And finally for today I have 2 rather spectacular Cucumber plants that are now producing flowers and fruit - although they are not doing as well as the one in the school greenhouse. Still not bad though are they?

In amongst the tomatoes I have some sweet peppers and some red hot chilli peppers that I sing Callifornication to and they seem to be growing really well too

While some of the tomatoes have been left out in the cold to jealously gaze through the window at the nice warm indoor plants. Actually I do have a variety called Alicante which have been outside for about 3 weeks and look the healthiest of the lot.

I also have my first little tomatoes - Golden Sunrise.

The Veg Is Taking Over

Carrying on from my post of 3 weeks ago my Gardeners Delight tomatoes have now just about reached the top of the conservatory!

We have also decided to start the spurcroft gardening club in the new school year in September as there are only 7 weeks left of this year.  Two more teachers want their classes to plant their own veg as well so it looks like some momentum is growing now that everything is looking good and growing well in the plots.

Back to school and I decided to do some phantom gardening!  I have planted Mulberry classes plot outside their classroom.  I put in some dwarf french beans as a border with purple cabbage in the middle and some tomato plants and sunflowers at the back - also put a courgette in a pot, a few shallots and beetroot mixed in for fun.  Adam and I had the help of Amelia (on encouragement duty) and Lewis (on collecting and gathering duty) today and they are both with Adam in Mulberry class so that was nice to.

Another busy few hours in the allotment was spent trying to find plants buried amongst the long grass of the hellawii tribe (a race of very short people who live amongst the tall grass and chant their tribal name to locate each other).  Try it after me "Oh we're the Hellawii, Oh we're the Hellawii". They are related to another far ruder tribe that unfortunately cannot be mentioned on a school blog!

We managed to find 2 lovely blackcurrant bushes and 3 clematis (apparently they are flowers!) Pictures below.

Then onto the far more important job of planting the runner beans which were to go in the last bed that we re-claimed from the weeds last week.  This was by far the worst bed in terms of soil quality so after much more digging and raking I added 2 trugs of well rotted compost and 2 trugs of well rotted manure and it then looked the best of the lot, added the bean poles which I tied together with cable ties (so much stronger and much easier) and then planted 3 types of runner bean, Enorma, Best Of All and another one called a Keen Bean. Pictures Below.

I also had enough time to pot on the cucumbers and a couple of courgettes to stay in the greenhouse for now.  Now relaxing with a very cold beer!

The Runner Bean Bed

One of the Lost Clematis

One of the lost Blackcurrent Bushes

Cucumbers with a couple of courgettes (spares) - Also needing potting on!

Tomatoes Alicante - I should be potting them on rather than doing this!

Peppers Heatwave!

Tomatoes - Gardeners Delight - will soon be growing through the roof the way there going!

Sweet Peppers 

The veg is taking over the conservatory!

A busy day in the allotment and we had a helper (Cameron) who was set the difficult task of de-weeding the final raised bed and with a little help he managed to get rid of most of the weeds and find some of last years potatoes!  Hopefully with a good amount of rain over the next few days it should be ready to be filled with fresh soil and manure next week and be planted with some runner beans.

We also managed to plant about 16 sweetcorn plants in another raised bed, probably too close together but we shall have to wait and see.  I've never grown sweetcorn so am quite excited about this one.

My friend Carl donated some nice cabbages which I need to find space for and also some brussel sprout seedlings which I have potted on and put in the greenhouse for now.

The kidnapped tomatoes are now looking fine having had a good drink and will need potting on over the next week as will the sunflowers.  I'm thinking of planting the cabbages and sunflowers outside Adams classroom. The Cabbages as ground cover with the sunflowers growing through them.

And here is a picture of the bed that I call salad bowl as it contains lots of juicy cut and come again lettuces.

Here is a picture of the what I have named the long bed taken from the potato end  - in this bed we have potatoes up one end onions up the other with garlic, spring onions and lettuce in the middle where ever I could find a space.

This is the story of how we look after the Spurcroft School Allotment starting with a couple of pictures I took on my mobile at the beginning of last month