by Philippa | Jun 4, 2013 | Allotment
After a scorching weekend a visit was definitely in order, to water at the very least. But I managed to get quite a lot done and we are pretty on top of things, which is impressive given the time that Neil’s training has been taking up.
Everything got a thorough water, the greenhouse thermometer read 44c when I checked. The sunflowers that had been in our makeshift coldframe were planted out in two long rows. We still have some spares so we’ll have to find some spare spots for them. I also weeded the whole of plot 118, I only wish some of our crops would grow as fast as the weeds!
While in the greenhouse I did some more sowing. Some green courgettes (dundoo organic hybrid) which despite the packet saying it contained an average of 5 seeds, had 18 in it (yes I counted, but what a bonus given they were pretty expensive!). Also a selection of cabbage varieties (tundra, candissa, kalibos pointed red and minicole) and a random variety of sweetpeas as the germination rate of our first sowings have been pretty poor. I sowed some pak choi (joi choi) inside too, I usually just sow straight outside but have found the slugs seem to like them when they are very young and tender so thought I’d try transplanting them out once they have had a head start inside.
I did some outdoor sowings too. Some swede (best of all), turnip (Milan purple top), spinach (perpetual and medania) and some rhubarb chard (red). The beetroots and carrots have germinated so will need thinning in a week or two. The parsnips have also come on great guns but bizarrely one variety is doing much better than the other. If they don’t even out, I might use the end of the bed that haven’t germinated properly for something else instead!
The asparagus has grown so much since I was last down on Friday, I’m sure if you stood and watched you would see it grow. Some is about a foot tall. There don’t seem to be many spears coming up but the ones that have popped up look good. I suppose there is still time but not sure it will ever thicken out at this rate!
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 Neil Wilkinson | Sep 13, 2009 | Allotment
Another quietish day at the allotment. We didn’t plan to stay long because we didn’t think we had too much to do – there were a few tidying up jobs and a fair bit of harvesting, but nothing huge or time consuming. Whilst I was busy chopping down the spent cucumber plants in the greenhouse, Pilla was busy dealing with some overgrown chard and harvesting blueberries (sadly enough we counted how many blueberries we’ve had this year. From one plant we have had over 100, from one plant zero. Why?!)
We then set about clearing the cauliflowers. The cauliflowers were a disappointment this year, we didn’t manage to harvest a single one. They went from looking perfect, but small to bolted and flowery in a week. After taking down the netting (another thing we need to improve upon for next year) we composted the cauliflowers and put some manure on the half of the bed that we never planted anything in after our savoy cabbage seedlings failed. The manure is amazing – it’s been rotting for a good few months now and is absolutely full of worms. I don’t mean that there are a couple crawling around on the surface, I mean every trowel full has hundreds and hundreds of them. It’s quite impressive.
I then sowed some green manure on a couple of the beds we manured up last week. We then just had to harvest our goods. We are still getting loads off the plot – this week we took home blueberries, raspberries, strawberries, green & yellow courgettes, green and red peppers, chillies, aubergines, rhubarb and loads more tomatoes. Pilla put some to good use this afternoon by making tomato and chilli jam using our own tomatoes, chilli and garlic. Delicious!
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