested (hopefully!) in spring next year.
I would normally grow these from seeds, but there were no seeds available at any of our local garden shops, or even on-line. I managed to find some seedlings on-line. They arrived yesterday and have been potted up in the greenhouse. They will be planted out into the Veggie Garden / Allotment hopefully in the next three to four weeks.
The Fruit Garden:
Apples – “eaters” . Last year, we had a very poor crop of apples, particularly the “eaters”, reason unknown! Not so this year. A huge crop of apples. However they are a lot smaller than usual. Also quite a bit of insect damage. I suspect the “codling moth” is at fault. So will need to put sticky traps on the trunk and support poles before winter.
The Apple – “cookers” again have huge numbers of smallish apples. Again quite a lot of insect damage.
A couple of days ago, I looked outside to see that the whole tree had collapsed, I presume under the weight of the fruit, and was now leaning at a 45’ angle against the wall. I managed to winch it up with a heavy duty ratchet and install new support stakes. 🤞
Apples – Three different varieties within the fruit cage. Looking delicious!😋
Blackberries (Brambles) – My new plant is now starting to produce a few fruit. We have had a few this year in an apple and Brambles crumble. Yum 😋
Veggie garden / Allotment:
The Welsh Onion is a kind of perpetual spring onion. I bought two this year. Put one inside the greenhouse, where it suffered and nearly died. The other I put outside in this pot, where it has thrived. I am now going to split it up into single plants and replant each one separately. This should give us a nice crop of spring onions next year. The one inside the greenhouse has already been split up and replanted outside. It is now looking much more healthy.
The Winter Cabbages – Tundra are looking great. They are starting to produce hearts. We will be munching on these shortly.
The Spring & Summer Cabbages have both been fully harvested and consumed. The spring cabbages were lovely as usual – they are one of my favourite cabbages. The summer cabbages were very disappointing this year. Very small and riddled with slugs and red worms. Yuck 🤮!
The Brussels Sprout are looking great. Small Brussels can be seen appearing on the stems.
Kale is from my Christmas Advent seed calendar. It has grown well. We harvested it heavily six weeks ago and turned it into delicious crispy kale in the Airfryer 😋. Since then we have left it to bulk up a bit. It is now looking good and I think we will be able to get back at it again soon.
The Beetroot has recovered well after its early decimation by an unknown predator. The beets are now forming and we are going to have one with our dinner tonight. This is really late in the season. We would normally have been harvesting months ago!
The Chard (right) plants have come on fine after their early decimation by an unknown predator. We have had a few harvests of delicious spinach from them.
Pumpkins are looking great. There are quite a few pumpkins developing. 🤞.
The Courgettes – yellow (right) are looking good. They have been producing heavily and we have had quite a few lovely courgettes from them.
The Courgettes – green (left) and Butternuts (back of the bed) have both struggled with the cold weather and need some warmth and sun to get them going. They all continue to struggle. Only a couple of green courgettes so far, and, I suspect, probably no butternuts from these outdoor plants.
The Leeks are looking fabulous. They obviously love this weather! I have harvested our first one today.
The Runner Beans – St George have done well. We have had quite a few lovely runner beans, but not in their usual immense numbers for whatever reason. They are coming towards the end of their time now.
The outside Gemsquash are looking great. Lots of gemsquash forming. Yum 😋!
The tomatoes, from the Advent Calendar, are looking good in the Veggie Garden / Allotment.
They have grown really well and we have had quite a few absolutely delicious tomatoes from them. As you can see there still huge numbers of green tomatoes on them. Hopefully they will ripen before the rapidly approaching winter gets here.
Just prior to going on holiday in July, my on-line order of Sweetcorn still had not arrived. It had also been delayed by the poor weather. I managed to buy some seedlings from a local nursery and get them planted before we went away. They were a completely different variety.
They have produced several cobs and have now ripened. We had our first one last week and it was very disappointing. Not the lovely sweet juicy cobs we are used to. Maybe it’s the variety. Maybe it was overripe. We will try another and see.
The Parsnips germinated well this year, after last year’s disaster. It all started so well!
They then started dying off in huge numbers. I loosened up the soil between the rows, which seemed to help. The remaining plants remained tiny and fragile-looking, and I began to fear that we would not have a crop again this year. Suddenly, a week or so ago, they took off and are now looking great. I hope they have not left it too late. All we can do is hope!
The Broadbeans – Sutton produced well this year, as always. We have had a good crops of delicious broad beans. They have finished producing now and have been relegated to the compost heap!
Both plantings of Calabrese (Broccoli) have now finished producing and have also been relegated to the compost heap. We did have some fantastic broccoli this year, which I somehow managed to keep free of cabbage-fly caterpillars!
The first sowing of Pea (Alderman) produced good quantities of lovely sweet peas. However, the second sowing, for reasons known only to itself, did not! Both have now been relegated to the compost heap!
The Shallots (Jermour) were harvested in July, then dried in the greenhouse (as the onions currently being dried). They are now stored in the kitchen and being used as needed.
The Garlic (Granny’s and Solent Wight) have also been harvested in early August. They too were dried in the roof of the greenhouse, then distributed to the two grannies, much to their delight!
I look forward to keeping you updated regularly on further developments in The Anaesthetists Allotment.
See you next time!
Dr Doug (Douglas) McKendrick 
Great garlic was used freely on my fillet steak on Friday. Many thanks Douglas for your hard work.
Mum
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