by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 1, 2011 | Allotment
This post is way late AGAIN! It’s last weeks update, I’ll do another one on Sunday because we’ve done loads since then too..
Wow, well, that’s the wedding done then. And if you don’t believe me, here’s the proof:[flickr]photo:5753597605[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5754155572[/flickr]
The wedding also gave us chance to test an important question. What happens when you leave an allotment for 3 weeks? Well the official answer is that if you have a very kind and helpful allotment neighbour (thanks Bob!) not much! Bob kept everything growing the greenhouse, quite frankly much better than we would have, which only left a huge amount of potting on to do. And I mean huge – basically everything was ready to move on. Cue almost a full day in the greenhouse and we have all our tomatoes, aubergines and regular chili plants in their final places.
[flickr]photo:5787330789[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5787330229[/flickr]
We’ve also had a huge growth spurt from the asparagus which we thought we had killed off last year. We might have less spears, but they are much healthier (this is a relative concept, they are rubbish compared to Bob’s, but at least they are still growing). I think with asparagus you can technically get a crop on the third year, but there really is no way ours will be ready till at least year 4. Ah well.[flickr]photo:5787886538[/flickr]
We set up the netting hoops and planted out sprouts, cabbages and cauliflowers (about 6 or 7 of each), and sowed half a row each of turnips and swede (which we hardly eat any of last year, but well, it’s an allotment, thats what happens). [flickr]photo:5787885552[/flickr] .
Spending so much time there, we managed to cross a long term thing off the list – following on from Sharon’s work on her plot we decided to deal with the bit of ground between our plots. Fences are always a bit of a nightmare area because weeds get between them and are difficult to really get in and deal with, so we didn’t deal with them. We covered them up with membrane and plonked a load of chippings on them. The weeds might well grow through but hopefully a lot less vigorously than before! [flickr]photo:5787330411[/flickr]
Oh and also, I found two toads. Here is one of them: [flickr]photo:5787886956[/flickr]
by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 17, 2011 | Allotment
[flickr]photo:5627951139[/flickr]
So, not only does my camera have a rather nifty panorama mode but I sit next to Rob at work who knows a few tricks on how to use it. The above picture is a 360 degree view of plot 118 and I think it looks pretty neat!
[flickr]photo:5627962065[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5627961717[/flickr]
We had a really great long day at the allotment today and got tons done. Pilla planted lots in the greenhouse (cucumbers, kale, pumpkins, celery and a few types of flowers) and more outside on the old plot including beetroot, lettuces and carrots and peas. We’ve really caught up on the April sowing now, with almost all of it done.
[flickr]photo:5627961455[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5627961273[/flickr]
We set up a few of the structures on plot 118, moving the munty and pea frame and setting up a length of wire fence for the peas. Whilst Pilla was busy doing the sowing I planted the main crop potatoes in the ground that last year was the huge soil mound.
[flickr]photo:5627952023[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5628545964[/flickr]
Bob very kindly gave us use of his rotavator which made quick work of the soil where we had the green manure and also up the side where the pea frame was. I also had a good weed of the whole plot and even had time to sweep the path – the whole plot is looking pretty decent now, and touch wood we seem to be on top of the weeds just before the wedding (they will come back I know, but right now, we might as well enjoy it!).
Now, where is that aftersu, I think I might have some sunburn coming on….
by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 16, 2011 | Allotment
We’ve been slack taking the camera to the allotment lately – hence the lack of updates really. However i’ve just got a nice shiny new one from Pilla, so I went to take some picture mid-week (I had to water too, that season has come around quickly). I’m going to change how I upload pictures too – i used to have them really small for storage reasons on my server, but i’m going to try and use Flickr for them which should allow much bigger images 🙂
[flickr]photo:5623154289[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742854[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742272[/flickr]
So, what’s new? Well whilst Pilla was busy working this week I managed to plant our early potatoes. I’m planning on doing the rest this week, but it’s pretty hard work digging them in (last year we used Bob’s technique of just using a bulb planter, which is rapid, but our soil is quite compacted and planting them by digging a trench and putting the soil back really breaks it up) . The potatoes are going in the land where the soil pile was, so this is really brand new growing space for us.
[flickr]photo:5623154071[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742904[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742224[/flickr]
The garlic we planting is shooting up and we have quite a bit growing in the greenhouse, although the squash seeds don’t seem to be doing much yet. The plots are both looking fairly decent now – the cherry tree is in blossom and quite a few of the flowers we planted are starting to bloom.
[flickr]photo:5623154241[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742448[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5623742402[/flickr]
We also have our first strawberry flower of the year and the figs are slowly starting to plump up!
