Ugh - Leased land is rubbish!

Oh no, here we go again....

De-ja-vu of 2009

We've been told by the developer/landowner won't extend the lease on Marsh Lane because it could put a block on future development of the site :-( Basically we can't use the site as an allotment even though there's no planning application in sight yet. So frustrating!! So much time and effort put in to make the Marsh Lane site such a brilliant commodity for Hungerford.

There's the likelihood of an alternative site but at present that would also be on a short lease - not a great position - can just imagine re-posting this in another 4 years....
We'll have to see what happens at the HAHA AGM on Monday evening.

On a plus note, in the last week we've eaten our first handful of strawberries - bad luck Jamie for getting the one that the red ants had got into <bleah>
Jamie also planted out six more Scarlet Empire runner beans and two jack-be-little squashes.
My fennel is still being eaten. I tried spraying with various things - the detergent seems to have got rid of the greenfly but I think slugs were joining in the fun. 7 plants left now....
 

Weather, Bacteria and Bugs

We've had over 5mm of rain since my last entry a week ago. Most of that fell yesterday while I was at the West Woodhay Garden Show with my mum - what a shame, though on the whole I did enjoy the day. The trouble was, it wasn't just rainy; it was a bit chilly and extremely windy - actually, that sums up the weather last week. We haven't taken the wraps off our runner beans yet as we're concerned the bean stems will snap.

We planted up our sweetcorn on Plot 8B last Monday evening - we protected with bottle cloches on them as they were rather small but Monday was likely to be the best day for planting. Unfortunately the wind did cause our protective cloche to chop one of the little seedlings off! But we popped another corn in the hole so maybe we'll get 16 plants after all...

Plot 8B

I planted up the Cornells Bush Delicata over the hole filled with manure and Jamie's Jack-be-little pumpkins will be planted near the sweetcorn as we want them to trail through the sweetcorn stems.

Orla potato is showing our first flower

Flowers are appearing on our potatoes - the Orla was the first to actually bloom. They're so pretty. On a less positive note Jamie had to pull one Kestrel potato which had rotted in the ground due to blackleg. Someone else on site had also mentioned that one of their plants had it. If spotted (and it's not hard to spot) you need to get rid of all trace of the rotten plant to avoid it spreading.

Carrots looking happy under enviromesh

I sowed some more mangetout and have protected the growing stems with mesh - it looks like the pigeons have been having a bit of a nibble. Talking of nibbling, over the last couple of weeks I've noticed that my florence fennel appears to be disappearing. I thought it may be slugs but today I took a leaf off one of the little plants which had gone all curly. On closer inspection it has greenfly on it - of course, I've now read that greenfly love fennel! We need more ladybirds! I've hardly seen any this year :-(

Lastly, we dug some more of the HAHA plot and filled two holes with manure so I can plant a couple of squashes (a Floridor yellow and Uchiki Kuri).

Unusual Veg Plot

This trendy photo was taken by Ethan - he found a setting I'd forgotten existed on my camera :-)

That's me, still clearing the HAHA plot. Nearly done... Nigel gave us some mooli radish seeds and some salsola Liscari Sativa. I'd never heard of that before but looks like it could be interesting - if it germinates. It needs to be reasonably cold for successful germination so I'll sow in a tray at home on the doorstep, which is always in the shade.

I sowed some more mangetout on our plot and also a test sowing of Asparagus pea, to see how long they'll take to produce once they're on the HAHA plot.

I also sowed some more radish on top of the row of wild rocket, which was a no-show. Oh yes, and our sweetcorn has germinated at home - 15 out of 20 so far. We'll take them up the plot soon...
 

Come on Strawbs!

Well, we got some rain! Quite a lot of it this morning (2.5mm) so we didn't get to Marsh Lane until after lunch; by then you'd hardly notice that it had rained.
We fed Robbie who is very busy feeding his chicks but still not ready for them to be photographed and Mrs Blackbird is squeezing as much as possible into her beak to take off to a nest somewhere.

I'm keeping a close eye on the strawberries - it can't be too much longer to wait now, surely...!
I transplanted some chard seedlings. I tried to be a bit selective so the multi-coloured stems show at their best. I like chard in salads but Jamie's not keen, so I don't grow much and I grow a new crop each year rather than leaving it in the ground.

We spent most of the time, yesterday and today, working on the new HAHA plot. We've nearly cleared all the weeds. We're going to grow unusual veg - the types of things you won't find in the supermarket. We hope to have enough for the HAHA stand at the Hungerford Food Festival at the end of September - that's the plan.
Look at these pretty weeds - not on our plot or the HAHA one I hasten to add!

