27 June 2010 - Promised Picture Spectacular!

22 June 2010 - Long time no see

Dear all - apologies for not posting sooner but usual lame excuses apply, including two weekends away camping. Hairshirt now over. No photos for this blog but we promise that the next one will be a Picture Special.

This isn't to say that nothing has been going on. Au contraire. The celery, winter cabbage, kale, posy (cross between kale and sprouts), corn, courgettes, butternut squash, pumpkin, beans and everything that was in the greenhouse for the allotment is now ensconced on the plot. The brassicas are now surrounded by a lovely tall netted structure which should keep out the dreaded White Cabbage Butterfly, but not, alas, the damned Slugs who have munched where they should not have. Tonight N harvested our first broccoli - looking forward to eating it later.

The peas have come up but not many and in what is now becoming a familiar ritual, I madly sowed some more last weekend. We are not going to repeat the famous harvest of the first year and we put it down to dodgy seed peas and not adopting the N approach to sowing peas - which is loads of them in the row regardless of crowd control issues. We also sowed the remaining runner beans from last year into a wigwam removed from the purple beans. Unfortunately my attempts to integrate them into the fruitcage doesn't appear to have worked. The purple beans are so small that we removed the wigwam - they don't appear to need the support and seem to be humble little plants with gorgeous purple flowers. The borlottis are learning how to twine around their wigwam and being very Italian about things.

The various onions are all doing well, and those in the fruitcage (overwintering) now look readyish for lifting. The shallots have finally made an appearance, though not all came up. As for the garlic, it is truly a tale of two halves. The sickly lot finally expired for no reason that we could see, whilst the others (around 50 plants) look amazing. To my shame, I did not record which garlic was which when they were planted. Ho hum.

Mr Rhubarb has yielded plentiful amounts so far, with various amounts donated to hungry work colleagues. One in my office made a delicious rhubarb and ginger crumble. The overwintered chard is now taller than me, and is flowering. We decide to leave it put to see what happens. Other chard (Rainbow Lights) sown earlier in the year is coming up well and the spinach has been (largely) eaten.

On the fruit front, things are a little less successful. Unfortunately we think we will get no apples this year - because of the late frost while the trees were in bloom. This is a Big Lesson. Next year we will wrap them up. The blueberries, loganberry and raspberries all appear to be OK. The strawberries have flowered and are making fruit, but it seems much slower this year. The plum tree got covered by nasty blackfly and was doused in horrid pest stuff. Fruit does appear to be more problematic in terms of bugs and susceptibility to climate.

In the new J bed, the various carrots and spring onions are coming up a treat, as are the parsnips (hoorah!). We have approx 25 to last over the winter which will be great. And if we put in any to the show, we shall not pull them until the day itself.

On the bank, we planted various squash and two pumpkins. Over time, the squash have been decimated by the unfettered wildlife, but the pumpkins are holding their own. The green manure we sowed earlier has come up but yet to flower. And the Elephant Garlic looks great. We also have several "volunteer" potato plants on the bank, and elsewhere on the plot too. Also a couple of similar strawberry plants that have happily taken up residence in unauthorised spots. No sign at all of the wildflower seeds we sowed - I think they'll appear next year.

All the potatoes have come up, and after the fright of the frost, appear to look very healthy and numerous. We are getting to the end of using last year's potatoes - it is now somewhat of a lottery - and are looking forward to lots of scrummy new potatoes in their place.

Leeklings are coming up in their cosy nursery though we are anxious that we don't have as many as we should have. The ones we started in the greenhouse seem to be ahead of the game.

The everlasting challenge and chore is to keep on top of the weeds. The worst task by far is the fruitcage. It would take strimming every day at this time of the year to truly keep them at bay and it just isn't feasible. We are thinking about applying weedkiller to the bank over the winter in a last ditch attempt at discipline - having tried all the green methods available, maybe it's time to admit defeat. Other plots don't have the same issues as us because we are directly next to wild land. Having said that, we wouldn't want any other plot and love the situation at the far reaches of the site.

Quick greenhouse report - tomatoes, aubergines, peppers and cucumbers all coming up. The tomatoes are an interesting mixture of home sown, donated (thanks Tim) and bought plants. We have completely lost any idea of which kind of tomato is what. The ginger never materialised (sob) and the carrots sown in the autumn appear to be still going with no obvious sign of carrotage. Generally speaking, those plants that we started off in the greenhouse seem to be doing well on site. We've sown some more broccoli for a late summer harvest.

Weather note: various cold and hot spells over the last few weeks combined with the usual quixotic English late spring weather. Certainly a later start to the growing season. Weather is now warm and settled so watering is a priority.