I was just looking through the pictures of the new plot when we got it, we’re very proud of how much we’ve done in the last year or so. Since we put the greenhouse up the plot certainly looks ‘done’ (I do need to find some glass to finish it off…)
Before: [flickr]photo:5623163673[/flickr] After: [flickr]photo:5623742810[/flickr]
Before: [flickr]photo:5623163633[/flickr] After: fdg[flickr]photo:5623153865[/flickr]
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 16, 2011 | Allotment
Well, that was a pretty healthy break from blog writing wasn’t it? In our defence we’ve been pretty busy with wedding things as well December was a write off due to the weather. Well almost a write off… we got our new shed in December and decided to put it up there and then with some help from Bob. Doesn’t sound much I suppose, putting up a shed, well the temperature didn’t get above -6 C and there was a good 4-5″ of snow. Still, at least the sun was out!
We haven’t done that much else over the winter really. The greenhouse we bought is still sat at the back of the plot, but we did put in a new apple tree at he back of the new plot. That makes three fruit trees in this part which I’m pretty sure equals an fruit orchard.
Things have started up again lately (well as much as they can when you have a wedding to plan). We’ve dug over quite a lot of the new plot, it’s quite nice how easy it is to dig after having things grown in it this year. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the green manure but the roots do seem to have broken up the soil a bit..
Elsewhere we have started planting the new crops for the year – the garlic and shallots are in and Pilla started sowing some flowers in the greenhouse this weekend whilst I was away.
Roll on the summer!
by Neil Wilkinson | Nov 21, 2010 | Allotment
It’s Pilla’s 29th birthday today and we celebrated it in style. Allotment style of course. We’ve had another big break in blogs, for which we are very sorry but it’s been a combination of a) not getting down to the plot that much recently and b) not much going on at the plots. Well, I say not much going on, this is actually my favourite time of year. The weeds are not growing, the place is quiet and you actually feel like you are making progress with the plots, it’s just that there is not that much interesting stuff to report. The day was slightly interrupted today with the annual allotment task of signing up the other plot holders and payment of rents but we managed to get lots done over the weekend none the less.
On Saturday Philippa spent her last few hours as a 28 year old by removing all the old plants from the greenhouse which is now almost completely empty and giving it a good clean out. It only seems like a few weeks ago we could hardly get in there and now there is not a single plant growing! I tidied up the raspberry canes on plot 97 by removing the canes that had fruited this year and tying up the new growth. There are probably about three times as many canes as last year and we were overrun with raspberries so it’s a little bit frightening how many we might get next year.
We’ve been talking for a while about getting a little tea shed on 118, before we could do this we needed a shed base, which I made on Saturday with a layer of sand and 8 of the 2″ by 3″ flags. It started level enough but by the time you have laid a few of those flags you get pretty tired and in the end it’s probably best described as ‘level enough’. It now sits proudly next to the greenhouse base. We did have a plan to put the greenhouse up today but we probably couldn’t have done it in the time we had available, so instead I decided to make a brick path to both the shed and the greenhouse. I think they are best described as rustic! No-one could describe them as level and if you hit the right bricks there are definitely a few wobbles, but it is a good way of using up lots of the bricks we have dug up over the plot. Pilla sorted through the many pots we had of spent compost and grow bags from the greenhouse and spread it all over the asparagus bed.
We’ve harvested our first sprouts since the last blog (of which Pilla ate three, a record!) and today took our first parsnips. What with the beetroot, cabbage and kale we are well into our winter crops already.
by Neil Wilkinson | Oct 10, 2010 | Allotment
First blog for a while, but our inactivity on the website is definitely not reflected on the plot. Last week whilst Pilla was recovering from an injury I decided to get some more flags laid on the path. This decision was helped by the arrival of some chippings which I managed to get a fair few wheelbarrows of, and meant I could nicely finished off one side of the plot. In between laying the flags I also managed to get a couple of big wheelbarrows full of manure and spread it around the recently removed pumpkin patch. The week before we took home the pumpkins and it turned into possibly the biggest harvest we have taken, it literally required a trolley to get it back to the car!
We also started using some of our homw grown compost, which looks really good. We put the first two wheelbarrows on the area where the potatoes were, some of it is full of clay, so now has two or three inches of compost and manure spread out over it.
We knew we had some helpers this weekend and so had planned a few big jobs. The main one was to dig over the ground we uncovered under the old shed and also clear the back corner of the plot. In preparation for this on Saturday I took a few pallets apart and made a place to store some manure, this is going against the back fence and meant we could then clear the ground around it. Whilst i did this today, Pilla, Nic & Ed set about the horrible job of removing all the weeds, glass, bricks, rubble, plastic and old tools in the ground. We spent almost all day doing this, with Nic finishing it off by raking it all level. The plot looks way better for it. I’s now pretty much ready to start building the base for the greenhouse and shed.
… which looked like this before we started today… 
… and this 6 weeks ago … 
We’re pretty please with how it’s all looking now, we don’t really have any areas of huge weediness now, and should have a nice new greenhouse and shed soon. We’re also pretty pleased about how our butternut squash is looking, having never got anything so much as a fruit nubbin last year!
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