 

More sunshine and sitting

Here's a photo of the plots from the other angle. I love these overheads shots - taken by putting the camera on timer and attaching it to the end of an 8-ft bamboo cane! It's a bit hit&miss, sometimes the photos line up, but there are also a lot at very jaunty angles :-) I'm taking a few around the site and adding to our Facebook page to show off all the hard work of the plotholders.

It was another scorcher today. Jamie mowed the grass around our plots while I mixed up the remainder of the manure which we collected and it's now bagged up for when we need it.
We spent most of our time on the site today working on the new HAHA plot. We've moved it to a1-pole plot near the communal area. We cleared a lot of the weeds but have a long way to go yet....

We also spent a lot of time chatting - lucky our actual plots aren't by a communal seat otherwise we'd never get anything done!

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!

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...

 

Two Visits to the Plot

We got to the plot for sunrise. We intended to get there before the birds started their chorus but we were too late. They were singing beautifully all the while we were there and we could hear the cuckoo across the marsh. It was a beautiful morning; just a few clouds and when the sun rose they were a fabulous colour (the photo doesn't do them justice).


5am

The sun reaches the the western hedge well before it lights up our plot.

The hedges round the site are looking beautiful at the moment with their shiny new foliage. The hawthorn with its may blossom is particularly stunning up close. This photo isn't photo-shopped, it's the morning sunlight giving it the pinky hue.

We went back home for a couple of hours and then returned to site about lunchtime. A lovely warm day and although windy at the top of site we found it to be quite still at our plots.

Plants in waiting

I planted up the celeriac - 2 rows about 30cm apart.

Yes, I cheated. My seed-sown celeriac is too pathetic so I bought a tray at the Garden Centre. I'm sure more germinated than are in the tray but something is nibbling them and it's just too slow growing.

Jamie took the netting off the onions and weeded all round them and dug up the persistent potatoes!

The strawberry plants, which we're growing next to our seat for the birds to eat, are looking healthy and, along with the chives, are bringing bees and hoverflies in.

Robbie came to join us as usual and watches our every move. No sign of his youngsters yet; he's still taking them plenty of worms.

 

Post Number 300!

Not a terribly exciting post but still it's a milestone :-)
We visited a very windy plot in the afternoon. It was very busy and we have new neighbours (on the plot where we saw the toad yesterday).
We took our tomatoes up but have protected them with fleece as they aren't used to being outside. A very good job we didn't take them up yesterday - it was 1°. Some people's potatoes and squashes had been burnt by frost, but it looked like our end of the site was protected - possibly because of the canal or the hedge.

Look how cosy our toms look.
The wind didn't make working with fleece very easy! We've round it round one of our bean wigwams for the time-being. We sowed another 11 Scarlet Empire runner beans yesterday as we've only had 3 germinate so far.. and still no sign of any french Speedy beans yet.

We shouldn't get any frost now but the next few days we're expecting rain and more wind - bleah!

I snipped off the excess parsnips, so just one per station now. We did some weeding around the rhubarb and removed some more rogue spuds which are appearing all over the site!

We left with three lovely leeks which will be soup quite soon - they're the leeks Malcolm gave us and have been in the ground since 8th August last year! I left a few in the ground but they'll have to go soon as they're in the way of the squash/brassica plantings.

I wrote a small piece for our local quarterly magazine. Some people on site think I have information about the end of our tenancy - I don't. Along with the 80+ other plotholders I'm waiting/hoping for a decision soon...
 

Sunshine & Buttercups

Another lovely day so another few hours on the plot. I have to admit, most of the time I wasn't actually working; I got some good wildlife pics though. We saw a toad and a couple of ladybirds - we haven't seen many of them this year so far. Pictures will be put on the wildlife blog later.
This buttercup is one of the many on the empty plot next door to ours. They're so beautiful when the sun shines on them. Jamie got fed up with the edge of the path looking so awful so tidied it up and that's where he found the toad.

We're just waiting for the chives to burst into colour. We've seen a few more bees and hoverflies around over the last couple of days so the flowers will keep them happy.

I sowed five more jack-be-little pumpkin seeds. Only one germinated under the light at home and that looks rather leggy. We'd like to have two plants really.
We also transplanted the french marigolds into modules - 96 of them; I think a few of them will be re-homed!

The weather forecast is threatening 2° tonight so we earthed up the potatoes again (just to be on the safe side) and where we couldn't fit any more earth we put grass cuttings on them. The thermometer showed it got down to 3° last night but nothing had been frosted. Maybe the wind helped or it may be that the ground is warm enough now...