by Philippa | Apr 7, 2013 | Allotment
Another dry and not too cold a day, it might actually be Spring now! Although maybe that should be whispered in hushed tones so as not to jinx it?
We had our monthly meeting first thing and once finished we did a bit more digging over on plot 118. We’re in the bit that is quite heavy going compared to the rest (and which we STILL manage to find glass in four years later). But we are nearing the end of that hard patch and so hope the last bit of the left side will be much easier!
The onions are still doing well and it’s a fine balance between putting them out too early and leaving them in the greenhouse for too long. So we’ve taken them out of the greenhouse, partially sheltered them with some glass panes and will try to plant them out next week. Our Charlotte potatoes are also ready to plant out next week, as they don’t look like should be hanging around inside much longer.
There are more signs of life around the plots. The rosemary has flowered and all the soft fruit bushes have either buds or small opening leaves on them. The garlic seems to have done well in the last couple of days of sunshine and as it hasn’t rained for weeks I gave them a bit of water from the butt.
We’ve started our tomatoes, chillies and aubergines off in the heated propagator at home and this leads me to a top tip! We always seem to go through loads of plant labels from first sowing, to potting on, to planting out. The packets of labels you can buy from the garden centres often don’t have enough in and we have been unimpressed with some of them. Wooden lolly sticks work temporarily but the writing fades after a fairly short time in the sun. And so we came to our free solution! All you need is an empty plastic milk carton, the bigger the better. Wash it out and cut it down it’s length so it opens out flat. Then cut out strips and cut these to the length you like for your labels. You can trim one end to an angled point but it isn’t vital. Now you can write on these with Sharpie permanent markers and plant as many things as you like! Worthy of a Blue Peter badge I think!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 28, 2012 | Allotment
Every year it happens – you have loads of jobs to do over winter and tons of time to do them. Well, December is busy so we’ll definitely start after Christmas. January is too cold, so we’ll wait. February, well we’ll just give the plot a bit of tidy and then crack on with the jobs. Ah oh well, it’s now almost April and our worthy list of jobs remains mostly untouched!
With that being said we’ve had a great couple of days at the plot. Philippa managed to get in some sneaky midweek plot time and used it well by digging over a patch of ground that had the netting on for the cabbages last year. I cannot complete big jobs like this – I get bored very easily and move onto other jobs, returning to do other bits during the day. I get there eventually, but Pilla managed to do it in one go. Pilla also helped out relaying car park number 2 with the regular gang of volunteers on Saturday whilst I was out on my long run (if you wanted to sponsor me my page is http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/neilwilkinson – thanks!).
On Sunday we got to the plot very early – Pilla had an idea to have breakfast there, so we tucked into a very tasty bacon sandwich and cup of tea outside, food is always better that way! We then got on with a few jobs, Pilla potted on some of the tomato seeds we had germinated inside, they had got very leggy but tomato’s quite like being planted deep, so you can recover leggy seedlings pretty easily! I dug over the last bit of plot that needed it. It’s quite therapeutic – every time you pull a piece of mares tail root out you think “yesss, one less this year!” Hopefully we might be able to borrow Bob’s rotavator at some point coming up to cheat at making our soil as fine as his! I also weeded the asparagus bed. So far we have not taken a single spear home and judging by the paltry state of the plants last year I don’t think we’ll have any this year either.
So spring is definitely here, our fruit trees are only a couple of weeks away from blossoming and we have things growing in the ground. The weather has been beautiful all week, from a running point of view I want the weekend coming up to be cool, slightly damp and overcast. From an allotment point of view I’d like more sun please! One final note Bob has planted his potatoes, as Bob is our official ‘if he’s done it, we should probably do it now’ allotmenter, we’ll probably put those in next weekend!
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!
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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.
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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.
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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 🙂
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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.
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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.
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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 | 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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