Time is Running Out

Wait! What? Now it's August - blimey, time is moving quickly these days!

What a great month July was though. The photo above is from 26th July and this photo below is from 5th July - such changes, with the help of a lot of sunshine and, thankfully, a final bit of torrential rain so we had a couple of days when we didn't need to water.

We've enjoyed our first meal using the Pickwick dwarf runner beans. The beans weren't as long as climbing beans, but were tasty and so many beans per plant - well worth growing to get a slightly earlier crop I would say. And Jamie thinned out the carrots - look at those beauties!

We've had a few more broad beans but there were so many weevil grubs that it put us off eating them. We've decided to stick with over-Wintered beans in future, which grew much taller and arrived before the weevil. Shame, as I was intending to make broad bean hummus with this lot. (Do you like my mini-shopping basket? Cute isn't it!)

At the end of July we finally attached the netting to our brassica cage - we've only netted half of it this year. It's a great cage, really sturdy and about 6m x 3m and just tall enough so that I can walk in it.

And then the next day we actually planted up our brassicas - Autumn cabbage, Nelson sprouts and Amazing cauliflowers. They were looking rather sad in the polytunnel - a cabbage white had discovered them - so we'll see how they do.

We have some space in there to plant some more stuff - maybe kohl rabi and some chinese vegetables for the Autumn/Winter. If we have time of course! We've lifted the shallots, which have finally bulbed up a bit more but they've been rained on so I'll pull them for storage on the next available sunny/dry day.

You can see the mole deterrent (the small green item to the left) it beeps every 30seconds or so. The mole didn't touch the shallots but burrowed through the runner beans, so not sure how useful that was!!

And here's another comparison from 26th July and 5th July - just 3 weeks, lovely!

This is a little movie of some ants dealing with a mealworm that was intended for the birds. I looked away for a moment and it was gone - I'm not sure where they moved it to, maybe down that hole!

Great song title provided by Muse - singalong, if you can hit those high notes :-)

Riders on the Storm

After the last three sunny blogposts it's now March - yay! Meteorological Spring has arrived and with it comes Storm Freya...

We had a hot chocolate, using our optimistically Summery mugs, sitting in our leaky polytunnel which was being severely buffetted. I wonder if it will survive the storm, which is peaking later this evening. The cover is already in a sorry state, but we're struggling to find a replacement at the moment, so keeping an eye on Amazon for one that will fit.

We only went to the site today to mend the mechanism on the pedestrian gate and feed the birds, though the little ones were hiding and all we saw were red kites and rooks enjoying the strong winds - you could say riding on them <ahem>...

Yesterday we braved a cold, windy day to erect our new brassica cage and it's still standing today, so far so good... No netting on it yet, so not too much to catch the wind..

Our next lot of bulbs have flowered. I think these dwarf iris are so pretty, I'm sure there are meant to be some yellow ones in there too.

We're still waiting for the frogs to return - no sign of them or any frogspawn yet. I hope the crazy weather hasn't put them off. Oh, here's a photo of my new washing-up brush for no reason except that I love it (Jamie's not so keen as he thinks it's impractical :-))

So many songs to choose from, but this by The Doors has to be the best.

Colourful Days

The last two weekends have been good allotment weather - weirdly warm for the time of year, even at night. On the last weekend of October we made up the new bed for another row of strawberries. We piled up a mixture of home-made compost and the well-rotted manure. Then covered the row in weed suppressant.

Jamie cleared the Desiree potato rows and disposed of any which looked slightly dodgy, but we got a fair few gigantic ones which make delicious mash and one potato makes plenty for both of us!

We did a lot of weed clearing - there's so much grass which is where all the slugs are hiding. The plot looks much prettier again now! And look at the asparagus peas! They just won't stop growing. 

Our Tundra cabbages are looking good, considering their sad start and are just starting to form heads. We had to remove quite a few caterpillars from under the netting.

So, we left with some pretty veggies including a couple of Hooligan(!) squashes from fellow-plotholder, Jonathan. Thanks!

November arrived and still the temperatures aren't falling but it rained hard overnight on Saturday. Sunday afternoon was ok so we got our eight strawberry plants into their new bed.

The rhubarb plants have died back completely and the area looks good with no weeds and two (Jamie-neat) circles of manure & compost mix.

