by Philippa | Jun 7, 2009 | Allotment
It was all set to be a rather cold, wet and lonely allotment experience today as Neil is ‘working’ in Abu Dhabi. And so while he was on the beach in 40 degree heat I was putting on the layers to brave the wintery conditions that befell Manchester this week. Which meant that it was a lovely surprise to be visited by Pete and Suzy and the boys (‘hello William and Alex!). I think that we have two budding gardeners on our hands as they seemed to know what lots of the plants are and were keen to explore the ones that they hadn’t seen before. Alex seems to have an affinity with the chickens but we drew the line at allowing him into the chicken run despite his requests!
I seemed to have quite a few jobs to do today, I think perhaps Neil engineered this for the week that he is away to keep me busy! So what with the monthly meeting first thing this morning it meant it was a longer day at the plot than expected and ironically when I left at 4.45pm it was the best weather of the day.
Good news in the greenhouse – our first fledgling tomato! No, I am not hallucinating, look closer and you will see a little green nubbin of a tomato. Ahh, so proud. Most of the other plants have yellow flowers on, so I gave them all some tomato food. We will have to keep feeding them about once a week from now on.
Our coldframe was stuffed to the brim so it was time to plant out the courgettes. We have both green (Zucchini) and yellow (F1 Jemmer). Courgette plants are notorious for producing a huge amount, the more you pick the more they grow, so I only planted out two of each colour and even then it might be a bit of a squeeze once they start getting bushy. A handy tip from our current issue of Grow Your Own magazine is to sink the top half of a plastic juice bottle upside down into the soil near the base of the plants so that they can be fed and watered via this direct to their roots as they are quite greedy. No sooner had I planted the courgettes out the coldframe was full again! This week the sweetcorn and curly kale are being hardened off.
The next job was a bit of a rescue attempt. Neil had planted out the peas and the dwarf beans in the last fortnight and they were quite ‘leggy’. Neil ran some twine round the peas to encourage them to twist around but had run out of time to do the same with the beans. They seemed like they were perking up a bit last week but in the meantime there has been almost torrential rain for a couple of days so when I arrived on site today they were almost horizontal on the soil! I managed to tease the peas a bit taller on the string but they were actually winding round quite well. I also planted a few extra peas along the line as they can be planted quite tightly. I then ran some string around the beans and threaded them through and they look much better already. In fact one of the plants has its first flower so maybe in the next few weeks they will all be blooming!
Lastly, I planted out some red and green lettuce (lollo rosso and lollo biondi) from the greenhouse and the gem lettuces that Bob kindly gave us a few weeks ago. Fingers crossed they don’t look too tempting a treat for any birds/slugs/mice! Next week will involve more planting out of things from the coldframe and maybe some potting on in the greenhouse but it really does feel like we are on the home straight and the greenhouse is looking positively empty in comparison with the last few months. All we need now are things to eat!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 2, 2009 | Allotment
.. which means this post is going to be an epic one. We’ve had a very busy few days, helping people move house, cycling to Liverpool, shopping for my week in the Middle East, so we have not spent too much time at the plot. Which is a shame because the weather has been perfect for it, however the advantage is that when we went tonight the plot seems to have kicked off it’s shoes, soaked up the sun and generally been having a fine time of it.
So, may we present for you a full on photo tour of our tiny piece of former car park in Manchester… (I’m not going to talk about all of them, it would take me all night!)
The broad bean flowers are a big hit with the local bee population.
The dwarf french beans are not looking great, but I only planted them out yesterday so I’m hopeful they will harden up over the next few days.
Before having an allotment I don’t think I’d ever seen a potato plant and now I’ve seen a potato flower. Aww, isn’t it cute?
The mixed lettuces look great. Which reminds me, I need to google how plants photosynthesize with red leaves.
Lots of our fruit is starting to ripen. We definitely didn’t plant enough strawberries this year, next year I think we will do them in some big bins we have with holes cut in the side. I think we’ll get more plants, more varieties and a more efficient use of our space.
Things in the greenhouse are going well. The tomato plants are big (and have lots of flowers) and the cucumber plants are so big they are starting to frighten me.
Our flowers make a big difference to the plot, I think we will grow more next year.
And this is what it is all about. We got our first proper vegetables in the form some radishes (and also learnt a vital lession in remembering to wash our produce before eating. Mmm soiley). And if you want you can play a fun game with the last picture – try and count the number of different varieties of plants. I count 30.
by Neil Wilkinson | May 25, 2009 | Allotment
I’m not sure where we would be on the allotment without the bank holidays – we spent two days doing allotment jobs and half a day shopping for allotment goodies this weekend. In fact, we got so much done this weekend that I think I will temporarily leave the descriptive posts we’ve been doing behind and try listing everything we got done instead.
