Better late than never

by | Mar 25, 2009 | Allotment

We are having some frustrating Internet issues at home thanks to our wonderful ISP which means it’s really difficult to get on the Internet in the evenings – which is why this post is a bit late – I’m having to do it in my lunch at work.

The exciting thing about going to the plot now is that we’re expecting something new each time – as you get closer to the plot you start wondering about what will have grown – at the moment because we don’t have much in the ground every little bit of new leaf is greeted with a big sense of excitement and achievement.  Also, because we are extremely new to this allotment business, we don’t exactly know how our plants will appear.  This week, this started growing:

Any thoughts? Yep, those are the shallots we planted a few weeks back, doing a quite remarkable small pineapple impression.  The garlic is still shooting up, we have a 100% germination rate, which I think is quite impressive.

  

We were a little disappointed with the seeds – it’s still very early and we only planted them as a test but the weather was so good last week I really thought they might be growing.  They are not.  We checked with Sharon next door who was also planting seeds last week, and she had got a bit of success using lids on the pots, so we borrowed a few before running off to Wilkinsons to buy our very own.  This also leads me on to a slight issue we have – we’d like to be as organic as possible.  Why is that an issue? Well you cannot have organic peat. Ok, fine.  So what is the best medium to start seedlings in? Yes, that’s right, peat.  So we are testing now – we have some seedlings in peat and some in non-peat compost and we’ll see what happens.  It’s a catch 22 though – you needs your seedlings to have a strong start in life so they are healthy and disease resistant which should mean you don’t need non-organic controls, but the best way to do that is to use a non-organic product.

 

In other news we finally planted the redcurrants Bob gave us and I fixed up a cold frame using some old windows Russ was throwing away. 

I’m making a website for the Society and I’ve been given some old pictures from around the place.  When I get time I’ll dig out a few and put them up, the place is almost completely unrecognisable from how it was even at the start of last year.

Jobs List Part 2

by | Dec 31, 2008 | Allotment

This is just a quick jobs list update, we’ll do a more in depth update later.

This is what we have done from our list:

  1. Build shed base
  2. Build shed
  3. Build greenhouse base
  4. Fix greenhouse to base
  5. Build leaf composters
  6. Collect leaves 
  7. Build compost bin

And here is what we still have to do:

  1. Fix glass to greenhouse
  2. Clean greenhouse (it’s a mess)
  3. Finish building the beds and a nice surround for the fruit tree.
  4. Fill the new beds with soil
  5. Sort out a pond
  6. Buy apple tree
  7. Plant tree, asparagus, redcurrants, garlic, onions.
  8. Sort out seed trays, compost, pots etc for March time.

Which is not bad, but we only have about 13 weeks until the start of April and that’s when the growing starts to kick in. Eek.

Jobs list

by | Nov 21, 2008 | Allotment

Sniff.  That has been the sound of our house this week.  Both of us have been ‘got’ by a cold that we think started out from Russ and the babies, and it has not been fun.  We did manage to use some of our poorly time to figure out what we are going to grow, fill in our seed form and plan what we need to do next.  So here is the list of jobs we need to get done:

  1. Build shed base (we are using scaffolding planks and wood taken from Russ’s house.  Its quick, easy and doesn’t use concrete anything.  It should last for ages.)
  2. Build shed (it’s been ordered, it should come by the end of next week)
  3. Build greenhouse base
  4. Fix greenhouse to base
  5. Fix glass
  6. Clean greenhouse (it’s a mess)
  7. Finish building the beds, and a nice surround for the fruit tree.
  8. Build compost bin
  9. Sort out a pond
  10. Buy apple tree
  11. Plant tree, asparagus, strawberries, redcurrants, garlic, onions.
  12. Build leaf composters
  13. Collect leaves

Odds on us getting it done for christmas?