Has Spring Sprung?

It certainly felt like it today! And, luckily, the lovely weather was predicted so I'd booked the afternoon off! It was about 13° in the shade with a low of -2° overnight.
Before leaving work I went to a photography talk, so I attempted to put some of the tips ("how to turn a snap into a photograph") into practise... Bear with me :-)

Attempting to use the Rule of Thirds - missing the mark I think

We prepared the area where the tomatoes are going this year. We cleared all the weeds and stones from an area on Plot 8B that hadn't been dug very well and then tramped it down and covered it in weed suppressant. We're having 3 Lizzano tomato plants in pots - the same as we had last year, as they proved to be so blight resistant, but with plenty more space this year.
I was chatting so forgot to take an "after" photo. We made a wood chipping path between that area and the strawberry bed and it looked very tidy(!) however, we think Mrs Blackbird will have a field day flicking the wood chippings all over the place! The chippings are dropped off by a local tree surgeon and someone always finds a use for them.

Pleased to see (most of) the raspberries are budding well. Yes, this is another photo trial. This was using Portrait mode on the camera rather than using auto - not too convinced it makes a whole lot of difference on this particular photo, so need to practise that a bit more.
Now, this I was very pleased with. Zoomed in and using portrait mode of the robin did make for a lovely photo.. And they are so photogenic.

Robbie eating sunflower hearts we took to the plot for him

By 5pm the sun had disappeared behind clouds (cirrocumulus I think) and it was beginning to get a bit chilly so we headed home. Just time for one Landscape photo...

Digging, clearing and some planting!

We had a brilliant few hours on the plot this afternoon. We got our shallots into the ground - fifteen Golden Gourmet should provide enough shallots for some pickles and cooking with.
We stapled (LOVE our staple gun!) netting onto the frame Jamie made the other week and put that over the top. The shallots don't really need that much protection but it keeps the birds (and mice) from pulling the shallots out of the ground and later will provide some protection against the leek moth.

The rest of the afternoon I spent digging the area behind the raised bed. The raspberries are sending shoots and roots out so that seems like a good sign that they're spreading happily. This area will be used for our little greenhouse for germinating seeds and then, once the greenhouse is packed away, we'll be putting some pretty wildflowers and night stocks in.

Jamie cleared a layer of moss and compost from the raised bed - we're going to give it a top up before sowing our beets and radishes this year. Then Jamie cleared all the annoying grass and weeds from near our strawberries and rhubarb. The birds keep burying our rhubarb whilst flicking around for worms and grubs.

Talking of birds, I've put an entry and video on the Wildlife on Our Allotment blog regarding the robins today. Our new regular, the female blackbird, was also on the scene - very pleased to eat giant worms we uncovered during our digging and clearing.

We took some small leeks home - enough to go in the creamy mushroom and leek pie that I'm looking forward to tonight!

Planning (Part Two) and Potatoes

Another very cold day, no rain though! We didn't get a chance to go to the plot but went to collect our shallots from my Mum's for planting tomorrow.

 

We spent some time looking through our seeds and doing some more planning. I've updated the plan for Plot 7 - it's changed a bit since the plan in February.

We've also worked out a rough plan for Plot 8B, which is the plot we took over last year and didn't fully use. This year it will hopefully look very full, as we plan to put quite a few sweetcorn on there, with jack-o-lantern pumpkins growing around - well, fingers crossed!

We're not too sure that big empty space will be there, as I haven't measured the areas we need for the various crops but that's a rough plan...

 

While at my Mum's we checked on our spuds - chitting nicely in the cold, light room... There's been quite a lot of growth in the last three weeks. A couple of the Orla at the front were upside down, with white chits pointing the wrong way, so we flipped them - that should help :-}

Too Cold to Hang Around!

A quick visit to the plot this afternoon to pick some leeks for two days dinners. We picked mostly from the ones which had been undercover and a couple from the ones which have been out in the open.

 The covered ones have been generally larger than the uncovered ones. There are only 3 left in the covered section (though they're not covered anymore).

It was bitterly cold - reached 2° with a low of -4° over the last week and there have been dry flakes of sleet falling for the last two days.
No sign of our robin but the female blackbird was staying close and was had puffed up her feathers for warmth.
Had a quick peeop at our over-wintered broad beans which are still looking ok. Some other beans on site have been taken down by the frost - not sure whether that's the variety that was used or because they had grown a bit too tall too early (like ours did last year).

You can see we're not going to be living on broad beans but hopefully we'll get a few early ones...
 

Saturday Snigger

No time or inclination to go to the COLD plot today, so here's a joke - thanks John!

