A morning trip to the allotment in order to dispose of a week’s worth of discarded veg and tea bags. To be fair it was more discarded tea bags than veg. My current mug count is approaching twenty a day.

Whoops.

It’s all looking a little threadbare up at the allotment, to be honest. We’ve done well to survive into mid-October and still be producing a harvest.

A rucksack full of tomatoes was harvested at the weekend. If we left them in the ground any longer, then the dreaded autumn blight would get them.

Chutney and tomato soup, here we come.

It’s good to see that a lot of the green has now returned to the allotment after the endless heat waves of the summer months. I might just need to mow the pathways in a couple of weeks in order to keep the Town Council from sending out nagging emails.

The major development in recent weeks has been placing some stinking sheep’s wool around the various beds. It absolutely bloody reeks. The local monk jack deer seems to like it and have already rearranged it for me, which is nice.

Sadly their particular style when it comes to product placement doesn’t tally up with where I have lovingly arranged the sheep’s wool. It’s all over the bloody place.

Looking around the plot, the only disappointment this year has been the raspberries. They failed to produce any produce but then they did go in rather late.

The canes are still growing so they might deliver next year. We should have left them in the garden.

Plenty of work is still needed on the allotment over the winter months. It’s become something of a dumping ground during a home garden renovation, but once again please don’t tell the Town Council.

What has worked out really well is that the wisteria we chopped down has found a new home. The stump has been positioned on the allotment as a possible bug hotel.

Not a bad first season. There’s still plenty of tasks to be getting on with over the winter months. Disclaimer: I won’t be getting on with plenty of tasks over the winter months.

A trip to the allotment on Wednesday lunchtime. I had one task and one task only: transport the fuck-off wisteria tree stump and its various logs and sods over to our patch of land.

Some garden vandalism has taken place back at base. Having resisted it for 16 years of living here, we finally got rid of the wisteria. It had outgrown its purpose, its space, and also my patience.

The ease in which it came down surprised me. The roots were getting dangerously close to encroaching on the drains down below.

SEE YA, wisteria. Be gone.

Of course it wasn’t me who took the wisteria down. If I had got my grubby hands on it, then the whole house would have been tumbling as well.

Our garden man did a fine job. He was also going to take the wisteria stump over to the tip. A little later on in the day I had the brainwave of a bug hotel over the allotment.

I got some strange looks as I transported it on the trolley dolly for the short walk.

I quite like the idea of sustainability shit and all that. We might killed off the wisteria, but its spirit is still there amongst us on our land.

The allotment is looking a little worse for wear, to be honest. That’s the impact of four, five, possibly six heatwaves during the summer.

The bonus is that it has given us a bumper crop in terms of tomatoes and courgettes. The latter, in particular, have expanded with almost freakish proportions and can’t quite decide if they want to become marrows or not.

The lack of water is now starting to show. There’s not a lot of green around but fans of sand-coloured hues and backgrounds won’t be disappointed.

Long gone are the days when I have had to obsess about heading up there every couple of weeks to trim the borders as part of the requirement with the Town Council lease. Grass is currently not a concept across the entire allotment patch.

Watering has scaled down a little in recent weeks. We’ve had a few downpours, which have relieved us of the burden.

Hose pipes are available to use at the allotment but the lease also says you can’t directly spray water over your green goodness. Instead there’s the laborious task of filling up the water butts and then using these with the watering can.

It’s been something of a steep learning curve but also a fun introduction to allotment life this summer. I feel that we’ve entered into the agreement at perhaps the best and worst of times: plenty of sun, little water.

Thoughts are already starting to stretch ahead to what might happen during the winter months. Spoiler alert: I think we’re going to get shit loads of rain around the Estuary Wilds.

Some leek and carrot seeds have been ordered. An allotment is for life and not just the summer months.

I didn’t quite understand the judging at the Wivenhoe Allotment and Garden Association annual show. Yeah sure, veg is veg, right? Some looked a little fresher than others, but ultimately veg for me is all about necking it and getting energy.

The judges thought a little differently. There was no evidence of the fruit or veg - or even cake - actually being tasted. In fact some of the produce awarded a first in show looked a bit mangy when compared to other entrants.

I would never suggest that there is something slightly slippery taking place with the WAGA judging. Nope.

It was a decent enough show for 2026. A few panic emails had gone out and then run up to it, worrying that not enough allotment holders had entered any of their goods. Guilty as charged.

But wait, what this?

We did get an email stressing the importance of us attending the close of the event as there was possibly a chance our allotment may pick up a prize in the overall category.

Football watching duties kept us away, natch.

There was plenty of tomatoes on show as we made our way up and down the various trestle tables early afternoon. Tomato, tomatoe, etc. I’ve never seen so many varieties.

Cabbages meanwhile, remain the ugly sisters of the allotment world.

Some of the blackberries looked incredibly tempting. They were rather lush and certainly plump. I confess to having a quick shifty to my left and right to see if I could snaffle one.

