by Philippa | Mar 16, 2009 | Allotment
At one stage this afternoon the plot looked like a murder scene out of Cluedo (“Who did it?”, “Miss Philippa, at the allotment, with the water butt.”) but fear not Neil is alive and well and as a result of his hilarious endeavours we have tried and tested taps on both water butts. We realised these were pretty necessary as our watering can does not fit into either water butt, something we only noticed once they were all hooked up and two thirds full! So Neil had to do some siphoning of water back and forth before he could fit the taps!
I was getting on with some greenhouse planting as it suddenly seems like time is getting away from us. We received our seed order mid week which was ridiculously exciting. We had to go through the packets to see what needs to be started in the next couple of weeks. This is pretty difficult to decide as whilst the packets give instructions of when to sow you have to account for the regional weather variations which can affect this timetable. So there are some seeds which say they can be planted in March which we are delaying until April to ensure that they are not adversely affected by any cold spells that may be on the way before then. We have a mixture of collected pots, seed trays bought from the allotment store and paper pots made from my paper potter birthday present! The latter are an excellent way of planting out for minimal cost and environmental impact. We are starting a production line at home to churn out enough of these for our seeds. We will end up looking like we have spent the afternoon down at the local police station with the amount of newspaper print that ends up on our fingers! Today I managed to plant broad beans, parsley, red cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli and all of our sweetpeas.
Neil carried on the DIY theme and built (and then partially filled) a manure bay next to our compost bin. This is so we can keep a store of manure on site to rot down as the manure deliveries are always of fresh manure that doesn’t hang around for long before being used by somebody.
Some further generous gestures to report. Firstly some chives, mint and lemon mint from one of Neil’s colleagues Mike. He has been an avid listener of Neil’s allotment tales and brought us some cuttings on a recent business trip. We cut the bottom off a few of the black bins and sunk them into the soil as we are told that both the mint and lemon mint are voracious growers and are likely to spread if left to grow freely. We then received two garden chairs from a man a few plots down who incidentally has the neatest plot I have ever seen and of which I am extremely envious. Unfortunately, when we came to eat our lunch the sun was briefly behind some clouds so we didn’t get to use them today, but I bet it won’t be long before we do.
Finally, some exciting updates on what is growing. We really noticed a difference since last week, particularly with the rhubarb which is so much taller, but also the strawberries which are putting out some new leaves and the garlic I planted only three weeks ago has now sprouted. We are taking bets on what will be the first produce to be harvested. I think the rhubarb is a clear winner at this stage while Neil is putting his money on lettuce, which has yet to be planted but grows quickly.
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 8, 2009 | Allotment
Last week we ticked a few major jobs off our list, so this week we were faced with just a few admin tasks – things we’ve had to do for ages but have had much more interesting things to get on with.
I started the day off by making a waterproof lid for the compost bin – I’m not 100% sure this is necessary for a compost bin but we had a spare pallet and some plastic sheeting so I put one together.
It took me a while as I had to keep running in the greenhouse for some protection from the rain. Whilst I was doing this Pilla was cleaning out the greenhouse. The glass is still very sparkly from the cleaning job Pilla had done on it over Christmas but the frame had all sorts of mud, grass and bugs in it. With the aid of an Ikea kitchen scrubber and a spoon(!) it has cleaned up nicely. It must be a sign of far too much mud in the frame when you find it housing a worm!
It’s days like this you realise the importance of a greenhouse – it’s great for hiding from the weather in. We had lots of rain in between bouts of sunshine and at one point a thunderstorm came our way… complete with a LOT of hail stones.
Still, all the rain had one advantage – it filled one of our water butts enough to give it a good clean. This was a former bin from Oaklands Drive – it still has a way to go to be a ‘proper’ water butt – I want to raise it up a foot and add a tap on the bottom so we can fill a watering can underneath. I did add a lid and put a hole in it for the down pipe to go through. In between bouts of rain I cleaned up the far corner of the plot – it was full of some old floor boards, which I have de-nailed and hidden behind the shed along with the carpet. We are not sure what we are going to do with this bit of the plot, it was going to be a pond, but we might utilise it for growing. It currently has a woodpile and the fruit trees.
