Norman Dunn's 'Hebburn and our Neighbours Forum'

Norman Dunn's 'Hebburn and our Neighbours Forum'
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Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend

Posted by Brian on 20/8/2025, 1:37 pm

Whilst the weather has been lovely not everything has liked it. We've had bumper crops of strawberries and cucumber, some varieties of tomatoes and aubergines have been the biggest crop We've seen, we picked 60 yesterday. Some things have been adversely affected by the heat, garlic although plentiful were small as were onions and shallots. Potatoes were and are a mixed bag Charlotte potatoes normally plentiful were low on amount yet the Jazzy potatoes were plentiful and next to the Charlotte's and produced 3 times the amount from the same number of seed potatoes. One of the apple trees is dropping fruit possibly as a survival mechanism as a couple of others across the site have done the same. We have some tomato varieties that are in torpor because of the heat but I think will ripen quickly as we go into a cooler period. Squash and courgettes are doing well, the romanesco went to seed quickly as did one of the cauli varieties but cabbages are thriving. We have our autumn planting veg almost ready to go out and will be planting potatoes for Christmas in the polytunnel. We are pickling, making chutney and jams as quickly as we can . We are making some spirit infusions , we tried one last year a quince infused gin concoction called Ratafi that worked well. This year we are making a crabapple vodka, a blackberry whisky, and two quince infused mixes one with gin the other with brandy with citrus peel, ginger, bayleaf and demerara and white sugar. depending on the spirit. They should all be ready by the end of the year so we will have some new yuletide tipples to sample.

Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend

Posted by Liz Dance on 20/8/2025, 2:14 pm, in reply to "Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend"

You are correct Brian, lots of trees in our garden are showing signs of real stress, our nut tree has shed loads of leaves, in fact we think it will have lost all leaves by the middle of next week, very early.

Our apples have ripened about 2 weeks earlier than normal, an amazing crop.

The apple farm just across from the stream at the bottom of our garden had tye the apple harvest starteed yesterday, the farmer normally doesn’t start until nearer mid to end September, massive tractors with huge containers now driving up and down the track to our house taking the picked apples to the huge containers waiting at the end of the track.

All of the wheat fields belonging to two of the other farmers have been harvested, there are a few fields with corn cobs waiting to be gathered in.

I was reading an article that peas might be in short supply so if you have any suggest you keep an eye on them otherwise someone might steal them.

Your concoctions sound amazing, hope you are not too tipsy so that you can’t manage the Advent Calendar!!!

Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend

Posted by Brian on 20/8/2025, 2:51 pm, in reply to "Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend"

The trees timetable has sped up considerably, I picked the crabapples yesterday of the wild plot on the site, you tell the readiness by the colour of the pips I bit into one to expose the pips expecting sourness and was pleasantly surprised , the apple tree that's shedding will be picked by the weekend, chilli jelly, pie filling and chutney will be the uses for them as they're a cooking apple. Our corn is a couple of weeks away but looking good, we've picked most of our peas, our borlotti beans are a couple of weeks away we've cleared a couple of beds ready for autumn planting and will be doing a summer pruning of our pear tree as we still have few water shoots that have to come off, we've managed to get it to fruit with a couple of years of fairly severe pruning as it had not been looked after for several years. All in all I can't complain after last year's wet and relatively cold summer.

Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend

Posted by Keith on 21/8/2025, 12:58 pm, in reply to "Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend"

The trees timetable has certainly sped up in Hebburn park Brian. Usually don't get leaves in my garden from the tress until back of September, had massive amounts of fallen leaves in the past week in the garden.

Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend

Posted by Brian on 21/8/2025, 9:50 pm, in reply to "Re: Allotment, the heat isn't always your friend"

The trees on the park will be parched, doubtful the council would have thought of watering them. The leaf shedding is a survival mechanism by the trees to conserve moisture because of the hot weather.

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