Half the year away.

We are now into June not that I am counting but that's half way through the year. So I thought I

would share with you guys how things are growing in our tunnel.

It still amazes me how quick things can grow inside our polytunnel. One thing I would say is,

yeah things grow quickly but make sure you keep on top with your watering, the heat and also

the wind blowing over the beds can dry them out very quickly. We have a sprinkler system in

place but I haven't yet extended it to cover the new bed and salad stations so for now it's not in

use.

This is one of our salad stations, we have two, one either side. I think we have been growing in

them for 5 weeks now. We have already picked the reddish and planted a second crop. We are

also picking lettuce on a regular basis. As the bed isn't to deep we have planet parisian carrots,

these are the small round ones.

In our central bed we are trying sweetcorn, as well as my favourite thing to grow cucumbers. I

have noticed that compared to sweetcorn growing outside these have shot up and look really

strong and healthy. I do worry there isn't enough of a breeze to help pollinate these so we may

have to do it by hand. Also if you look closely you will see we are growing beans at the bottom

of each of them, they will use the sweetcorn as a support when growing.

In our left hand side bed we have 2 cauliflowers and the rest is taken up with cabbages. These

shouldn't be too long now before we can start harvesting, we have seedlings growing in the hot

house that will replace these when needed. We also have some sprouts to go in as well, but

they may go in the central bed once the sweetcorn is done. This just depends on timing.

In the bed on the right hand side we have a large amount of peas, I need to make a frame for

these, but it scares me having canes near the cover of the tunnel. Next to the peas we have

celeriac, I have never grown these nor tried them but a friend said they make good chips. On

the other side of the peas we have 6 pepper plants and two aubergine.

Did anyone else know just how spikey the aubergine was, not me. This will be our first time

actually having any success with aubergine, so fingers crossed they carry on strong.

Outside our polytunnel I have built some raised flower beds in the area where we had the wild

flowers growing last year. The reason for this is to gain some control over weeds and make less

work for myself. To create these I used some upcycled pallet wood that I had lying around, just

need a good amount of compost now.

Once again if you're reading this, thank you for taking the time out of your day. I am not an expert; I am just sharing my experiences with you and maybe it helps in some way. For more on our allotment head over to our Instagram page @allotment102. We try to post a few times a week and we share everything good and bad