I picked a lovely bunch of carrots for tea and some lunch soups. I also picked some par-cel which Jamie added to our mash - our flat smells of celery, mmmm, yum!

Some of the carrots have a bit of carrot fly damage.

We left as the sun started to go - too early now the clocks have fallen back. Aah look how pretty and berry-laden the hedge is.

Still catching up

We finally managed to get some time on the plot today. We joined the many other plotholders who were taking advantage of a lovely warm (18°) Bank Holiday. 

As with most visits, it starts with a quick plot inspection. The rhubarb is attempting to take over Plot 8 and I'm pleased to say that some of the broad beans and onions have sprouted. The grass paths really do look good at Marsh Lane, but certainly add to the workload; the edges had nearly grown a foot! Look at those lovely strawberry flowers - I really hope they don't get hit by a frost this week!

Finally I got to clearing the brassicas from last year. They grew really well, as you can see among the weeds. But we just didn't get round to picking them - isn't that dreadful? Such a waste, but they do get composted - by the Council, not in our compost bins; compost doesn't like too much brassica waste added in one go.

Jamie dug over the quarter with the manure pile, which we'll use for brassicas this year. 

So, we got a lot of tidying done, we took 6 bagfuls of green waste away with us!

And, we got our little greenhouse up, so I sowed a couple of seed trays - just Boltardy beets and half trays of lettuce Red Fire and Tom Thumb - at last it feels like a real start.

Oh, and +SueatGLAllotments, no flowers on my chives yet ...

But so close ...

so I haven't missed the boat with making my chive vinegar yet...

HAHA Plot - it's no joke!

Ugh! That's what happens when you neglect your allotment for most of October. Not a happy looking plot, so I left Jamie to it(!) and worked on the HAHA plot for a couple of hours.

Jamie dug some manure into the planned brassica quarter and has stored some paving slabs on the area where the sprouts will go next year.
Talking of sprouts, ours aren't looking too bad now Jamie's removed all the dead leaves - though they're all leaning in opposite directions, we should get plenty to eat from the four plants. The leaning shows that the earth was looser than it should have been. We may resort to staking the plants a bit earlier next year.

The HAHA plot also looked abandoned, but at least now it has a small corner where I can plant the  Elephant garlic and Vayo garlic which I ordered from Suttons this morning. I dug the area, pulled weeds and stones and then spread some chicken manure pellets.

It wasn't a bad day actually, though the glimpses of blue sky didn't stay for long. There were quite a few birds around including the kestrel and, unusually for Marsh Lane, some pied wagtails. No sign of our little robin though :-(
We found a couple of pupae which I need to identify before posting to the Wildlife blog.

We've still got Network Rail working on the Marsh Lane railway bridge. I was a bit disappointed to have missed them doing the work; it sounded quite interesting. They've now put the four new strengthening pins in - they go all the way from one side to the other of a two-track railway bridge! No wonder they needed to re-inforce some parts of the arch while they were drilling!

Bye-Bye Toms and Hello Sweetcorn!

This last week has really felt autumnal; we had a lovely Summer but it feels like it's over far too soon. I went up the allotment before work during the week. There was heavy dew on the paths and look at our sad tomatoes :-(

Lots of fruits to be had but blight had struck so this weekend we cleared the area and to be honest, it's a bit of relief to have some space on that part of the plot! There were calendula there too but they had long since been buried by the pumpkin leaves and haven't been seen since July so they got composted too - not to our compost bin, but to the Council green bins.

The Jack-o-lantern pumpkins have taken over but probably won't have much more growing time - just hope they start going orange soon...
We cut back the runners on the strawberries - we've potted on a couple which will replace non-fruiting strawberry plants from this year.

Today we picked our first Spring(?!) cabbage. It's there in the trug with our first sweetcorn (fabulously sweet and didn't even need butter to make it delicious) and some of our Kestrel potatoes. They're extremely scabby and only about 5 tubers per plant...but one weighed 850g! Don't know what went on there - we're blaming the weather...! 

First Timelapse on a hot day in June 2013!

It was a really hot and lovely day on the allotment. Jamie and I spent about 6 hours there and we were actually on our plots so feel like we've achieved quite a lot.
I used this new app for the first time - this was just a freebie version so the quality isn't that great. However, I've now bought the Pro version so expect to see a few more timelapses on this blog in the future :-)

The hardest part was finding where to stand my phone hence the low-level view! This was filmed over about an hour and a half.

