by Philippa | May 27, 2013 | Allotment
I managed a cheeky few hours on Wednesday this week. But something was telling me that maybe this wasn’t a good idea as it became a very weird visit! Firstly, there was a headless (needless to say dead) bird on one of the beds. I had to be brave and get rid of it. No sign of the head yet-I’m a bit dreading it turning up somewhere!
Second weirdness was the discovery of a giant buried egg! I was planting some carrots (early market, flyaway and autumn king) and beetroot (boltardy, golden, forono and barbabietola di chioggia) and gave the beds a good raking first. I uncovered what at first appeared to be a large potato, although there was no associated greenery. On closer inspection it was a large egg, entirely unbroken and buried quite deep. I left it on the surface as I carried on planting, while a magpie eyed up the egg and eventually pecked into it-what a stench! So that got a flinging too! Later research indicated it was probably a goose egg buried by a fox for snacking on later.
I retreated to the greenhouse so I could catch up on some seed planting. I planted all of our courgettes (yellow jemmer, zucchini and floridor) and our squash (butternut, metro pmr, Turks turban, crown prince, bon bon, autumn crown, marina di chioggia). I also started a few larger pots of herbs, parsley, thyme, coriander and green and purple basil. A few last pots of melon (watermelon charleston grey and Blenheim orange) and spring onions (white lisbon and red) and then the final fright was a huge hairy spider in the greenhouse! A sure sign it was time to pack up and go!
by Philippa | Jun 20, 2011 | Allotment
We really feel like we are on top of things on both plots at the moment, which is surprising given our three week absence while on honeymoon. Most of the greenhouse plants have been potted on to their final pots and due to having glazed the new greenhouse some have been moved over to plot 118. We have split all the varieties into both greenhouses, just in case they don’t grow consistently although the new greenhouse seems to be doing its job so far. As a result we seem to have plenty of room for other tasks. Neil has decided to do a little experiment with some rosemary cuttings which he is trying to get rooted. I’m not sure he knows exactly what needs to be done so he has just put them into damp compost! Apparently some rooting/cutting gels have high hormone levels, which is a bit off putting, so we will see what happens without.
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We have managed to take a bumper harvest of fruit home already, including about 1.5kg of raspberries, 750g redcurrants, 500g blackcurrants and 500g strawberries, all of which have been delicious. The blackcurrants, our first harvest off the plant we got about a year ago, are incredibly tart when eaten straight from the bush, so need plenty of sugar adding to any recipe they are being used in. I have a plan for the box we have in kitchen, a combination of cordial (move over Ribena!) and some blackcurrant vodka, which will need three months maturing and so will be in good time for Christmas gifts.
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We would have had more strawberries, and gigantic ones at that, had it not been for some local pest problems. The plants we put in during winter have been growing nicely, with large, upright fruit. They started ripening in the last couple of weeks and we had been looking forward to harvesting them once ready. However, eagle eyed Bob noticed that suddenly there looked to be a lot less fruit on the plants. We’ve come to the conclusion that it is either wood pigeons, squirrels or a rat. Whatever is responsible, it is pretty voracious and has left us with few fruit on the plants in the bed. It is a bit disappointing as it has never been an issue in previous years, but I suppose the wildlife now knows after three years on 97 that it provides a consistent supply of treats!
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Another casualty of the wood pigeons has been the kale and the purple sprouting broccoli, again things we have grown for the last two years without any attacks. We only planted them out about a week ago, having reared them to be big and healthy in the greenhouse and they are now almost stripped bare! This necessitated an emergency dash for some canes and netting and Neil spent a good deal of time constructing frames to keep them covered. Hopefully they will be back to normal in a few weeks, although Neil remains pessimistic! I really hope so as kale has certainly been a good crop in the colder months.
