by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 21, 2010 | Allotment
Great day at the allotment today. The sun was out, there were lots of people, and thanks to Eddie coming down we got absolutely tons done. The plan was to move the two trees from plot 97 onto 118 and put up the posts to form the back fence whilst Pilla got on with sowing the years first seeds. We’ now have four types of sweet pea, three types of tomato (tigerella, marmande, vanessa), cauliflower, oregano, broad-beans and scabious all sown in the greenhouse. That reminds me, I need to increase our bench space in the greenhouse soon.
Soon enough the trees were moved (we should have done this a week or two ago as the trees have actually started growing again) and we had the four concrete fence posts in place. We used a dry cement mix the hold these in place, I’m not sure it is as strong as wet mix but it should be fine for an allotment fence. We then got to work sorting out the front fence, this was a bonus job – I had most of the parts but didn’t think we’d get it done today. I borrowed a couple of pieces of wood from Bob, and It’s still not quite done, but we have the rails attached to posts and a working gate – something this plot hasn’t had for a while. The nice looking sign we inherited is proudly in position on the gate.
Elsewhere, Pilla managed to dig over a huge section of the big plot and plant a couple of currant bushes that Debs kindly gave us. The plots are slowly coming back to life, some of the garlic and shallots are beginning to grow, and the raspberries have leaves growing again.
Bring on the summer!
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 19, 2010 | Allotment
I’ve been meaning to get this post done all week, but just had one of those weeks. We couldn’t really spend any time at the allotment for a few reasons, one of them being a huge pile of work for Pilla, so it was just me this week. The only jobs I could do/had to do were planting the new raspberry canes and blackcurrant bush. We both love raspberries and the ones we got from the allotment last year were so tasty we’ve decided to double up this year and get some more canes. We’ve gone for a variety that fruit off this years canes (the other ones we have grow on last year’s wood, so you have to chop down this years growth, and separate the new stuff. It’s not a massive pain, but it is more work). The new variety you just chop all the canes down at the end of the year and they all grow back the following spring. This should hopefully mean we get early fruit from one set and late fruit from another – in theory we could have fruit from May until November.
The blackcurrant bush is looking a little sorry for itself – I’m not sure if there was a problem with the delivery but the one we got looked like it had been in the post a while. I’m not hugely convinced it is going to thrive. Elsewhere, I was desperately looking for signs of growth (I know there will be more this week because I had a sneaky mid-week-post-work visit) and found a couple. No signs of growth from the garlic or shallots disappointingly.
I’ve been looking at the pictures from last year and I think we must be at least three weeks behind spring last year.
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!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 19, 2009 | Allotment
Exciting times at the allotment this week – not only did we harvest almost more crops than we could carry, but Pilla got to use her new trug:
As you can see it’s pretty full up. I have to admit that the trug is quite useful – and it looks the part when Pilla is carrying it, I’m just not sure I can pull off the look! The full list of it’s content is:
- Sugar snap peas
- 3 yellow courgettes
- Runner beans
- Dwarf French beans
- Broad beans
- 3 types of lettuce
- 2 cucumbers
- A handful of carrots
- Thyme
- Raspberries
Sunday was exciting for different reasons – there was a lesson from Bob and Walter on how to prepare vegetables for the annual show. The first weekend we spent at the allotments was at the annual show last year (you can see that here) – and we did wonder if we might have produce to show this year. We probably will, but won’t be challenging for a prize (we had a sneaky peak at Debbie’s onions and shallots and they must be about three times the size of ours) and unfortunately Pilla’s appeals for a category of our own for wonky vegetables was rejected!
After the show meeting we braved the rain to rattle through our list of jobs. I added a few more strawberry runners to the first bin I cut holes from last week. We have two of these to fill and thankfully our strawberry plants are going crazy producing runners for us to use. Using these bins will give us an extra half bed for other things next year and we should have lots more strawberries than this year. Pilla was busy digging up our bed of shallots – they had got a bit of a pounding in the heavy rain this week and didn’t look likely to recover and their leaves had been yellowing for a while. We got a pretty good number from them but they are pretty small – they are currently drying out in our spare room.
We also planted out the remaining habenero chillies, melons and some more basil and sowed more of our lettuce varieties. We didn’t manage to take a lot of pictures today – a lot of the time we were hiding out in the greenhouse sheltering from the rain. I did manage to venture to the front border – the dahlia’s that Mike from work gave me are looking great. Back in the greenhouse we are about to have a glut of peppers, we have four plants and each one probably has 10 peppers on it. We also have our first proper chilli growing – finally!
In between rain showers (actually just when the rain got a bit lighter) I planted some green manure in the bed vacated by the shallots and Pilla planted our some more radishes. We were pretty damp at this point so called it day.
by Neil Wilkinson | Jul 5, 2009 | Allotment
The chickens we jointly look after have got their laying groove on – we found three eggs on Saturday and another two today. We had a further six waiting for us in the allotment fridge, as you can see they are a massive assortment of sizes and shapes but all the better for that I think. If we wanted perfect looking food I suppose we could just go to the supermarket – but that would mean missing the excitement of rooting around nest boxes!
Our harvest from the allotment is now notching up a gear – this week we’ve taken home a lot of new potatoes, cucumbers, mint, raspberries, broad beans, sugar snap peas and a few different lettuces. Most of this produce has been eaten straightaway – only some of the broad beans have had to go in the freezer. The lettuce has been really successful and was delicious with tonight’s dinner.
We only spent a few hours at the plot late this afternoon – after the morning run for Pilla’s half-marathon training we had a nap – it’s taken us a week, and we still haven’t recovered from Glastonbury! Luckily the plot is taking care of itself a lot these days so we just had a bit of allotment ‘admin’ to do – weeding, watering, a tiny bit of planting out and adding support to some of the plants. I tied up the sweet peas at the front of the plot whilst Pilla took the weeds out of all the beds. The advantage that we got when we took on this plot was the lack of weeds – it took around an hour but Pilla managed to weed the whole plot.
I also added a bit of support to the tomatoes – some of which are now up to the roof of the greenhouse. After some watering and feeding that was pretty much us done. I think we might have spent longer harvesting our crops and taking pictures than we did doing ‘proper’ jobs – that’s how allotment life should be I think!
Recent Comments