15 May 2010 - Potato shock

Jack Frost (and our friend Doone - see below) has been to visit. Yes, in the second week of May, practically everyone's potatoes have been hit by frost. The foliage of most potatoes look like small brown lumps. Ours have also been hit, but not so badly - there are still stalks at least. We worry and ponder. We are told that "they will come back". We earth them up and put the protective environmesh back over them. Frost has also hit our apple trees but hopefully we will still get a good crop. The strawberries seem to be OK. Our plot appears to be less affected by frost than others, maybe because we are bounded by trees. Makes up for the stones.

Another significant incident was the discovery of the still limp corpse of a small bunny laid neatly out on our allotment bank. There were no injuries and the eyes were still shiny. Was it a message? Had Archie (our bunny-killer cat) been at work? We will never know but we rejoiced as there is now one less rabbit to eat produce. Having said that, an exceedingly fat rabbit just sat in a neighbour's plot as we drove by. You win some...

We were honoured by a visit from Doone, a friend from Southampton. She was mightily impressed by the plot, the innovative creative solutions we had devised for raised beds, the fruit cage and the current state of the crops therein. We endowed her with some sticks of rhubarb and had leek and potato soup for supper. She was also taken with the garlic plait which is still looking fab and endorsed my strawberry jam (unlike the judges at the last show, chiz). Here is a link to a website explaining how to plait and the picture is of the garlic we did in 2009 for her future reference. She is now going to get her husband a greenhouse, having seen how fab ours is. We reflect on the contrast between our young, hedonistic selves and the two magnificent, accomplished and high-achieving women shown above.

So as we'd not been up for a couple of weekends in any serious capacity, we had quite a bit of stuff to do - strimming, watering (very dry), weeding and such. Weeding the beds is pretty easy but we have to keep an eye on the weeds that come up round the side of paths. The innovative plastic board solution appears to be keeping stuff out in the fruit cage. As one of us was not feeling very well, the session was not overly strenuous.

We planted out some more peas (more peas more peas more peas) and some mangetout, which were making bids for freedom. They are securely wrapped in mesh for protection. We also install all the leek seedlings into one tiny bit of the fruit cage so they can get established. The carrots are coming up fine and the first parsnip seedlings and kohl rabi (hooray!) are beginning to show. The spinach I planted out several weeks ago is getting into its stride now, though its fascinating to see that the four plants, in a line, decrease in size in order - must be something to do with the way the sun falls.

N harvests some comfrey and we donate some to Jan and Pat. We also put some in a bin and cover it with water. In a few whiffy weeks, it will be Magic Juice Extraordinare.

The giant garlic is holding its own on the bank and (we think) we can see the beginnings of small plants (green manure and wild flowers). We sow some poppy seeds given to us by Jan and think of a row of gorgeous orange flowers in the late summer. Some of the sweet peas that I have hopefully sown seem to be coming up at the side of the fruit cage - but they have to battle the weeds. Shallots are finally coming up and the onion sets appear to be growing well. The onions from seed are still looking little but we are confident. Lots of onions this year. The yellow garlic appears to have recovered slightly.

We are feeding the strawberries and overwintering onions with Magic Juice but nothing else as yet. It still doesn't feel spring-like enough - everyone agrees that it's a different feel this year. We have courgettes, celery, squash and beans bursting at the seams in the greenhouse but it's just not warm enough yet. We reckon the last weekend in May/first weekend in June which feels very late. Winter cabbage, red cabbage, petit posy and cauliflower are also waiting to be put into the earth. I feel an urge to rush everything out so that we can prepare the greenhouse for its next phase of existence with growbags and wire for aubergine, peppers, melon (! still not dead), cucumber and tomatoes (of course).

Shortly after the last blog, we took proud delivery of our 10 sweet potatoes. They looked a little tired and needed extensive resuscitation. Two have succumbed. They are very sensitive to cold so they have been hogging the warmth in the kitchen in root trainers. We hope to put them out on the bank. An interesting experiment if nothing else. As they are tropical plants it is definitely a gamble. If the summer is lukewarm and wet they will perish. C'est la vie at the cutting edge of horticulture.

Weather note: quite cold over the past two weeks. Sunshine and showers.

April 2010 - April is the Cruellest Month

So said T S Eliot at the beginning of The Waste Land - though obviously this poem could not have been named after our plot, which is beginning to show definite signs of life and growth. We have been very busy each weekend, putting the finishing touches to beds and making a real move against the weeds that cometh in from the bank at the back. We are confident that the plastic sheets that were going to be recycled will prove an effective deterrent in the Pagoda.

One important lesson for you backpain sufferers though - do not dig for hours on end, as we did on the bank, to prepare it for wildflower and green manure seeds. Many and severe were the repercussions! We had visitors for the Easter weekend, who were duly admiring of our plot and even lent a hand. We reflected on how different it looked 3 years ago and how much more confident (and yet still prone to disaster) we are. The daffodils made a triumphant - and much later than normal - appearance.

