by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 29, 2009 | Allotment
Before I talk about our plot, something happened to someone else’s plot whilst we were away. I’m not going to talk about the details, but I’m shocked and saddened that anyone would cause that amount of pointless damage. We’ll probably never know what happened, but why anyone would do that to someone who spends so much of his time helping others, welcoming newcomers, generally making everyone feel at home there and being an absolute star on the site is beyond me. Idiots.
Right then, after getting thoroughly de-gunked from the Glastonbury trip (and oh how smug we were walking through the ‘grow your own’ section in the Greenpeace field. Been there, doing that) we headed down to our plot. We’d not been there for six days. Nothing could change that much in six days, right?
Err, wrong. Meet our second cucumber (and the third, fourth, fifth, sixth etc etc are almost ready). It is a monster. It almost doesn’t fit in the fridge. I measured it at 34 cm’s long. I feel we are about to be overwhelmed with cucumbers.
The aubergines in the greenhouse have grown a lot. They look about twice as big as they were last week and quite a few have flowers. We have green tomatoes all over the tomato plants now- the variety in the picture is the stripey Tigerella. Bob looked after our greenhouse plants last week, which is perhaps why they are looking so healthy!
Outside, things seem to have moved up a gear too. We have our first courgette flowers – these grow even faster than cucumbers by all accounts. Pilla has been stocking up on recipes in preparation – I think one is a vegatable muffin which sounds interesting! We have quite a few broadbeans ready to pick, a few sugarsnap peas, the french beans too and the runner beans are slowly developing bean pods.
We also have signs of proper little blueberries. The internet dating we arranged with Debbie’s blueberry bushes has obviously gone well. The carrot tubs are looking very bushy and so we dug up a carrot just to see how they were getting on – Pilla is beautifully modelling a variety. I say ‘variety’ because I think I have mixed up the labels – we have three types, this one should have been ‘Purple Haze’ but it is looking distinctly unpurple right now. We had our first plants bolting in the heat however. We dug up a few mizuna plants because they have grown massive flowers (how a tiny lettuce can grow a three foot flower in six days is beyond me) and the rocket has done the same. They both grow quickly so we intend to sow some more seeds at the weekend.
Apart from running around the plot checking what else has grown, we only did a bit of watering, planted out the Jack o’Lantern squash plant and grabbed a few strawberries before rushing off. Thanks to Bob (again) we got enough strawberries for our pudding this evening.
by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 1, 2009 | Allotment
We had a few jobs to finish off or get started with this weekend. The main task was to neaten the front of the plot on the outside of the fence. The top trek layer came right up to the edge of the path but didn’t have a straight edge and in some places was wearing thin. Given the time we have spent making the plot itself look lovely we thought this part needed some TLC. We hope to put some flowers and pots there once the time is right for planting. Neil bought some thin batons of wood to make a defined edge but first we had to scrape up the top trek and then cut away the membrane. This was quite a good job for us after the seemingly never ending greenhouse saga as it didn’t take long at all and it makes a big difference.
The next pressing task was planting. Exciting! We have had a good week for deliveries and some of our parcels contained bushes that we had to leave in tubs of water until today. We went via the garden centre as the blueberry bush needs an ericaceous compost (an acidic soil) and we also picked up some multipurpose compost for some of our other tubs and a couple of healthy looking rosemary plants. We have ordered rosemary seeds but some of our research seemed to indicate that growing from seed can be quite difficult and therefore using cuttings or an established plant is more successful. So we planted the rosemary, blueberry and blackberry bushes and the raspberry canes (which incidentally look far too dead and withered to ever bear fruit, but I’m told that’s what they are supposed to look like!)
A really good allotment find came in the form of the black tubs you can see above. In their previous life they were wastepaper baskets at Neil’s work. In a bid to become more green they were all replaced by large recycling bins. And they have sat in a darkened storeroom ever since. That is until Neil liberated them after a bit of tough negotiating! He brought about 20 home and there are plenty more should we need them, which at this rate we most certainly will.
In case you are thinking that this is all we did today, we also attended the monthly allotment society meeting ( nothing much to report there) and started digging the last two beds. Unfortunately, our progress was halted at about 3pm with a flurry of snow! It had been snowing on and off a couple of times this afternoon but it didn’t really come to much and after a brief respite in the greenhouse we were back out again. However, this downpour looked set to last and so we decided to call it a day. Lets hope the plants we put in today are hardy enough to survive the cold snap.
by Neil Wilkinson | Jan 29, 2009 | Allotment
Until very recently I thought that getting sent packages through the post was always exciting. Now things have changed. First of all, the receptionist at my work thinks I’m weird. This began about 2 years ago when we started getting sent meat through the post, so getting sent things to work always feels like a game of ‘how much can Neil annoy the receptionist’. I think I’m going to hit new heights when the fig and apple trees turn up. Anyway, back to the packages. This week we started getting allotment goodies – blackcurrants, raspberries and blueberries, followed by shallots and spring onion seeds. The initial excitement is fast replaced by ‘did we buy the right variety of (plant x)?!’ and then ‘wow (plant x) is surprisingly heavy, how am I going to get it home?!’ before ‘(plant x) needs to be kept dark/dry/wet/cool/warm how can we do that in the flat?’ and then ‘how on earth are we going to grow this, I know nothing about (plant x)?!’ before being finally replaced by ‘what if NOTHING grows?!’
So here are our shallots. Not being kept dark or cool.
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