I finally got down to the allotment today after three weeks of having no time to attend to it - two weekends away, in London and the Lakes, and lots of things to do on weekday evenings. It looked surprisingly good, not too many weeds in the beds at all - only thigh-high grass and comfrey bordering most of the plot, which is a necessary evil given how little time I spend down there. I don't really mind the grass - although I do feel bad about the way it's choking off the fruit bushes - and the comfrey isn't a weed at all, making itself useful as a mulch (comfrey tea smells so bad I don't bother anymore). Every so often I make a token effort at ripping the grass up, but it's much more industrious than me and just keeps coming back.
That aside, the plot actually looks fairly presentable - which is also thanks to Orsi's hard work weeding and stocking it with Hungarian plants! Most things have been saved from the slugs and snails - although quite a few French beans, red cabbages and cavolo nero have been munched. I made myself busy between the rain showers weeding, putting in pea sticks and tying in the broad beans. And at last starting to collect the first of the early summer harvest! Tonight's tea included green onions, fennel stalks, and broad bean tops - a seasonal delicacy. And the last of the rhubarb, which went to top up the pickled rhubarb I made a few weeks ago, because it's utterly delicious. The recipe is from Diana Henry's 'Salt, Sugar, Smoke', my go to book for preserves this year. But why is it that 'pickled rhubarb' sounds so much better in French?
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