My racing snail wasn't winning any races

I took its shell off to make him more aerodynamic

It didn't work...

If anything, it made him more sluggish

 

 

HAHAHA :-D
(Sorry!)

Two Quarters Dug

I was using up a days leave today and the sun shone! It was about 8° so very pleasantly warm in the sunshine. In fact, it's been so sunny that this dandelion decided it was worth opening its flower - shame it had already been pulled up and was on our spoils heap!

And, amazing, we saw our first butterfly! It flew by a couple of times but was going so fast we couldn't identify it - it looked like tortoiseshell-type colours.
Our rhubarb is looking very feeble! I took the cover off it so it can get a little sunshine. It's only its first year though, so we're not expecting it to produce anything this year - except maybe one stalk for some rhubarb vodka!


That is IT!



For the next couple of hours Jamie spent time re-building the frame for our leeks and shallots and I moved the frame for the peas - this year we're growing mange tout and petit pois.
Then for the rest of the afternoon I was digging over the second quarter - where our potatoes are going this year. The earth was pretty easy to dig (though my back is suffering!) and it didn't need a serious dig as we'll be digging trenches for the spuds as usual anyway.

It looked good when we left though so we're half way there - with Plot 7. Plot 8 will be more taxing...

 

Weeding in the sun

Another dry day and today with sunshine - we really are feeling spoilt!

This was taken at about 5:00

We saw our first ladybird of the year - it appeared to be hibernating on an old brassica stalk. It's a harlequin ladybird.

We had a couple of hours on the plot, just doing some tidying and clearing. So many weeds and so much grass :-( At least it's not too hard pulling them free from the ground as it's been so wet.
Our robin had his nose (beak) put out of joint today by a very cocky female blackbird who was happy to hop very close to pinch worms that 'Robbie' would have had. He was around too but didn't get the first pick of worms :-)

We went home with leeks for tea - still quite a few left in the ground.

Wildlife blog updated with some of today's finds

 

More Days like this, please!

That's more like it! Three days with no rainfall. We've had an inch of rain since our last visit to the plot a week ago -- evidence in the form of our new rain gauge...

It was so good to be digging the plot and having other plotholders to watch and talk to for a change!

The ground is muddy but very diggable (doesn't look like a word, but we know what it means!) and last year's potato quarter looks pretty much ready for this years onions now - we're expecting Thompson & Morgan to deliver our Santero F1 onion sets very soon, joining the garlic which is looking good - 15 bulbs have sprouted.


Garlic shooting up well

While Jamie was doing most of the digging I was clearing away the beets which had grown to mammoth size. Although Boltardy I can't think that they wouldn't be woody so they'll be thrown away but I left them on a spare bit of plot for the mice to enjoy for a bit. As I was pulling them I saw a lot of centipedes, spiders and slugs. Hopefully the birds will deal with clearing the slugs and the slug eggs we found. See the Wildlife blog for more

 

Asteroids and Meteors

After the amazing footage of the meteorite falling in Russia this morning I'd been looking forward to seeing the DA14 asteroid this evening from the well-placed allotment site.

Russia, not Hungerford

We took our flask of coffee, binoculars, camera, sky map and star map Android app along with a little rum and settled in the container at about 7:30 ready for the start of the 'show' at 7:50.
It was a fabulous night for star gazing. Lovely and clear with a newish moon not causing too much light. The DA14 asteroid passed between Earth and some satellites but it's only small so not visible to human eye without at least binoculars.

DA14 asteroid image

The moon looked great through the binoculars and Jupiter was shining brightly. Sadly, finding the planned location of the asteroid wasn't as simple as that. My hands were shaking so much with the chill that I could barely make out the stars of the plough constellation through the binoculars. So, tracking down the star M94 and the asteroid near that was an impossible task!
So, we returned home fairly quickly, just as clouds began to cover the sky. Never mind, we'll stick to going out for the perseids in August when it's warmer and easier to spot!

Chitting Spuds for 2013

So, here's the essential blog photo :-)
All our seed potatoes chitting at my mum's house - in the nice, cold, light spare room.
Here's the psychedelic picture to identify the different varieties...

This is what they really look like:

And these are all our kestrels - probably more than we want, but there's always the spares table at the allotment site. We bought these from the Wyvale Garden Centre where they were stored in a much warmer room, hence the chits already forming.

 

 The earlies definitely benefit from chitting, as we want lots of little spuds to form but maincrops don't really need to chit in advance of being planted. However, it would be too early to put them in the ground now - apart from the fact that it's soaking wet!