A Little Bit of This... A Little Bit of That

Hooray! It's May! And it's been a bright, warm(-ish) day on the allotment with lots of other plotholders on the site. Jamie spent the whole time digging Plot3 but I couldn't face that, so I did lots of different jobs...mostly involving the compost. Not a very interesting picture...

But look at the animated version! The bins are alive with woodlice and worms - both very welcome in the compost to help breakdown the plant material. You have to be quick to see them though, they scatter as soon as the lid is opened.

I pulled up and composted last year's Brussels Sprouts plants. They've been re-growing so I chopped the new growth up but the stalks were too thick so they'll go in the green bin at home. I added some dried out weeds, a wheelbarrow of manure and a pile of shredded household bills - that's the best place for them, if not in the potato trench!

I potted on the petunias. They'll appreciate the extra-growing power from that multi-purpose compost. Their next move will be into tubs and baskets.

I even managed to sow a row of radish into our protected little raised bed on Plot3. (Hungerford Town and Manor have taken away lots of the stones to shore-up the river. Hopefully lots of slugs were taken away too!)

And finally I helped Jamie with a bit of digging, but I did an easy bit with no horrible grass and roots.

Aah, I like May Day.

Growing Time

After waiting for the forecast extreme heat then a big thunderstorm, which never arrived, we had a grey day on the plot yesterday and just 1.5mm of rain. But, hooray! We got some blue sky and warm sunshine today so the site was nice and busy.

Kestrel potato flower

Some plotholders have pulled some early potatoes already, but we probably have a couple more weeks to wait. The Tenerife potatoes look happier in the potato bags than they do in the ground, but they're beginning to get some flowers so hopefully they're healthy enough to grow some tubers.

Jamie got a couple more pumpkins planted up in Plot3; adding lots of manure to the hole to feed the pumpkins and cheer up the earth on the plot at the same time. The earth on this plot is reddish in colour; very different from Plots 7&8 which were used for the canal clean-up in the 1980s. We think that the dredgings made the ground very fertile. I planted a row of marigolds along the edge of Plot3 which we hope will encourage bees and other insects to the plot too.

That's a photo of our lovely home-made compost. Amazing to think that consists of just gardening/kitchen waste and ripped up cardboard boxes! We used that, along with some well-rotted manure for our celery seedlings. They are planted in tubs in the hope we can keep it wet enough. We'll see. Last time we tried to grow celery the stems we're hollow...

The beetroot and Silverskin onions are growing well. Most of the garlic looks okay, but some are developing flower heads, so we'll use them early. We had one tonight - not very well developed cloves but very strong flavour!

My boss at work gave us two tomato plants (I need to check the variety- I know they're yellow cherry fruits). They're planted up in a GrowBag in the greenhouse, with string going from the pots to the roof. Exciting! We've never grown toms inside before.

We're unfortunately sharing our strawberries with the ants, but they're still delicious and there's plenty to go round :-)

We have some colour - Blue Sky!

And it was so lovely to be out in the sunshine!

Jamie wheeled a few more barrow-loads of manure down to our site from the HAHA winter delivery, the pile is rather small now, but it's good stuff - very well-rotted so it's a shame to not use it.

I got an additional barrow-load, just to show willling and to make the cost up to £2. It was tiring, even on a cold day! We really should have taken our flask with us. It was nice recuperating with the sun on my face though!

I did some more weeding, clearing the area where we had wildflowers last year. I wasn't sure whether the rosettes were from flowers or weeds but I weeded them all as we may not have the flowers there this year. I still need to do a bit more planning for that half of plot 8, we're waiting for a blueberry to be delivered which is likely to go there, near the raspberry canes (which were rubbish last year). There's also our massive sage plant which keeps spreading and I haven't used sage for about 2 years! I need to look up what to do with it; cooking but also probably to get rid of most of it and put a few plants in pots for sharing.
Look, tiny signs of edible life...

A garlic sprout!

Rhubarb, at last!

And, here's the surprising little songster who was serenading us today - a little dunnock!

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...

It's Wet; It's January

Looking back over the blog, I see that 2012 started with a drenching and last year wasn't much better, and I'm happy that we're mostly just planning at the moment. However, we had a quick visit to the plot to see if the robin was about - there were two, but, so far, not friendly ones like last year :(

This photo shows two things 1) We've had a lot of rainfall 2) We should have cleaned our pots, tidied and sealed them away like good allotmenteers - groan, what a mess, but it'll wait a while longer!