We have to start by extolling the virtues of the greenhouse. It makes so much difference to be able to start things off in comfort. Sowing and thinning seeds is easy and what used to be a bit of a chore is now a regular Saturday retreat into a kind of quiet cultivational ecstasy. Things that we have sowed are: green beans (from last year), purple beans, borlotti beans, corn, marigold, dahlias, cucumbers, aubergines, melon (though who knows), many kinds of tomatoes, peppers, peas, mangetout, celery, winter cabbage, petit rosy, red cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, winter squash, pumpkin, butternut squash. Not bad eh?

The salad bed at home is also now looking fab thanks to a great new protective (against the cats) structure and is bursting with parsley, chard, rocket, spinach, lettuce and radish, with some spring onions too. It's so good to go to the plot with the seedlings and put them in their new home. So far, we have installed cabbage, onions, broccoli and some peas on the plot (the latter may have been too early because of frost as they look a bit peaky).

Things that haven't worked so well were the mangetout that we overwintered in the greenhouse. Planted out in early March, it was clearly too soon and the poor little blighters just froze to death (the weather still being rubbish then). Also one lot of the garlic we planted has something very wrong with it - it is yellow and shrivelled in places. We cannot recall whether this was our own garlic from last year, or shop-bought. We hope it will pull itself together.

Otherwise on the plot, the potatoes are now showing, and the overwintering onions are doing well, though a bit yellow round the edges. This yellowing, like with the garlic, could mean a lack of water, as it has been exceptionally dry. We have had to water.

Regular onions, carrots and shallots are beginning to come up, as are the various sets of peas frantically planted to ensure that we get a bumper pea crop this year. Spinach, chard and radishes are also beginning to appear. We have sown two main lots of carrots, with room for more, and some kohl rabi (?) a vegetable we have never encountered hitherto. Parsnips have been sown too in the amazing J-bed (the envy of Jan and Pat).

We picked our first rhubarb last weekend and had a lovely rhubarb custard fool dessert. It is a lovely plant and we hope we can live up to its expectations. I have been looking up rhubarb jam and wine recipes - watch out Hugh F-Whittingstall.

The newly planted fruit trees (cherry, plum) are doing well too, and we are heartened to see plenty of apple blossom on our existing apple trees, especially the one that didn't really do much last year. We have put disgustingly sticky bands round each tree to protect them from the ants (remember, the aphid incident of last year). Do not underestimate ants - I peeled a potato today from our store and cut it open to find lots of happy looking fat ants which had spent a whole 6 months inside! They will be here long after us.

It is still not reliably warm enough to put out the beans, corn and squash - it has to be at least 5 degrees at night for a week. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we will be able to do so. What we really need (and I shouldn't be saying this about to go on a camping weekend) is a lot of rain here - but not on our campsite please.

Weather note: warmer than March, not much rain

21/28 March 2010 - Spring cleaning

A blog in two halves - well what with one thing and another...

21 March saw the planting of the first - and second (a bit of a risk but hey) - potatoes in bed 3. These were Arran Pilot, Blue Danube and Orla. We then faced a quandary about the maincrops as there wasn't enough room for them too. We then decided to tidy up the patch behind the shed, move all our infrastructure stuff (useful bits of wood etc) and use that to take the overflow of the maincrops. It's still too early to plant them yet, though I know of at least one plotholder who has just put all his spuds in. Beware Jack Frost.

The new three sided bed was finished, and filled up with more topsoil and shop-brought compost, as well as a lot of our own compost from the black bin. It is amazing how it rots down. To make the extra room for all the stuff from behind the shed, N cleared the second of our compost pallet areas - this was the place where we dumped stuff like old brassicas - and quite a lot of it had rotted down very nicely. This is officially bed 6. We sowed some more early carrots and spring onions in it. So lots of getting in with the muck and sorting stuff out, which was very therapeutic. We marvel yet again at the seemingly limitless possibilities of our plot.

We sowed wild flower seeds in the Pagoda and added nasturtiums and sweet pea. Here's hoping for lots of lovely flowers. A few radishes for fun and that was about it (but it took a long time because of shifting all the poo about - I didn't mention the well rotted manure that we had stored - this had to be moved into other bins).

As the peas were proving mutinous we sowed some more of a different variety on bed 1. We'll probably end up with far too many. We also put more compost/manure on the fruit trees (did we mention that we now have a plum and a cherry, as well as a new blueberry to keep the other one company?)

