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!
by Neil Wilkinson | Jun 29, 2009 | Allotment
Before I talk about our plot, something happened to someone else’s plot whilst we were away. I’m not going to talk about the details, but I’m shocked and saddened that anyone would cause that amount of pointless damage. We’ll probably never know what happened, but why anyone would do that to someone who spends so much of his time helping others, welcoming newcomers, generally making everyone feel at home there and being an absolute star on the site is beyond me. Idiots.
Right then, after getting thoroughly de-gunked from the Glastonbury trip (and oh how smug we were walking through the ‘grow your own’ section in the Greenpeace field. Been there, doing that) we headed down to our plot. We’d not been there for six days. Nothing could change that much in six days, right?
Err, wrong. Meet our second cucumber (and the third, fourth, fifth, sixth etc etc are almost ready). It is a monster. It almost doesn’t fit in the fridge. I measured it at 34 cm’s long. I feel we are about to be overwhelmed with cucumbers.
The aubergines in the greenhouse have grown a lot. They look about twice as big as they were last week and quite a few have flowers. We have green tomatoes all over the tomato plants now- the variety in the picture is the stripey Tigerella. Bob looked after our greenhouse plants last week, which is perhaps why they are looking so healthy!
Outside, things seem to have moved up a gear too. We have our first courgette flowers – these grow even faster than cucumbers by all accounts. Pilla has been stocking up on recipes in preparation – I think one is a vegatable muffin which sounds interesting! We have quite a few broadbeans ready to pick, a few sugarsnap peas, the french beans too and the runner beans are slowly developing bean pods.
We also have signs of proper little blueberries. The internet dating we arranged with Debbie’s blueberry bushes has obviously gone well. The carrot tubs are looking very bushy and so we dug up a carrot just to see how they were getting on – Pilla is beautifully modelling a variety. I say ‘variety’ because I think I have mixed up the labels – we have three types, this one should have been ‘Purple Haze’ but it is looking distinctly unpurple right now. We had our first plants bolting in the heat however. We dug up a few mizuna plants because they have grown massive flowers (how a tiny lettuce can grow a three foot flower in six days is beyond me) and the rocket has done the same. They both grow quickly so we intend to sow some more seeds at the weekend.
Apart from running around the plot checking what else has grown, we only did a bit of watering, planted out the Jack o’Lantern squash plant and grabbed a few strawberries before rushing off. Thanks to Bob (again) we got enough strawberries for our pudding this evening.
by Philippa | Jun 14, 2009 | Allotment
It was a long time coming but we have had our first allotment tea! In fact, the lamb was the only component that we had not grown ourselves – not worked out how to grow a lamb in a raised bed just yet! We had grilled lamb steaks with new potatoes, rocket and mizuna salad and mint and basil pesto. Dessert was ten sweet and juicy strawberries shared between us. The new potatoes were an unexpected bonus as we didn’t really know that they would be ready to harvest. However, our impatience was getting the better of us and we decided to empty one of the tubs we had planted a spare Charlotte potato in. We knew that this could have meant sacrificing this plant needlessly if the tubers were not ready but we felt that it was worth it and boy was it worth it! I counted 18 potatoes out as Neil rooted around in the soil to check we hadn’t missed any. If our other plants have such good yeilds we will have more potatoes than we know what to do with!
Quite a busy day at the plot today with lots of jobs completed, all in the scorching sunshine. We planted out the sweetcorn and the curly kale that had been hardened off in the coldframe. Both were sturdy enough not to need any support at this stage, but we will keep an eye on them for the next few weeks to make sure they continue to prosper. The sunflowers took their place in the frame for the coming week. Not quite sure where they will be planted out when the time comes as space is rapidly running out!
It was renovation time in the greenhouse due to the flourishing tomato and cucumber plants. They were all getting wider as well as taller so Neil took apart the two sides of staging and spread them out a bit more. He then used cable ties to fasten the vertical support canes to two horizontal canes rested in our greenhouse fixings. This has really strengthened them up which is important for when the plants start to fruit as they cannot hold up the weighty fruit bearing trusses without help. We potted on the aubergines and peppers and all the resulting black tubs in the greenhouse have been connected to the water butt irrigation system. There is very little left in the greenhouse now that is not staying there and what remains we potted on this afternoon – chillies, squash, basil and alpine strawberries.
