My blog celebrates its eighth birthday at the end of October. My first post was on the 27 October 2009 about setting up my weather station. It wasn’t until the 30th of the month that I decided to include what was going on in the allotment. If you’re interested you can find this post here.
Whilst the weather station has gone on to be replaced by a better model we’ve still got our allotments. Most of the beds in the first photo are mostly unchanged with crops being rotated on an annual basis. I think the bed in the centre of the picture is now our main strawberry bed.
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| Plot 30 - Date: October 2009 |
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| Plot 30 - Date: October 2017 |
The second photo shows the other side of our plots when these were still work in progress. The bed being dug over in the 2009 photo now contains our three pear trees. The beds in the background are part of plot 41 and these were being dug over for the first time. Our quince tree and blackcurrant bushes now grow in the bed that is partly dug over.
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| Plot 42 - Date: October 2009 |
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| Plot 42 - Date: October 2017 |
As you can see there has been far more changes to the plots at this side of the allotments. Back in 2009 we had only just started developing these two plots.
Since 2010 I’ve kept a record of our harvests so just out of interest I thought I’d see how much fruit we’ve had from our three pear trees and quince that were planted around the same time.
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| Quince and Pear Tree Harvests 2009 - 2017 |
Our quince tree regularly produces a decent crop whereas that can’t be said of the pear trees. I think the main problem with them is one of pollination. They don’t normally flower at the same time which probably leads to poor pollination. I can’t really explain why our Invincible tree produced such a heavy crop this year. The crop was so large that the weight broke some of the branches.
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Congrats Martyn on your anniversary. Your blog is exemplary. Not only is it science - it is accessible/shared science.
ReplyDeleteBTW I clocked up 100k visitors since switching to Mal's Edinburgh Allotment
(but I can't be fagged to add up the Mal's Allotment and Mal's Edinburgh Allotment Stats). Weather station still in planning/financing phase!
Thanks Mal.
DeleteI never check how many blog views I’ve had as I’m too busy checking to see if our Monster Tomato video on YouTube has hit the 200,000 mark. It currently stands at 192,595. I suppose there’s still a way to go.