Roll on another 7 days, and the first of the leek seeds sown in a little space in the Pagoda are beginning to show, as are some of the broccoli. Bloody slugs had already tucked into the cabbage seedlings so now they have cabbage collars, three lots of slug repellant and a plastic bottle thingy to protect them. We just won't have such nonsense this early in the season.

Weather is just what you expect at this stage in March, mixed but warm in the sunlight. So we took advantage of it by digging the new bed behind the shed - as yet unnumbered, but looking like bed 8, moving some more stuff around and, yes, for the first time in months, doing some weeding.

Another nice surprise was the appearance - finally - of the rhubarb. Last weekend there was hardly anything to be seen, and now there is the proud flush of a great looking plant.

14 March 2010 - Rites of Spring

Signs of life are beginning to be seen on the site. Several of us convened on Sunday morning to clear some vacant plots of rubbish prior to new tenants taking them on. We used it as a jolly excuse to have a bonfire (apologies no pictures) and generally reflect on the fact that it had been 6 months since we had last done anything communal on the site. This was almost entirely due to the dire weather which thankfully looks to be settling into the beginning of spring. Amazingly, there are no daffodils out yet and things are certainly at least a month behind in terms of sowing and growing seed etc. Or alternatively it's how it ought to be, we're just not used to it.

The weather being not too bad, N carried out some valuable infrastructural work. Firstly, the finishing of the construction of the fab new carrot/parsnip bed, started last week. It's J-shaped, darling and no-one else has one like it. We were going to sieve the soil for stones but in the end opted to buy a whole load of compost. We sowed four small rows of early carrots and covered them with a makeshift cold frame. More soil needs to be put in but in the meantime a great addition. We remain continually surprised at the amount of things we can do in such a small space. Maybe it's the Tardis of allotment plots.

Another one was the replacement of the table top which had somehow fallen to cardboard-like bits over the winter. It was never the most robust object anyway, and N has replaced it with a far sturdier and more elegant solution. This was in fact a small pallet but very stout. It will do us just fine.

Onto matters horticultural. Many seeds have now been sown in the greenhouse. We have: aubergine, various peppers, various tomatoes, broccoli, chard, marigold, red onions, leeks (though not many), rocket, lettuce, cucumbers - coming up - and still awaiting an appearance from french beans, borlotti beans, sweet peas, pumpkin, squash x 2 and peas. The latter is particularly concerning, as we have put two lots of peas in guttering in the greenhouse over the last 2 weeks with very little success - only two germinations so far. I've sown a separate lot in the heated thingy, only 3 of which have come up. And have sown some on the plot last week, using the raspberry sticks from last year (one of N's great ideas) as peasticks. We are worried that we may have got a dodgy lot of peas (Kelvedon Wonder from T&M).

In terms of the plot, last weekend we moved red cabbage, pak choi and spinach overwintered (what a great word!) seedlings from the greenhouse and planted out under protection on the plot, having cleared the winter leeks to one side. That was quite a good feeling. In addition, we sowed some more leeks in a tiny little seedbed in the Pagoda as we are concerned about the slow progress at home. Optimistically, I sowed some radish seeds (you can never go wrong) and chard. Overwintering onions are still heroically soldiering on.

Garlic is now beginning to show quite well, though I am anxious that we are not going to have as much as last year (well, no, of course we're not because that was a ridiculous amount). Everything is slower and later than last year and maybe it hasn't all come up yet. Last weekend we also moved our mangetout seedlings which had been growing all winter in the greenhouse. We've protected them to keep the worst of any frost off.

We had also been fretting about the rhubarb but we saw evidence that it was emerging from its slumber. Must be a later variety. Next weekend we'll plant the first earlies and then the growing year can begin in earnest. Oh and for fun, I planted some of the overwintered sweet peas and planted some sweet pea and nasturtium seeds. Let's see if we can get that colour off to a good start this year.

7 February 2010 - A quickie

This is just a quick blog to note a few things that we did today on the plot (remember I mentioned how useful the blog was for checking back?) So this isn't for you, the reader, but for us the growers.

We moved the strawberries from the Pagoda to the former carrot bed and covered them. It was an interesting experience - we didn't realise what tough customers strawberries are and how they proliferate. A bit like comfrey in their stubbornness.

We sowed the shallots and sowed a few broccoli seeds direct into the bed (same as the leeks bed currently).

We also cut down the raspberries and mulched the fruit trees. A bit of pruning was also accomplished.

I also sowed the following seeds in the greenhouse: two sorts of basket hanging tomatoes, red onions and lettuce. The previous weekend I sowed leeks, aubergines and cucumber (the latter two in the heated thingy), and peas in the guttering. And put a bin over the rhubarb (to force it). We hope it is not too cold to sow seeds as we head toward yet another cold snap in this seemingly endless winter.

Weather today was cold and grey but not unbearable.

Thassorl.