The River Shalbourne, that we cross on the way to the site, was looking rather full but I was pleased to see the giant puddle under the railway bridge wasn't there, so that saved our feet getting a soaking. The river was at 0.26m, just 4cm above average high and way off the record high of 1.08m.

Marsh Lane has surprisingly good drainage and, although soggy in places, isn't a quagmire or underwater like some other allotment blogs have shown recently - my sympathies are with those plotholders. 

We wish we'd protected the manure from the rain, though I guess it's still acting as a weed suppressant and the blackbirds are having a field day with all the worms escaping the waterlogged piles.

I'm looking forward to having some more leeks and sprouts plus there may be a couple of cabbages that are still edible, but yesterday wasn't a day for hanging around!

Literally SSDD!

Here's the remains of our sweetcorn - looking very picturesque against the late Autumn sky  (should that be Winter?).

Such a pretty picture I put it at the top of this post, but the stems really need clearing and composting along with most of what's left on our plots!

 

Another 10 wheelbarrows of manure shifted today. Half to the HAHA plot and half to ours lucky one huge pile was dumped right beside our plot - very handy!

"Same sh*t; different day".

I'm pleased with the squash trellis we had this year. I'm surprised that the heavy fruits are still suspended even though the foliage has died back completely. That squash isn't actually tied to the trellis or rope at all. It was a real space-saver rather than growing this trailing monster across the plot.

The sun is so low at this time of year that it was getting dark and chilly by 4:00pm so we cleaned the tools off and walked home on the last day of November.

 

Manure and Squashes

First visit to the plot today following our lovely two weeks away in beautiful Tenerife - now, I love the allotment, but I'd rather be in Tenerife again right now!

I only went to see how things were doing and to pull a potato but ended up spending a couple of hours on the site.
There hasn't been a frost while we were away and the weather has apparently stayed quite warm, though there had been a lot of rain at some point - the gauge was full.
Looks like I'm going to be eating squashes for a few months - Jamie's refusing at this point :-)


Cornells Bush Delicata

Jack-be-Little

Uchiki Kuri

It was such a warm day and there were quite a few of us there because the manure was being delivered - we can buy a barrow-load from HAHA for £1 (HAHA buy it from a local farmer). We were pleased to see how well-rotted it is and I moved 8 barrow-loads to our plot - Jamie may get some more next week.

I went home with a very heavy bag of potatoes, one squash and a sweetcorn - most of the sweetcorn have gone over now but the one I took home was still sweet and tasty, though the kernels were a little harder than you'd really want.

A Bit of Planting

Another lovely sunny day started with us collecting two bags and a bucketful of horse manure from beside the road at Liddington. We've driven past the 'free manure' sign so many times!

So, when we got to the plot I dug nice deep holes and filled them with the manure. I planted the Uchiki Kuri plants by the trellis and put the Floridor yellow (round courgette) in the legume quarter.

I want to put the green courgette where the lettuce are, but that can wait a bit.

The watering system is a plastic bottle with a length of pipe attached; the aim being to let the water seep down to the roots rather than running off the surface. I've used flower pots for the same purpose by the trellis.

The hole on plot 8b is waiting for the Cornell's Bush Delicata, which eventually germinated but is nowhere ready to be planted yet.

While I was doing that Jamie planted up the tomato plants. He's put a cane through into the ground to stop them toppling over and we loosely attached the plant to it. They're looking rather unhappy with their browning leaves but hopefully they'll cheer up in the big pots full of Tomorite grow bags... we'll see...

 

Readying for Runners

Another lovely few hours on the allotment today. It was mostly sunny, though the wind was chilly, so we needed to keep busy or at least sit in the sunshine! The temperature last night was -2° but finally reached double figures today 10° while we were on the plot - it's getting there, slowly...

The first thing we did was dig circular trenches for our runner bean wigwams.

We put 2 bags of mushroom compost in each trench. We have two types of runners this year: Scarlet Empire and a white-flowered variety which we were given by a fellow plotholder last year.



While Jamie dug over the rest of the bean quarter, I piled manure round the raspberry bushes as a healthy mulch. I covered the area where the fennel is going with black plastic to try to warm the ground a bit. Also managed to square off the dug area on Plot 8a, still a lot do be sorted on plot8b though...

Panorama of Plot 7 - Three Quarters ready...

Spotted this pheasant clearing up one of the empty plots near us - there's nothing for him on our plots at the moment. I've updated the wildlife blog too.