by Neil Wilkinson | Jan 24, 2010 | Allotment
Well it’s been a while. What with the pre-christmas snow, christmas, being poorly before new years eve, the holiday (and proposal!) and the big freeze in January we haven’t been able to do anything for what seems like months. We popped down today with Leona but didn’t really get into any heavy work, apart from checking a few parsnips.
The allotment seems to have survived the cold pretty well, there have been a few burst pipes around the site but even they provided some pretty ice sculptures! Even the chickens have coped pretty well thanks to some left over straw from the christmas show. I felt most sorry for the rhubarb – it had launched back into life following the warm autumn, obviously thinking it was spring, before being clobbered by 6 inches of snow. It has now definitely gone back into it’s proper winter mode.
Today we realised we still have quite a lot to get done before the spring comes around and we are probably not able to spend much time there for the next two weeks. We need to build a new fence on both the old and new plots, sort the old shed out, sort the raspberry beds out and generally get everything ready for the madness of April. Still, there are hints that spring is not that far away – today we noticed our first growth of the year along the front border, we think it’s some of the snow drops we planted in september poking through.
We also heard some sad news from Bob – Tammy, our favourite little friendly allotment cat who had been taken in by Vicky after going blind, died last week – she fell asleep on a pillow and never woke up. Bless.
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 | Mar 30, 2009 | Allotment
I have to be careful writing this post. Sunday was a lovely day down on the plot – bright sunshine, warm, good banter, cold beer – really the sort of afternoons specifically designed for being on the allotment. Unfortunately, Pilla didn’t get to enjoy any of it as she spent about 12 hours stuck inside working. So I’m going to try and downplay how nice it was…
I got there before lunch and had a couple of good jobs to get on with. The big one to tick off the list was to create some new little flower beds around the far corner of the plot and up near the apple tree. The far corner of the plot is an odd little spot, we had thought about putting a pond there (and still might put a small one in at some point in the future) but because it’s open to the space outside the site we get a bit of litter blown in and it had become a bit messy. We want to attract some wildlife too and it really wasn’t going to in the state it was in. We have a few old floorboards behind the shed, they have been on the plot since we took it over – the longer pieces got transformed into the fence but we still have some left. It took me a while – lots of cups of tea and thinking time was required. There was also a lot to see today – something must have been in the water in Abbey Hey recently because there has been a fence building spree on Site 3 – so I had to go have a nosey. As much as I like my pallet fence gate, I am definitely a bit jealous of Debbie’s new home made gate. It is faaancy! So here are our new beds, hopefully I’m going to add a few logs to the log pile to make it a bit more wild.
The beds also took a while because Chris brought me out a cold beer when I’d almost finished. This is exactly what you need when you’ve been building things in the allotment all day. He’s also given me a latch for the cold frame so we can prop it open properly. Legend :).
After they were done I had a few smaller jobs to do. We’d been to the plot on Saturday afternoon to plant some horseradish roots (in bins – they are virulent growers) which needed to be distributed around the plot. I then cleaned out the Pearson bins and filled up the manure bay. It’s taken a good amount of manure to get it two thirds full – this will hopefully provide us with enough rotted manure in the autumn for the whole plot.
I also planted some more seedlings. Some of the seedlings have finally appeared – maybe they heard me moaning about them last week. I forgot to take any pictures so you’ll just have to take my word for it. So far there seems to be little difference between peat and no-peat but it’s early days (thanks for the GW info mum!).
Our shallots have really come on leaps and bounds and the rhubarb is growing at a quite frankly frightening pace. It has become a monster. It’s looking pretty tasty already!
Tammy was spotted throughout the day enjoying the warmth of our greenhouse and the nice bed that Pilla created in the dark depths of winter. She alternated between sleeping in her bed and stretching out across the pallet we still have in there. She was incredibly warm!
We have a busy weekend next weekend with Paris and all – however we have both booked Monday off work which should be for me to recover, but I’m sure I can do that at the allotment, right?
by Philippa | Mar 16, 2009 | Allotment
At one stage this afternoon the plot looked like a murder scene out of Cluedo (“Who did it?”, “Miss Philippa, at the allotment, with the water butt.”) but fear not Neil is alive and well and as a result of his hilarious endeavours we have tried and tested taps on both water butts. We realised these were pretty necessary as our watering can does not fit into either water butt, something we only noticed once they were all hooked up and two thirds full! So Neil had to do some siphoning of water back and forth before he could fit the taps!