Saturday
- Fed chickens and opened up the coop
- Bought bedding plants, flowers and organic slug pellets from garden centre
- Bought replacement trowel (my digging is so fierce I broke the first one on the very first use. Plastic and metal is no match for me) and water butt irrigation system from B&Q
Sunday
- Planted out the cauliflowers
- Planted out the lemon thyme, french thyme and oregano
- Moved the greenhouse shelves into the shed and had a general tidy up both shed and greenhouse
- With Tom, built netting around cauliflowers to protect from woodpigeons
- Set up drip irrigation system to the water butt. This should make watering our greenhouse plants a bit easier. (More information on this another week I think)
- Pilla and Nic weeded the plot
- Pilla and Nic planted out some of the bedding plants
- Neil planted out the new flowering blue scabious (sounds horrible, is very pretty)
- Pilla added some of the slug pellets
- Put chickens to bed
Monday
- Planted out all of the remaining bedding plants together with the marigolds from Sharon across the front of the plot, into two old hanging boxes we had and across the rear of the plot
- Created hanging boxes for flowers & possibly tomatoes
- Planted out three lavender plants
- Planted out runner beans onto the new munty frame
- Potted on two cucumbers to their final pots
- Potted on kale, basil, two sets of courgettes and more tomatoes
- Put dahlia, french beans and some basil into the cold frame
- Thinned out all the carrot containers
- Thinned out lettuces
- Added more manure to the poo pile
And finally done. Phew! We also have another job to do after this weekend – build somewhere shady and cool. So much of our time has been spent being cold over winter I think we completely forgot how hot allotmenting can get. We have nowhere shady to hide and I think we should try and resolve this, particularly after a little bit of sunburn for both of us yesterday in spite of our suncream!
Special thanks to Tom and Nic for their help on Sunday and for the refreshments they brought, particularly the banana muffins! Allotmenting is much more fun with friends.
by Neil Wilkinson | May 17, 2009 | Allotment
Well it had to happen. For the first time since we got the allotment we left early today because it was raining. Well I blame the rain, but us both being a bit tired and grumpy didn’t help either. I won’t say who was worse, we both know who it was and we try and operate a no blame culture on the allotment. The tiredness was caused by us both taking part in the Manchester 10km Run today so it was handily timed that we didn’t have a massive amount to do on the plot this weekend.
First up yesterday was the Saturday morning chicken feed and a brief stop to see what needed to be done on the allotment. We really should have learnt by now that ‘brief’ and ‘allotment’ don’t really fit in the same sentence. We popped back after lunch and planted out the red cabbages and in the same bed propped up some of the weaker purple sprouting broccoli we planted out last weekend. I tied up some of the sweet peas that hadn’t quite attached themselves to the strings we are growing them up and set about drilling holes in the bins we are going to put the tomatoes in. These are old bins from Pearson and with half a grow bag in each and good drainage holes they should make fairly decent homes for the toms. We grew way too many of each variety and so have been looking to give a few away, which we managed, but not without taking a few different varieties back. It’s one of the many nice things about allotment life that people are very generous about what they grow. So now we have 9 (that’s nine) varieties of tomatoes. I’m fairly sure that come the summer we’ll be able to keep half of Manchester in tomatoes and still have buckets full for ketchup. Sharon from the plot next door (that’s 3 mentions in two weeks!) very kindly gave us some marigolds which we should try and plant out next week – and Bob gave us a gooseberry bush, which despite a warning from him, still managed to attack Pilla with it’s thorns.
We spent Sunday afternoon planting lots of our tomatoes into the large pots and putting a cane in each, ready for their final positions in the greenhouse. We had a bit of a lesson in tomato growing from Bob on Saturday, so we picked out the side shoots as we potted them on. Pilla planted out the remaining beetroot – we found a forgotten seed packet last weekend, and I started planting out some of the sugarsnap peas we had growing in the greenhouse. I’m not convinced that they will be particularly successful (they were a bit leggy and we didn’t harden them off) so we planted some extra peas in with the plants just in case. I only got 4 done before the heavens opened and we hastily retreated to the greenhouse.
Unfortunately the rain meant that we couldn’t take any pictures which is a shame as we seem to have had lots successfully growing this week – in the greenhouse our courgettes, sweetcorn and lettuces have all sprouted, and our cucumbers, peppers, aubergines and dahlia’s are all looking good. With a bit of luck they will be doing just as well next week.
And finally, after months of hard graft, countless hours, and many many dirty fingernails, some produce from the plot finally landed on our plates! Step forward some spare Mizuna plants, whose leaves added a home grown touch to some salad we had on Saturday night. Ok, it’s not much but hopefully it’s a sign of things to come!
by Neil Wilkinson | May 10, 2009 | Allotment
We have spent a lot of time at the allotment this weekend, which has been nice and despite thinking that we didn’t have too many jobs to do we haven’t really stopped! Yesterday, we had to do a lot of weeding. This week has brought a snowstorm effect of ‘dandelion clocks’ blowing all over the whole site and everywhere they land they seem to germinate in a matter of days. Being at the end of the row of plots means that we seem to have more than our fair share! There is absolutely no prospect of weeding them all out but we have turned over the areas of unplanted soil to stop them in their tracks. But weeds are not the only things that have been growing as our plants are doing quite well. We have some berries on our redcurrant bushes (although admittedly they are more like greencurrants at the minute!) and the radishes continue to thrive. If you look close enough at the photo of the radishes you can see the sprouted dandelions, the little blighters! Our potatoes continue to grow furiously and to protect against any cold snaps and to give them as much growing depth as possible we piled soil around the leaves. This will be an ongoing job as they get taller or until we run out of soil to pack them in!