Spoiler: I’m too much of a good honest citizen for that type of behaviour.

The usual daily harvest of tomatoes (red and yellow, natch) and courgettes. These are both of the more conventional style and also the spherical courgettes that we have still yet to decide what to do with.

Also slightly out of shot and lurking on the allotment naughty step is a cucumber that looks more like a knobbly knee. It is lime green and not exactly enticing me to rustle up a tomato and cucumber sarnie.

Even with the fifth heat wave during this estuary wild summer, the cucumbers have failed to deliver.

We’ve got the Wivenhoe Allotment and Garden Association annual show at the weekend. I might have to take out a small tin of green paint and tart up the sorry-looking cucumber. The cucumber trophy has already got my name on it.

More tomatoes, more courgettes. We do have some variety over at the allotment. Honest. Future updates will hopefully introduce you to the brave new world of sweet corn. Tomatoes, courgettes and sweet corn. That’s a diet to eat yerself fitter.

The tomatoes are ripening now at a rapid pace, and yep, that includes the yellow ones. An allotment email went around telling people to keep an eye on their tomatoes. The fifth heat wave is expected to complete the crop well ahead of the early autumn allotment show.

Meanwhile I’m still perplexed by the curly whirly courgettes. They taste super fine so far. We have chopped them up rather finely and then fried them to serve alongside a pasta meal. They still give me the giggles.

A return to the Thursday evening pickleball social at the Tennis Club. It’s been a few weeks whilst I wait for black ink recovery and healing.

We had a healthy turnout as well. Eight players rocked up, the perfect combination for a rotating two games of doubles.

And whaddyaknow? I got partnered with A for the first few games. Some major domestics broke out on court. I could see other players sheepishly turning away as our arguments were played out in public.

If you’re going to claim that a ball is yours, then it’s yours, right?

A couple of players were very young lads. This was great to see. They were under 16 and show that the club and the sport is continuing to grow locally.

The autumn nights are slowly slowly starting to creep in. We took the strategic decision not to turn the flood lights on and cut our losses around 8:30 p.m.

It wasn’t so much the fading light that was causing issues for me; the stench from the nearby onion fields was making play a little tricky.

I should name a blog specifically after that.

Rejoice! We finally have some colour to our allotment palette!

So here we have some red tomatoes to add to the yellow hue. I’ve been told that these aren’t your bog-standard red tomatoes but some kind of autumnal variety. I’m not sure if that is a statement or not on how our four seasons are currently fucked.

Plus don’t forget the obligatory spherical courgette. These are stacking up now like a bin full of footballs at Sports Direct. If nothing else then they would make for half-decent vegetable weapons if a battle of the garden ever broke out.

More tomatoes and a couple of courgettes. Yep I know the tomatoes are yellow. That’s how we do things around these Estuary Wild parts. Ditto for the courgettes.

There was an alarming email that went out from the Allotment Gods bemoaning the lack of entries for the Wivenhoe Allotment and Garden Association show. This is coming up in a couple of weeks.

The email was a call to arms for entrants. It was a classic begging case of use it or lose it.

My concern here is that you will only exhibit things that are relatively fresh that you have harvested from your allotment in the past few days or so. My allotment is a means to an end. I want to grow food and then I want to eat it.

To be honest I don’t give a shit about exhibiting my funny-shaped courgettes that look like penises to the rest of the world.

TUCK IN!

Another day, another trip to the allotment - or that should be another day and another two trips to the allotment. I’ve done the double dipping thing on consecutive days.

The reason for all of this back-and-forth activity is that I’ve got a brand new set of wheels and I’m going to bloody use them. I’ve also got two wormeries that need transporting from the garden over to the patch.

The poor old worms started out life in Essex when they were pushed through my letterbox. They didn’t stay here long, maybe a day or so, before I transported them down to South London for a la-di-da Sunny Stockwell lifestyle.

They thrived back in Transpontonia for over a decade, and yep I’m not as naive to know that the original letterbox Essex worms are unlikely to be the ones that are still around. Nature is rather good like that.

After living it up in SW8 they then headed back to the Bloody Estuary Wilds. Good luck with that one, as they say. Now they find themselves strung out on the allotment.

Saturday morning at the allotment was a little more lively. There was an unforgiving heat already starting to build up.

The tomatoes however still need to get something of a shifty on. We’re not entirely sure if the yellow ones are ripe or not. I had an interesting chat with some old fella who was growing blue tomatoes. I never knew such a thing existed, tomato, tomatoe, etc.

Across the field preparations were well underway at the cricket club for President’s Day. This is the most prestigious day of the year in the local cricketing calendar. It involves getting dressed up in rather stuffy clothes. I tend to stay away.

The two umpires look most resplendent as they strolled out to the middle in their traditional white shirts and black trousers with boater hats. This was a bit of a different look to the shorts and vest from the fagging umpire we normally see for a Sunday social.

I left the worms to do their business. Who knows, I can’t rule out them having a trip back to south London at some stage in the medium or long-term.

To be continued…