After that we were pretty much done, so we went on the hunt for some signs of spring. The rhubarb we planted last week seems to be shooting up – you shouldn’t really take any the first year after planting, but at this rate we’ll be overrun with it! The cherry tree & raspberry canes that we are training along the fence seem to have come to life this week too.
Hopefully next week we should get the seeds we have ordered – let the planting begin!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 3, 2009 | Allotment
I’ve adjusted the images so they load into a separate application within the page you are viewing – so when you load an image you don’t have to use the back button. You should then be able to navigate through the images using the ‘Previous’ and ‘Next’ options (if you hover to the top right of the image when it loads). Not exciting, I know, but useful!
by Philippa | Mar 1, 2009 | Allotment
Today being the 1st of March it was appropriate that there was a definite feeling of spring in the air at the allotment. Quite a few people were there working their plots ready for planting and it was warm enough to sit outside in the sunshine.
We had yet more generosity this afternoon, particularly from Bob who gave us some wallflowers for our front and a couple of rhubarb crowns. The flowers grow quite tall so we have put them at each end of the front soil so that we can plant other flowers in between. As part of our seed order we included some flowers, so we will be putting sweet peas, dahlias and sunflowers all about the plot to bring some colour to the place other than the predominant brown!
Thanks to Bob we now have bed that is flourishing with rhubarb. One of the crowns he gave us was one of the biggest he (and us) had ever seen and this was even after he had left some of the roots in his plot! We put it in our soil just as it came and so we will probably get fruit off it this year. This is good news as all of my recent cookery magazines have been full of rhubarb recipes and so the thought of waiting another year to harvest our own was too much to bear! As an interesting aside, when Bob dug up the giant crown I noticed a cluster of wet looking spheres on one of the roots. Now, I guessed that they were eggs of some sort, but I wasn’t sure what they would grow into. I saved one for a photo as a bit of a quiz for you readers:
Drumroll please…….it is a slug egg! Now maybe it is just my ignorance, or perhaps I have never sufficiently pondered the origins of a slug before, but I genuinely did not realise that slugs produced eggs. I am not sure where I thought they came from. But now I know. It just shows that every day at the allotment is a lesson in something or other.
Whilst I was having the nature lesson from Bob, Neil was busy with the staging. He had managed a visit to the allotment yesterday so he was able to complete the staging this afternoon (even with a slightly earlier finish to allow for football watching). And very beautiful it is too. Note the slight gap on the bottom right hand side to allow Tammy continued access to what has become her sunspot.
I got on with planting the shallots which we pictured about a month ago. Advice dictates that they should be planted between mid to late February and late March so we had held off putting them in for a few weeks. But now that March has arrived, along with the sun, the time was right. Plus, a couple had started to sprout or go a bit soft so we didn’t want them to spoil. I had a bit of a dilemma, as our book recommended that they should be planted with their tips at the top of the soil but their label said that half of the bulb should be proud of the soil surface. Our expert Bob had gone home for the day so the decision was left to me. I decided to follow the book’s advice as it didn’t look quite right having so much of the bulb on top of the soil and I was worried that this might leave them vulnerable. Time will tell whether I made the right choice! I labelled the shallots, and everything else we have planted thus far, with a little wooden lolly stick which includes the variety for future reference.