In the video I'm transplanting quite a few lettuces - lambs lettuce and lollo rosso. I also put some where my remaining three (yes, THREE!) florence fennel are. You'll see I've loaded the ground with slug pellets. I'm wondering whether the proximity to the sage is the problem - it's a bit of a slug/snail haven in there. Well, they've got plenty of lettuces to scoff now so maybe that'll keep them off the remaining fennel...

Jamie planted up the two Rocky cucumber plants. One in the ground and the other in a pot and that will hopefully trail across a framework. I planted up another sprout plant and some summer cabbage (Minicole) - protected under an enviromesh tunnel. I also planted up eleven Speedy french beans - the only ones that we've managed to germinate this year.

We did lots of weeding and Jamie cut the grass and did the edging. We fed the strawberries and tomatoes with Tomorite liquid feed. There are lots of flowers on the tomatoes and the strawberries are providing us with plenty of fruit for desserts.

The raspberry bushes have got bashed about by the wind (and Jamie's mowing) so I need to stake them up tomorrow. There are lots of flowers and fruits appearing and it's the most popular plant on the plot for bees at the moment.

I chopped all the chives back to ground level as the flowers had just about gone over and I didn't want them to seed everywhere - the chives will grow back quickly enough. We'll need them for our new potatoes soon :-)

 

Watching/Growing/Planting/Sowing

Wow! What a great week to be on leave! Such a lovely sunny day that even the wind was warm.

Jamie potted up the three peppers, using a sand and potting compost mix. They're in pots on weed suppressant near the tomatoes.

I planted a row of French marigolds between the carrots and parsnips. And put a staggered row of pot marigolds (calendula) alongside the tomatoes.
The salsify is barely visible but they all seem to have germinated. Here's a macro-shot of it - very easy to miss or mistake for grass!

The French beans haven't appeared (well one did) so I sowed some into individual pots and have left them in the greenhouse to germinate. I also sowed a tray of Winter cabbage Tundra in modules which should be fine germinating outside, under netting.

At last we've also sown a root trainer tray of Sweetcorn supersweet which are under the grow light at home.

A little bit of Robbie news - his chicks have fledged. We saw two sitting on the fence and Robbie was feeding them both. One of them did a circuit round our plot, but didn't land. Hopefully I'll get a photo of the family soon.
At one point Robbie was sitting on our bench and was letting out a really high-pitched sound but frozen in position. When we looked about we saw that the kestrel was on the telegraph wires watching. Once the kestrel flew away Robbie started feeding again.
That reminded me to fill in the Kestrel Survey online!

Hmmm, leek moth and lifecycles

Well, I clearly should have looked closer when I photographed the leeks yesterday! We have got some leek moth damage (not too much) and today we found several leek moth cocoons, which we disposed of, away from our leeks - hopefully our little robin will gobble them down! It would appear that the leek moth caterpillars had sneaked under our leek netting cage.



Leek moth cocoon

If these do develop into moths they'll be the parents that start the cycle to trash our alliums next Spring :-(
Talking of which, we visited the local Wyevale Garden Centre to buy a fork - they didn't have any!! - but I did buy a Solent White garlic bulb. So, we dug over the area by the leeks and hoed some chicken pellets in - we'll plant the garlic next weekend. I think there should be about 10 cloves.



Hoe hoe hoe (sorry!)

There are still quite a few butterflies about. Though it was cold enough for a frost last night it's lovely and warm in the sunshine. This small tortoiseshell butterfly was warming itself on the stones and there were a lot of cabbage whites about too. From the patterns on the outside of the wings I think it's a male. According to UK Butterflies, tortoiseshells stay in the UK and hibernate in outbuildings or hollow trees.

When we picked one of the cabbages early last month we took a tip from Liz and Ken on the allotment - they're long-term veg gardeners and know loads of tips. If you cut a cross into the remaining stem you can get extra cabbages to grow - well, this is the result. Not quite cabbages but certainly brassica leaves that can be eaten. We'll try them at some point if we get a chance while they still look edible.

The weeds continue to grow, we have a lot more weeding and clearing to do, especially with the rain and warm sunny days we keep seeing...

We picked two of the biggest celeriac and the last of the kohl rabi and sweetcorn. We rushed home to eat the sweetcorn within 20 minutes to ensure they retained as much sweetness as possible - it worked they were delish!!