Colourful chard

We had a couple of visits to the plot in the last couple of days. The rain stopped so Jamie spent the afternoon digging manure and compost into Plot 8 for the rhubarb. We're going to let the worms work the patch a bit before we plant the rhubarb.

Even the chard has started to cheer up now and the raspberries are reddening up! There are quite a few wasps and bees around the raspberries but there are very few insects around because of the bad weather. There are some more flowers on the runner beans but concern all over site that the rain will knock the flowers off before any bees are able to get out to pollinate :-(

Rainbow chard

We took a little trug of goodies home. Jamie didn't dig for all the potatoes from the belana plant he pulled - just enough for our dinner that evening. There's a bit of salad, another handful of mange tout and our first salad onions too.

Nice weather for snails

Soooo wet and chilly! We transplanted all the marigolds into the bigger trays and I sowed some calendula and put them all in the cloche.
We mulched around the raspberries with well rotted horse manure from Andy at work and took the bottle cloches off the broad beans which are big enough to look after themselves now.

That was enough - as it was we spent more than half the time in the container just watching the birds and enjoying watching the rain from under cover! It sure is getting a good soaking!

Potato planting and other stuff

Jamie did all the work today. I've got a cold so just flitted about and mostly sat down enjoying the sunshine. It's definitely April - we've had some torrential showers over the last few days but managed to avoid them all this morning.

That meant that Jamie was able to plant the two remaining rows of potatoes - both about 6" deep with grass/paper at the bottom of the trench and then the usual bag of farmyard manure. These two rows have Kestrel, Orla and the last Duke of York Red (which we intend to leave in as a maincrop).

We were joined by a lot of robins and blue tits on the plot today - the robins are getting very cocky and are willing to pinch worms from a couple of feet away from us now. I spotted the kestrel and he sat on the telegraph wires long enough for me to get this pic of him. It's a bit blurred as I had to zoom in but his lovely pinky plumage really stands out when he's flying over the site.

Kestrel

Most of our seeds are emerging now, including some silverskin onions, beets, cabbages, sprouts, sweet peas, salad crops. No sign of the parsnips, leeks or spring onions but we've found them to be quite slow to germinate previously.
We need to work out our sowing plan for the rest of these busy weeks now, then we can sit back and wait for food :-)

More seeding

Dull weather today but not too bad for sowing seeds and Jamie dug manure into the sweetcorn patch.

In the morning we soaked some seeds (sweet peas & beetroot) in hand-warm water for a few hours to help them germinate a little quicker. This softens the tough outer shell of the seed so the seedling can break out more easily... well, that's the plan.

Seeds soaking

The 2 types of beetroot were sown directly into the ground - the Boltardy are in the onion quarter and the Moneta (which are a monogerm variety which means they only grow one root per seed) are sown into the raised bed.

The following were sown into seed trays and put into the cloche:

• Nelson F1 brussels sprouts
• Minicole cabbages
• Sweet peas

I used my Nether Wallop paper potter for the first time to make some pots for the remaining sweet peas (I made the pots longer than the potter is meant to make because I want the sweet peas to get long roots). The potter is designed to make little 3cm pots and they're really sturdy so I really want to find some more seeds that would appreciate a little pot to start growing in.

The salad cloche in the raised bed had a row each of mixed leaf, radish (Dragon F1) and corn salad. The radish look ok but not one corn salad showed up! The mixed leaf started ok but each visit there have been less plants - today there were just 4 tiny seedlings left!! So, my succession sowing hasn't quite gone to plan but another row of each has been sown in the cloche today... and I did buy a new packet of Corn Salad seeds.

4 lonely seedlings!

A whole long row of Little Gem lettuce was sowed in the other cloche in the raised bed, so hopefully I'll have some kind of lettuce for my lunch in a few weeks time...

It's due to rain all day tomorrow and the ground certainly needs it, so I hope the weather people are right for Marsh Lane!

Preparing the way

As well as planting the potatoes we did some tidying. Jamie edged the plot and I mowed the paths to get the grass cuttings for adding to the potato trenches.

The excess earth from the potato trenches was dug into the other plot quarters and we dug a circular trench (1m round) for the runner bean wigwam. We filled the trench with 2 bags of Countrycare Products mushroom compost which we use for water retention but have found previously that it all disappears over the year so the beans and worms must like it!

Look at these silly ducks - they seem not to have noticed the canal running alongside our allotments so were drinking out of a tiny puddle!

There were quite a few other people on the site even though the weather wasn't too great. We spotted Malcolm converting his old divan into carrot cloches covered with fleece.
Aren't zoom lenses good?  :-)

And lastly, if anyone in a position of power reads this blog - we really need a shed!!

Jamie carrying everything to reduce the number of trips to the container

Spuds are in!

Today we planted up two rows of First Earlies. Three different varieties:

• Belana (4)
• Red Duke of York (2)
• Orla (2)
• Chopin (8)

We mixed up shredded packaging paper (thanks, Amazon!) and grass cuttings for the bottom of the 25cm deep trenches. This should help with water retention and the grass will add some acidity. That layer was topped with the Westland Organic Farmyard manure (from Hungerford's Garden Centre) which has been sitting on the plot for a few months - it had lots of worms in it and we gave it a drenching.

A small layer of earth was added and then the chitted potatoes were put at a depth of about 12cm and then covered completely with our very dry earth.

 The dry edges of the trench were crumbling away as we dug although it did drizzle for much of the day. We still haven't mastered the art of straight lines!

