by Philippa | May 31, 2013 | Allotment
Phew what a scorcher! Or comparatively speaking given recent weeks. As we are at Neil’s half ironman triathlon this weekend I popped to the allotment today mainly to do some watering so things would be ok in our absence. However, the weather was glorious and I could find plenty of things to do so I ended up being there for a few hours. In fact there were so many things I wanted I get done I was jumping between jobs in what was probably a bit of a disorganised manner! Still I accomplished a fair few things.
I potted on the rest of the tomatoes that are going in the greenhouse on plot 97. This was really hot work as I had to lug the grow bags around emptying them into pots while temperatures reached 44c inside the greenhouse! In previous years we have fed our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines with Miracle Gro Organic liquid feed, adding it to the watering can once a week. When we did our B&Q run last weekend to stock up on grow bags and things we went to buy a couple of bottles of food only to find it is no longer available there. I’m sure it’s still stocked elsewhere but we don’t really have time to spare tracking it down! So we bought the only organic vegetable food option they had, the Miracle Gro dry feed. You add it to the compost, dig it through and water in. It reckons one application lasts 8 weeks. So we added that to the large pots we transplanted our tomatoes into and we’ll have to wait and see how it performs.
While in the greenhouses I realised there were a few other things that probably needed potting on or there was a risk they wouldn’t last until we had time to get to them. So I potted on the Brussels sprouts (hastings) and cauliflowers (snowball) and pit them straight out into the coldframe.
I pulled up some old sprouting broccoli and curly kale that was going to seed and dismantled the tunnel they were in. I also did some wedding of the larger weeds, so things looked much neater which is always my preferred way to leave things when we are away.
Some chippings had been delivered to the car park from the council. I put a couple of wheelbarrows over some patchy areas of plot 118 where you could see membrane peeping through. But I stopped after two as the chippings were largely green matter so it seemed a bit pointless to exert too much energy on it.
Having admired how far on some of Bob’s beetroot was and having only planted ours out a couple of weeks ago he revealed he had started his in the greenhouse as plugs. So instead of sowing more beetroot and chard straight outside on plot 118 I started some off in trays. Another plus is the neat lines we’ll have without inconsistent germination!
Lots of things are coming on in the sunshine. The grapevine has little grape buds on it and the plum tree looks like it will have a bumper crop after last years rest. The asparagus has produced seven spears of varying heights in the last week alone. I’m desperate to eat some this year but once again Neil says we have to wait! It doesn’t seem like it’s growing any thicker this year than last so I’m not sure what we are waiting for or what we could be doing to help it along, but oh well. I vote that if it doesn’t make big improvements next year we eat it and use the space for something else!
by Philippa | Apr 20, 2013 | Allotment
The sun has arrived! This has been the first week or so where the weather has stayed consistently warm and we like it! But it has made us feel in a bit of a rush to get things planted out. With a cheeky mid week morning off work I popped along and sat in the sunshine sorting our seeds out so we know what needs planting and when. And it hit me quite how much needs to be planted now (or in reality should have been planted weeks ago when it was too cold). But at least the packets are now all neatly bundled up in piles!
The propagator seedlings were growing so quickly this week you could almost stand and watch it happen. One morning there would be a handful which had germinated, two hours later they had doubled in number! Once they were germinating it didn’t take long before they were at risk of getting too leggy. I took the tallest to the plot mid week and the last of them today. We potted them on in the greenhouse into seed trays. It’s always a panic when they flop over dramatically after they’ve been moved and you think you’ve killed them all but they had perked up by the time we left.
Neil took on a unexpected task today. He suddenly decided that as the sun was out it would be a good time to paint the front fence on 118. We didn’t even know if we had enough wood stain but after a mooch in the shed we found an almost full pot of it. It looked lots better after he was done. Although I think he got just as much stain on his face and arms! He also weeded the front as he went along, so two birds and all that.
