by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 1, 2011 | Allotment
This post is way late AGAIN! It’s last weeks update, I’ll do another one on Sunday because we’ve done loads since then too..
Wow, well, that’s the wedding done then. And if you don’t believe me, here’s the proof:[flickr]photo:5753597605[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5754155572[/flickr]
The wedding also gave us chance to test an important question. What happens when you leave an allotment for 3 weeks? Well the official answer is that if you have a very kind and helpful allotment neighbour (thanks Bob!) not much! Bob kept everything growing the greenhouse, quite frankly much better than we would have, which only left a huge amount of potting on to do. And I mean huge – basically everything was ready to move on. Cue almost a full day in the greenhouse and we have all our tomatoes, aubergines and regular chili plants in their final places.
[flickr]photo:5787330789[/flickr] [flickr]photo:5787330229[/flickr]
We’ve also had a huge growth spurt from the asparagus which we thought we had killed off last year. We might have less spears, but they are much healthier (this is a relative concept, they are rubbish compared to Bob’s, but at least they are still growing). I think with asparagus you can technically get a crop on the third year, but there really is no way ours will be ready till at least year 4. Ah well.[flickr]photo:5787886538[/flickr]
We set up the netting hoops and planted out sprouts, cabbages and cauliflowers (about 6 or 7 of each), and sowed half a row each of turnips and swede (which we hardly eat any of last year, but well, it’s an allotment, thats what happens). [flickr]photo:5787885552[/flickr] .
Spending so much time there, we managed to cross a long term thing off the list – following on from Sharon’s work on her plot we decided to deal with the bit of ground between our plots. Fences are always a bit of a nightmare area because weeds get between them and are difficult to really get in and deal with, so we didn’t deal with them. We covered them up with membrane and plonked a load of chippings on them. The weeds might well grow through but hopefully a lot less vigorously than before! [flickr]photo:5787330411[/flickr]
Oh and also, I found two toads. Here is one of them: [flickr]photo:5787886956[/flickr]
by Neil Wilkinson | Nov 21, 2010 | Allotment
It’s Pilla’s 29th birthday today and we celebrated it in style. Allotment style of course. We’ve had another big break in blogs, for which we are very sorry but it’s been a combination of a) not getting down to the plot that much recently and b) not much going on at the plots. Well, I say not much going on, this is actually my favourite time of year. The weeds are not growing, the place is quiet and you actually feel like you are making progress with the plots, it’s just that there is not that much interesting stuff to report. The day was slightly interrupted today with the annual allotment task of signing up the other plot holders and payment of rents but we managed to get lots done over the weekend none the less.
On Saturday Philippa spent her last few hours as a 28 year old by removing all the old plants from the greenhouse which is now almost completely empty and giving it a good clean out. It only seems like a few weeks ago we could hardly get in there and now there is not a single plant growing! I tidied up the raspberry canes on plot 97 by removing the canes that had fruited this year and tying up the new growth. There are probably about three times as many canes as last year and we were overrun with raspberries so it’s a little bit frightening how many we might get next year.
We’ve been talking for a while about getting a little tea shed on 118, before we could do this we needed a shed base, which I made on Saturday with a layer of sand and 8 of the 2″ by 3″ flags. It started level enough but by the time you have laid a few of those flags you get pretty tired and in the end it’s probably best described as ‘level enough’. It now sits proudly next to the greenhouse base. We did have a plan to put the greenhouse up today but we probably couldn’t have done it in the time we had available, so instead I decided to make a brick path to both the shed and the greenhouse. I think they are best described as rustic! No-one could describe them as level and if you hit the right bricks there are definitely a few wobbles, but it is a good way of using up lots of the bricks we have dug up over the plot. Pilla sorted through the many pots we had of spent compost and grow bags from the greenhouse and spread it all over the asparagus bed.
We’ve harvested our first sprouts since the last blog (of which Pilla ate three, a record!) and today took our first parsnips. What with the beetroot, cabbage and kale we are well into our winter crops already.
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 | 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:
- Build shed base
- Build shed
- Build greenhouse base
- Fix greenhouse to base
- Build leaf composters
- Collect leaves
- Build compost bin
And here is what we still have to do:
- Fix glass to greenhouse
- Clean greenhouse (it’s a mess)
- Finish building the beds and a nice surround for the fruit tree.
- Fill the new beds with soil
- Sort out a pond
- Buy apple tree
- Plant tree, asparagus, redcurrants, garlic, onions.
- 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.
by Neil Wilkinson | 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:
- 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.)
- Build shed (it’s been ordered, it should come by the end of next week)
- Build greenhouse base
- Fix greenhouse to base
- Fix glass
- Clean greenhouse (it’s a mess)
- Finish building the beds, and a nice surround for the fruit tree.
- Build compost bin
- Sort out a pond
- Buy apple tree
- Plant tree, asparagus, strawberries, redcurrants, garlic, onions.
- Build leaf composters
- Collect leaves
Odds on us getting it done for christmas?
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