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More planting out this weekend, a Crown Prince squash, very precious as it was the only one that germinated out of the four I sowed. The broad beans, three varieties, Streamline, Red Knight and Moonlight, have been strung up the munty frame and look quite healthy but we have decided we must be a couple of weeks behind some other plot holders who already have flowers appearing on their beans! The Sugarsnap peas are now twisted round the base of a cane structure, these are the second attempt at these this year, as the first ones that I sowed directly into the ground pre wedding were very poor at germinating. Courgettes, Jemmer, Zucchini and Tundi, have gone out too.
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With the leek planting, I’m trying an experiment of my own. The Gardener’s World website reckons on planting them out once they are pencil thickness into holes that are 15-20cm deep and then watering them in so a little of the soil falls back in the hole. Some others (Bob included) reckon that all you need to do is dig them in with a trowel and put the soil right back over it. So we have two rows, one of each method, and we’ll report back if it makes any difference! We hope to still be in as much control of things in the next couple of weeks, but we have this weekend off in Glastonbury so who knows!
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by Neil Wilkinson | Sep 5, 2010 | Allotment
I think the allotment fairies came back to help us this week (no not Pat and Nic who came down to help today, although now you mention it…) because we needed a big pile of manure to add to our freshly cleared space on plot 118 where the soil pile was and yesterday I heard loads of it being delivered from the stables next door. Job number one today then was Pilla and I grabbing lots of it which involved several trips with the wheelbarrow and ingenious use of a big rubble bag and two wheeled trolley. We got plenty enough to cover the ground and with the help of Nic and Pat we dug over all the soil, removed lots more weed roots and glass and worked in the manure.
We then decided to cover the ground with green manure, something I’ve been wanting to do for a while and finally persuaded Philippa into doing it. We planted stripes of four varieties so hopefully it shouldn’t just look like a mass of weeds and will add some much needed organic matter back in to the soil in the spring. It should also help break up some of the soil with the plant roots and I think will make the plot look better through the winter as it avoids a sort of brown desert across the plot. Pilla disagrees with me on the last point so expect lots of posts through the winter on how nice I think it looks!
I finished off the fence at the back, although it does still need a gate. We also cleared up a bit around the back of the shed and covered it up with some tarpaulin to stop the weeds from coming back. On Saturday I went to pick up a few more of the 3×2 flags from Wigan. Those things are incredibly heavy to move and taking them out of the car on your own is an absolute killer. I put a couple of them down to extend the path, I now can’t put any more down as I’ve run into where we are currently storing the greenhouse. We suddenly feel like we have done loads on this plot, so we looked through a couple of the old photo’s and we are pretty pleased at our work:
Back on the old plot we harvested quite a bit from the greenhouse including another 57 chillies! We’ve also discovered another handy thing about people coming and helping us out – we’ve managed to give away quite a lot of our courgette supply!
by Neil Wilkinson | Sep 1, 2010 | Allotment
It seems like it has been a very long time since we’ve updated the blog, which is a shame for lots of reasons, we have a whole lot of news and next year we’ll be wondering what on earth we did in August without any reminders!
The first big job was to collect a new (to us anyway, its actually 20+ years old) wooden greenhouse that we bought on eBay. We had to hire a big van and get ourselves over the Pennines with some help (Tom and my Dad-many many many thanks) we managed to dismantle the structure and bring it back to the plot without damaging it. Whilst there I cheekily asked for the flags underneath the greenhouse and managed to take 10 of those for the path. It’s got to be accepted allotment behaviour to ask for free things, and if you don’t ask you don’t get.
In the meantime the sunflowers which were blooming away so brightly a month ago quickly drooped and we rescued the heads to save the seeds for eating. They are currently drying off in the greenhouse, hopefully away from the squirrels that seem to love finding the seeds and eating them. You can’t mind too much when you see little neat piles of the carefully removed husks around the plot!
The harvesting has continued, we’ve been taking lots of everything really. We have been completely over run with courgettes but have managed to find some interesting ways to eat them. Special mention here goes to the courgette bread Pilla made and the hollowed out massive courgette stuffed with chili. Both delicious!