The rest of my afternoon comprised of planting our apple and fig trees which arrived mid week. The apple tree is a Braeburn variety and as well as putting in a sturdy stake, we also followed a handy tip and sunk a piece of spare drainpipe just next to the tree. This has a few holes drilled in the bottom so that we can water down the pipe to get directly to the roots. The fig tree is a Violetta and didn’t really have an allocated spot. We knew it was going into a container of sorts but we didn’t have any to hand other than our wastepaper bins which are too small and the large black bins which looked too rubbishy! So Neil removed the top part of the bin until it looked a bit more like a container. This was not without incident however. In his excitement, Neil managed to cut himself with his fancy (and sharp) new saw. No photos of the resulting injury but there was plenty of blood which dripped all over the place. Not sure if that is a good fertiliser?
This signalled a good time to stop for the day. The next big job will be the cleaning of the inside of the greenhouse, a daunting task that we can put off no longer. Especially as our seed order may arrive in the next week or two. Time is ticking on!
by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 23, 2009 | Allotment
I’ve used my lunch break to reorder the webpage just a little. I’ve discovered the world of tags, which let you classify content for all the posts. The neat thing is now if you want all the posts containing say, Tammy, you can click on ‘Tammy’ in the bottom right corner or here. I’ve also added links into the pages at the top, so in the ‘What we are growing’ & ‘Jobs’ page you can click on the item and get all the relevants posts. It’s geeky and boring, but it’s made me happy!
by Philippa | Feb 22, 2009 | Allotment
Well this weekend (plus the bonus afternoon on Friday) has been jam packed and full of generous gestures. After moving the soil on Friday we wanted to make a start on a few little jobs that have been on the list of things to do for quite a while.
First on the list was planting the trees that were such a bargain from Aldi. Yesterday we realised that we were still in need of a few containers for our trees and also some to use as water butts. For some time we have been asking around friends and family and it just kept getting pushed further down the list. But having bought a plum and a cherry tree which needed planting asap this suddenly became a lot more pressing. We took a walk around the site to ask people where they got their containers from and we ended up with some very useful gifts! We got a big grey barrel for a water butt from Chris which had apparently enjoyed a previous life at the Robertson’s jam factory! He also donated a metal bin to match one that Bob kindly offered us which are perfect for the trees:
It took a surprising amount of time to fill two of them deep enough for planting! In fact, so much time that Neil was very productive in building some greenhouse staging. Neil’s dad provided lots of metal shelving which we adapted for the base and we bought 2m wooden batons to lay across the top.
Neil completed two sides and now only has one more to finish. We think that this will be sufficient for this year’s seedlings and one advantage of DIY staging is that we can take some or all of it down if we find we need more floor space for pots and growbags. We also added an old set of Ikea shelves that had been hanging around at Neil’s dad’s house since they were used in various university flats. I was a bit worried that all this activity in the greenhouse might have frightened Tammy off but she was around for most of the day and getting very friendly at times!
In order to catch up with Neil’s productivity I set about planting our garlic that arrived a couple of weeks ago. It comes in large bulbs which you have to break apart into cloves to plant just under the surface of the soil. Unfortunately for me whilst this again took some time to complete, all my efforts are now under 3-5cm of soil so not very visible-you will just have to trust me that there are now 30 cloves lined up between the canes waiting to grow into big juicy bulbs! Neil did some planting of his own on Friday as during our soil shovelling he found a lonely little unidentified bulb that is just sprouting a green tip. He rescued it and put it in our front border. We have a bet on as to what it might grow into. My money is on it being a crocus while Neil thinks it is a daffodil (as if!). We also put in a tangled cluster of strawberries that Debbie gave us-thanks Debs!
Finally, we popped to the store to buy some seed trays and some Jeyes fluid which we plan to disinfect the greenhouse with before sowing and Neil connected some spare drainpipe to the gifted water butt so after a few rainy Manchester days we will be able to water our fledgling plants without using the tap. All in all a good three days which has made it very hard to summon up sufficient enthusiasm for work on Monday morning!
Neil would like a special mention for the newly hung plot number which now adorns the gate. This was made out of a broken piece of pallet which Neil chiselled and scorched the number into. Very homely 🙂
Recent Comments