I was getting on with some greenhouse planting as it suddenly seems like time is getting away from us. We received our seed order mid week which was ridiculously exciting. We had to go through the packets to see what needs to be started in the next couple of weeks. This is pretty difficult to decide as whilst the packets give instructions of when to sow you have to account for the regional weather variations which can affect this timetable. So there are some seeds which say they can be planted in March which we are delaying until April to ensure that they are not adversely affected by any cold spells that may be on the way before then. We have a mixture of collected pots, seed trays bought from the allotment store and paper pots made from my paper potter birthday present! The latter are an excellent way of planting out for minimal cost and environmental impact. We are starting a production line at home to churn out enough of these for our seeds. We will end up looking like we have spent the afternoon down at the local police station with the amount of newspaper print that ends up on our fingers! Today I managed to plant broad beans, parsley, red cabbage, purple sprouting broccoli and all of our sweetpeas.
Neil carried on the DIY theme and built (and then partially filled) a manure bay next to our compost bin. This is so we can keep a store of manure on site to rot down as the manure deliveries are always of fresh manure that doesn’t hang around for long before being used by somebody.
Some further generous gestures to report. Firstly some chives, mint and lemon mint from one of Neil’s colleagues Mike. He has been an avid listener of Neil’s allotment tales and brought us some cuttings on a recent business trip. We cut the bottom off a few of the black bins and sunk them into the soil as we are told that both the mint and lemon mint are voracious growers and are likely to spread if left to grow freely. We then received two garden chairs from a man a few plots down who incidentally has the neatest plot I have ever seen and of which I am extremely envious. Unfortunately, when we came to eat our lunch the sun was briefly behind some clouds so we didn’t get to use them today, but I bet it won’t be long before we do.
Finally, some exciting updates on what is growing. We really noticed a difference since last week, particularly with the rhubarb which is so much taller, but also the strawberries which are putting out some new leaves and the garlic I planted only three weeks ago has now sprouted. We are taking bets on what will be the first produce to be harvested. I think the rhubarb is a clear winner at this stage while Neil is putting his money on lettuce, which has yet to be planted but grows quickly.
by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 8, 2009 | Allotment
Last week we ticked a few major jobs off our list, so this week we were faced with just a few admin tasks – things we’ve had to do for ages but have had much more interesting things to get on with.
I started the day off by making a waterproof lid for the compost bin – I’m not 100% sure this is necessary for a compost bin but we had a spare pallet and some plastic sheeting so I put one together.
It took me a while as I had to keep running in the greenhouse for some protection from the rain. Whilst I was doing this Pilla was cleaning out the greenhouse. The glass is still very sparkly from the cleaning job Pilla had done on it over Christmas but the frame had all sorts of mud, grass and bugs in it. With the aid of an Ikea kitchen scrubber and a spoon(!) it has cleaned up nicely. It must be a sign of far too much mud in the frame when you find it housing a worm!
It’s days like this you realise the importance of a greenhouse – it’s great for hiding from the weather in. We had lots of rain in between bouts of sunshine and at one point a thunderstorm came our way… complete with a LOT of hail stones.
Still, all the rain had one advantage – it filled one of our water butts enough to give it a good clean. This was a former bin from Oaklands Drive – it still has a way to go to be a ‘proper’ water butt – I want to raise it up a foot and add a tap on the bottom so we can fill a watering can underneath. I did add a lid and put a hole in it for the down pipe to go through. In between bouts of rain I cleaned up the far corner of the plot – it was full of some old floor boards, which I have de-nailed and hidden behind the shed along with the carpet. We are not sure what we are going to do with this bit of the plot, it was going to be a pond, but we might utilise it for growing. It currently has a woodpile and the fruit trees.
After that we were pretty much done, so we went on the hunt for some signs of spring. The rhubarb we planted last week seems to be shooting up – you shouldn’t really take any the first year after planting, but at this rate we’ll be overrun with it! The cherry tree & raspberry canes that we are training along the fence seem to have come to life this week too.
Hopefully next week we should get the seeds we have ordered – let the planting begin!
Recent Comments