One of the long standing jobs (I think that should read ‘one of the many long standing jobs’) we’ve needed to do was clear the soil pile left over on plot 118. As I mentioned in the last post this was left over from the path excavations by the previous plot holders and we had since covered it with a membrane to try and kill off some of the weeds. It was a pretty big job over about three weekends but I finally managed to get rid of it all, most of it going to other places on the plot where the soil was a bit low. This has cleared a whole patch of land for us to grow on next year (with the caveat it will still have a lot of weed roots and tons of glass we will have to watch out for). As I was doing this Pilla was busy harvesting the onions and turning the chair into a handy drying rack-good job we don’t often have time to sit down!
The allotment fairies have been kind to us lately as it seems as soon as we need something it’s been magically appearing. Right after finishing the soil pile and so being able to re-use the membrane, the site got a big delivery of wood chippings. This meant we could lay the membrane over the back right corner of the plot and lay the chippings over the top. Pilla got to work in her week off (with help from Bob, thanks Bob!) and managed to move a load of chippings onto the plot ready to be put into position. We managed to move all the chippings into position this week (with help from Nic, thanks Nic!) at the same time re-fitting the fence at the back and weeding across the back path. The whole back of the plot needs a lot of attention as we’ve used it as a bit of a dumping ground whilst it’s not been in use so it’s good to finally making a start clearing it up.
Just as that job was finishing up and my thoughts were turning on how to get more flags for the path and greenhouse base, Bob shouted me over as we’d just got a big delivery. I managed to snaffle 12 3 x 2 flags, along with the few more I’ve got off eBay we easily have enough for the path now. More good timing! Pilla planted some leeks we got fromDenise on the new plot and some lettuces off Bob on the old plot, two more wintry crops that should give us something to eat in the slow months to come.
It was the annual summer show this weekend and with it the allotment veg prizes. Last year we were very happy to win a single first prize but were not as confident this year, so we were very pleased when the tent doors were opened and the prizes announced. We won first prize for our garlic (that’s two years running!) and also for our shallots along with a few third prizes for french beans, beetroot, a jalapeno in the open class and a single flower. We were really pleased for Bob who managed to scoop first, second and third prize for his tomatoes which included the cup for the best in show. Continuing our lucky streak, Pilla won a prize in the raffle which turned out to be a goody box of allotment things. The fairies at work I think 🙂
by Neil Wilkinson | Aug 2, 2009 | Allotment
Despite the nice weather the allotment was pretty quiet and those two factors brought a constant companion to us today. The table we rescued from the bins is proving to be a bit of a sun trap – and at our allotment where there is sun, a place to lie and a few cat treats you will probably find Tammy. She’s a soppy little thing.
Tammy wasn’t the only creature on the plot today, we saw plenty of bees on our dahlias, a few ladybirds and about a million snails climbing up the bean frame. We are not supposed to like snails at the alloment and the bigger ones regularly get launched over the fench into the rough ground at the side of our plot, but when they look like this little fella, it’s sort of hard not to.
Again we didn’t have that much to do today. We fed the plants in the greenhouse, did some weeding and then harvested some more produce. Today we have taken home runner beans, tomatoes, courgettes (which Pilla is currently cooking up into a courgette casserole) salad leaves, mint, potatoes, cucumbers and sugar snap peas.
The beetroot is almost ready and our chillis are finally growing. I put the pictures of these together because I was talking to Ralph on Saturday, and not only did he give me a big bag full of tomatoes (thanks Ralph!), but he talked about a chilli and beetroot pickle he made last year. Pickles, beetroot and chillis – surely you can’t go wrong with that combination! We are going to have to make that this year.
Back in the greenhouse we got out first full truss of tomatoes – I think the variety is ‘Gardeners Delight’. The aubergines are growing at a fair pace and the sweet peppers have almost exploded. We have four plants and there must be 10-15 peppers on each.
Thought I’d also share the success of the growing frame (it’s known as a munty frame – I got the design from a web forum) as it is now producing tons of very straight runner beans and they are easy to pick too because they all hang down beneath the frame. Brilliant. The garlic we picked last week has dried out nicely in the greenhouse, and I think we can start digging up the rest of the garlic next week.
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