The rest of yesterday was taken up with feeding and cleaning out the chickens (cue Neil climbing into the chicken coop to get at the hard to reach spots!) and also helping Simon with some digging. We hope that it is good allotment karma to help out others if we don’t have that much to do on our own plot and three people digging certainly makes more progress than one. It was a lovely evening which meant that we only really noticed the time once our stomachs started to rumble at half past five!
Today was another early start due to the AGM. This passed without too much political unrest but was noteworthy for ourselves as a new Treasurer was needed. So I stepped up and won by a landslide (although I was without an opponent!). We had to have a lot of things explained to us by Susan, the retiring Treasurer and I am sure that there will be a lot more that we have to learn on the job but today is officially day one in office!
Following the meeting and a healthy amount of gossip we got down to some actual work. Neil has been researching various methods of growing climbing beans on the internet and happened upon the Munty frame. It has a short and a taller side, with the short side facing North, and pieces of bamboo connecting the two. Vertical pieces of string run from the base of the short side and then across the slanted top which the beans can be trained up. This makes the beans hang down from the plants so that they have room to grow and are easier to harvest and has the advantage of leaving the bed underneath free for other produce. Neil used spare wood from Site 1, bamboo canes and twine and it kept him busy for most of the afternoon. We will probably be putting the beans out towards the end of May.
I spent the day planting, both outside and in the greenhouse. Inside I planted melons, pumpkins/squashes and a mixture of lettuce. Outside I planted pak choi, red and green lettuce and some oriental salad, leaving some stripy soil so we know where they are! Ignore the rather pathetic looking mizuna in the photo below, it was only planted out yesterday and is still acclimatising-or at least that is what I am telling myself!
Another late finish today, we only left at 6pm but this was partly due to having to wrestle with some netting to go over the purple sprouting broccoli we put out yesterday. We are told the woodpidgeons are partial to such plants and we didn’t want to lose any during the week. We will have to consider a better way of netting them before next weekend but we were simply too impatient for our dinner to stay any longer!
by Neil Wilkinson | May 4, 2009 | Allotment
We took advantage of the long weekend to get absolutely loads done off our ever changing to-do list. We managed to get to the allotment on each of the last three days (although once was just to feed the chickens and let them out).
One thing we seem to have no trouble growing are these mushrooms. They take advantage of the wet and warm weather we’ve been having and sneak up around your plot when you are not looking. They take about 4 seconds to grow. Ok, maybe not quite that quick but you get the idea. We had about 8 of the blighters to add to the compost heap. We’d planted some broad beans and sweet peas out last week, which were our first transplanted seeds, so the first job was to check they are ok and they seem to be thriving. We’ve been having nightmares all week about hoards of roaming slugs coming to devour them!
Next up I set about planting more sweet peas across the front of the plot and up the fence and Pilla planted a few of the seeds we were a bit late starting off in the greenhouse, sweetcorn and courgettes. Pilla then started the epic task of transplanting seeds in the greenhouse. Pretty much everything we have planted is doing well so we had a lot of things to move into bigger pots, which included: lots of different tomato varieties, peppers, cauliflowers, sunflowers, cucumbers, basil, parsley and sweet majoram. It’s a fairly time consuming process and you have to make some life and death decisions over which seedlings to keep and which go to the great compost heap in the sky. It was carnage.
After adding a third water butt next to the greenhouse with some bricks from Sharon’s plot we called it a day (hi Sharon!). Today we caught up with planting the things we should have put out in late April. The big thing to get planted were the carrots. We’ve sort of run out of bed space for them so we have planted them in a selection of sqaure Pearson bins – which all had to be cleaned out, drilled, lined with membrane, and then layered up with gravel, soil and stone free soil. We now have three varieties sown – regular, round and purple. Whilst I was doing this Pilla was on a mad planting spree – filling up beds with a couple of types of beetroot and spring onions.
We have lots of things growing outside now – our parsnips have germinated and are doing so well we had to thin them down. We have had to do the same with the radishes and leaf beet. Our red and white onions have started sprouting and some potatoes are starting to appear above the soil. Other less desirable things are growing too – the plot has sprouted quite a lot of weeds. The raised beds help quite a lot with weeding because you can sit on the edge of one and reach across quite easily.
We have about a million spiders in our greenhouse and they were temporarily joined today by a butterfly, who was reading the seed packet and complaining about vague spacing instructions I think!
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