Sprouts and Wind

Today was our first visit to the plot since the really windy weather last Wednesday and Thursday. First thing I noticed was that our sprout cage was missing, then Jamie pointed it out in the hedge!!

Wind damage

We had secured it in the ground with bamboo legs but they'd snapped off and all the bricks holding down the mesh hadn't done their job. It was a bit tricksy getting the mesh off the hawthorn hedge but it's not badly damaged, so now it's back in place protecting our sprouts from the pigeons!

We bought 3 bags of organic farmyard manure from the garden centre and have piled that on the area which is for the sprouts next year - after Jamie dug it over. The ground needs to be firm to prevent getting blown sprouts (where the sprout is leafy rather than solid) so a bit of weight on the area for the next few weeks should hopefully do the trick.

Firming the sprout bed

I turned the compost and added more cardboard and veggie cuttings. We chatted with other allotment holders who were taking advantage of the amazing weather for January - 11° in the sun today and 0° minimum over the last week.
And, of course, we picked some more sprouts and a carrot!

Digging and Clearing

Had a lovely 4 hours on the plot this morning in the sunshine.
The temperature had reached -1 and the beans, courgette and tomato plants all collapsed due to the frost. We cleared them all away to the compost - such a lot of runner beans went uneaten. We must sow them earlier next year!

Frosted Runner Beans

Frosted Courgette

Jamie dug and put organic chicken manure pellets on the quarter for onions next year and I dug all the areas which had the plants cleared. It's satisfying to clear the areas and nice to be able to dig again - funny how you miss it even though it's tiring!

Another sunny day

We went up to do some digging and other bits this afternoon, but again it was so sunny we stopped and chatted for about an hour then didn't have time to do all that we planned!

However, we did chop down and dig in the mustard green manure and planted a couple of rows of broad beans which we're hoping will over-winter. We've put cloches over the beans as the mice are still causing trouble on other people's plots.
The beans are planted on the strip where we thoroughly dug in the horse manure that we're slightly concerned about - our test at home produced 4 broad beans; a couple which look rather fern-like and a couple which look just about perfect - so not such a great result to put our minds at rest! However, we figure the on-plot test will tell us for sure, so fingers crossed that the manure is fine....

Put a lot of corrugated cardboard (ripped into small bits) into the compost bin and gave it a good mix about - it's still a bit stinky, but there is a lot of green in there so not too suprising. It's not too wet so should be ok. The black compost bin has shrunk to about half full and is lovely compost for use next year. We've also bought some bags of Westland Farmyard manure to put under our spuds again next year.

Weeding, weeding, clearing

As promised, we spent a few hours on the plot yesterday. Weeded the whole leek/potato quarter and the root/onion quarter (well, lots of it!). The green manure (mustard) has grown really tall and should really be dug in, but we'll wait a bit to do that.

green manure

I cleared the pea netting and weeded that area too. Tomorrow we should do the brassica patch. Some of the cabbages look really good but others have been chomped by something - not sure whether it's caterpillars or something like mice - it certainly has a big appetite whatever it is!!

The leeks (all over site) are looking pretty awful - we think it may be leek moth and need to examine for further evidence now we've checked them out on t'internet....

Manure

We're a bit concerned with the broad bean we planted as a test in the horse manure. The leaves are really curled like reported with Aminopyralid contamination. Jamie's doing another test with 4 more broad beans. We haven't got too much manure and haven't spread it across the plots yet so it won't be catastrophic if it is contaminated, but obviously we don't want this additional problem!!

Green Manure

We sowed mustard, as green manure, yesterday in the middle section where the onions/shallots were. We grew this last year and it just gets dug in when it's died down after the frosts. This quarter is going to be for the legumes next year. So, at the moment it's turnips, green manure and horse manure under black plastic.. The turnips have just started showing a white bulb.

We're picking one of the red cabbages tomorrow, so this is the last photo of it growing - there's a lot of caterpillar damage, hope there's enough edible stuff left for us!

Best made plans..

We got to the plot in the morning to avoid the rain - but didn't get there early enough and got soaked, before running for cover in the container!

We did manage to get some of the manure dug into (what was) the onion quarter - it's going to be the legume quarter next year so we plan to overwinter some broad beans in there. We covered the dug-in manure area with black plastic to encourage worms, etc.
It should mean we start getting broad beans a few weeks earlier - unless the frost strikes too soon...

Picked a couple of massive beetroot - we wanted 400g for cooking borscht for tonight. In fact the two we picked weigh more than 500g each :-} Really should have taken the scales with us!

I also picked about 250g more of raspberries to make up some more vodka...

Manure and Compost

Nantes Carrots. Congo potato plants

We spent most of the morning on the plot. My friend gave us a big bucketful of well-rotted horse manure so we've put all the compost into the black composter - it's full to the brim now - and put the manure into the green one. There's a problem with some manures at the moment, due to contamination by herbicides. For this reason we're growing a bean in the manure before we risk spreading it across our plot.
Andy's confirmed that he's seen veggies growing in the manure without curled leaves so it should be fine - GOOD!
The Congo potato plants are still looking amazing. Jamie put his hand around the roots and didn't find any potatoes - hopefully they're there though!!

Some of the cabbages have got proper heads now but there's a lot of holes and I found another cabbage white caterpillar to flick off...

Picked some carrots and onions for carrot and coriander soup for tea and pulled another Orla potato. And Dave gave us a parsnip which we'll have along with a veg roast tomorrow. We've taken all the shallots home now and will make up another small jar of pickled onions.