While Neil was painting I planted some seeds-lots and lots of broad beans (masterpiece green longpod), purple podded peas, sugarsnap, early onward peas, gherkins, cauliflower (snowball and purple queen), sprouts (hastings), cucumber (burpless and cucino). There were also some seeds that needed to go straight outside so we have some neat rows of parsnips (countess and imperial crown) and rainbow chard. I loved the chard last year when we first tried growing it but we didn’t plant anywhere near enough so I made up for it this year!
There had been a big manure delivery so I filled up the depleted manure bay on 97 with plenty of trugs of it. Felt like we ticked off a lot of good jobs in the few hours we spent in the sunshine.
by Philippa | Apr 5, 2010 | Allotment
It’s suddenly very busy on the allotment – both with people working their plots and with the number of jobs we have to do! The seeds we planted out in the greenhouse have had mixed results. The sweetpeas, cauliflower, basil and oregano have sprouted but there is still no sign of life from the tomatoes. It is hard not to peer into everyone’s greenhouses to compare their results with your own at this time of year! We have brought some pots and compost home this week to start some tomato seeds here in the warm with the hope that they might get off to a quicker start.
On Sunday I was on light duties to preserve my muscles for my training walk the next day but I managed to clean the greenhouse out, which was very satisfying and had been bothering me for ages. Everything has had a good sweep down, ready for Neil to start constructing the extra staging that we will need in the next few weeks.
Neil was doing more heavy duty jobs on 118 while I was tidying, as he was cementing in some of the concrete posts using a dry mix of sand and cement. Although he was a bit worried about one of them being wonky, we checked on them today and the cement has hardened nicely and they are all pretty straight. Only seven more to go!
We had some exciting deliveries over the last week. Our onion sets arrived, two white varieties (Fen Early and Hytech) and one red (Hyred) and so we planted really long rows on 118. Only a few are showing signs of growth just yet but at least none have been plucked out by hungry birds or squirrels! Even more exciting to receive was our asparagus crowns (Backlim) as this is a new crop for us. Bob has some growing which he started from seed but we weren’t sure we had the patience (or the expertise!) for this, particularly given that it is recommended that you wait for three years before harvesting even from crowns to allow for them to get established. Neil dug a long trench in a raised bed on 118 and we then made a small mound all the way along the trench as the spidery crowns need to be supported rather than squashed flat. We had ten crowns so we planted them generously apart and filled the trench in and added a little bit of organic fertiliser to help them on their way. We are hopeful that they will be successful, especially as we didn’t really have any opportunity to carefully prepare the soil in the bed, so fingers crossed.
We will have a busy few visits over the coming weeks as the pile of seed packets ready to plant is quite large! But as for the things already growing, there were even more signs of life cropping up all over the place. Each visit we are looking forward to searching out the new bits of greenery and it is amazing how fast everything happens, so no slacking off for us!
PS Thanks to Debbie for her kind sponsorship for my walking marathon!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 21, 2010 | Allotment
Great day at the allotment today. The sun was out, there were lots of people, and thanks to Eddie coming down we got absolutely tons done. The plan was to move the two trees from plot 97 onto 118 and put up the posts to form the back fence whilst Pilla got on with sowing the years first seeds. We’ now have four types of sweet pea, three types of tomato (tigerella, marmande, vanessa), cauliflower, oregano, broad-beans and scabious all sown in the greenhouse. That reminds me, I need to increase our bench space in the greenhouse soon.
Soon enough the trees were moved (we should have done this a week or two ago as the trees have actually started growing again) and we had the four concrete fence posts in place. We used a dry cement mix the hold these in place, I’m not sure it is as strong as wet mix but it should be fine for an allotment fence. We then got to work sorting out the front fence, this was a bonus job – I had most of the parts but didn’t think we’d get it done today. I borrowed a couple of pieces of wood from Bob, and It’s still not quite done, but we have the rails attached to posts and a working gate – something this plot hasn’t had for a while. The nice looking sign we inherited is proudly in position on the gate.
Elsewhere, Pilla managed to dig over a huge section of the big plot and plant a couple of currant bushes that Debs kindly gave us. The plots are slowly coming back to life, some of the garlic and shallots are beginning to grow, and the raspberries have leaves growing again.
Bring on the summer!
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