There are signs of things to come all over the plot now, with more tomato nubbins, fledgling cucumbers, tiny broad bean pods and flowers blossoming. All very exciting and after seeing the tasty meal we made tonight it is enough to make your stomach rumble in anticipation!
by Philippa | Jun 7, 2009 | Allotment
It was all set to be a rather cold, wet and lonely allotment experience today as Neil is ‘working’ in Abu Dhabi. And so while he was on the beach in 40 degree heat I was putting on the layers to brave the wintery conditions that befell Manchester this week. Which meant that it was a lovely surprise to be visited by Pete and Suzy and the boys (‘hello William and Alex!). I think that we have two budding gardeners on our hands as they seemed to know what lots of the plants are and were keen to explore the ones that they hadn’t seen before. Alex seems to have an affinity with the chickens but we drew the line at allowing him into the chicken run despite his requests!
I seemed to have quite a few jobs to do today, I think perhaps Neil engineered this for the week that he is away to keep me busy! So what with the monthly meeting first thing this morning it meant it was a longer day at the plot than expected and ironically when I left at 4.45pm it was the best weather of the day.
Good news in the greenhouse – our first fledgling tomato! No, I am not hallucinating, look closer and you will see a little green nubbin of a tomato. Ahh, so proud. Most of the other plants have yellow flowers on, so I gave them all some tomato food. We will have to keep feeding them about once a week from now on.
Our coldframe was stuffed to the brim so it was time to plant out the courgettes. We have both green (Zucchini) and yellow (F1 Jemmer). Courgette plants are notorious for producing a huge amount, the more you pick the more they grow, so I only planted out two of each colour and even then it might be a bit of a squeeze once they start getting bushy. A handy tip from our current issue of Grow Your Own magazine is to sink the top half of a plastic juice bottle upside down into the soil near the base of the plants so that they can be fed and watered via this direct to their roots as they are quite greedy. No sooner had I planted the courgettes out the coldframe was full again! This week the sweetcorn and curly kale are being hardened off.
The next job was a bit of a rescue attempt. Neil had planted out the peas and the dwarf beans in the last fortnight and they were quite ‘leggy’. Neil ran some twine round the peas to encourage them to twist around but had run out of time to do the same with the beans. They seemed like they were perking up a bit last week but in the meantime there has been almost torrential rain for a couple of days so when I arrived on site today they were almost horizontal on the soil! I managed to tease the peas a bit taller on the string but they were actually winding round quite well. I also planted a few extra peas along the line as they can be planted quite tightly. I then ran some string around the beans and threaded them through and they look much better already. In fact one of the plants has its first flower so maybe in the next few weeks they will all be blooming!
Lastly, I planted out some red and green lettuce (lollo rosso and lollo biondi) from the greenhouse and the gem lettuces that Bob kindly gave us a few weeks ago. Fingers crossed they don’t look too tempting a treat for any birds/slugs/mice! Next week will involve more planting out of things from the coldframe and maybe some potting on in the greenhouse but it really does feel like we are on the home straight and the greenhouse is looking positively empty in comparison with the last few months. All we need now are things to eat!
by Neil Wilkinson | May 10, 2009 | Allotment
We have spent a lot of time at the allotment this weekend, which has been nice and despite thinking that we didn’t have too many jobs to do we haven’t really stopped! Yesterday, we had to do a lot of weeding. This week has brought a snowstorm effect of ‘dandelion clocks’ blowing all over the whole site and everywhere they land they seem to germinate in a matter of days. Being at the end of the row of plots means that we seem to have more than our fair share! There is absolutely no prospect of weeding them all out but we have turned over the areas of unplanted soil to stop them in their tracks. But weeds are not the only things that have been growing as our plants are doing quite well. We have some berries on our redcurrant bushes (although admittedly they are more like greencurrants at the minute!) and the radishes continue to thrive. If you look close enough at the photo of the radishes you can see the sprouted dandelions, the little blighters! Our potatoes continue to grow furiously and to protect against any cold snaps and to give them as much growing depth as possible we piled soil around the leaves. This will be an ongoing job as they get taller or until we run out of soil to pack them in!
The rest of yesterday was taken up with feeding and cleaning out the chickens (cue Neil climbing into the chicken coop to get at the hard to reach spots!) and also helping Simon with some digging. We hope that it is good allotment karma to help out others if we don’t have that much to do on our own plot and three people digging certainly makes more progress than one. It was a lovely evening which meant that we only really noticed the time once our stomachs started to rumble at half past five!
Today was another early start due to the AGM. This passed without too much political unrest but was noteworthy for ourselves as a new Treasurer was needed. So I stepped up and won by a landslide (although I was without an opponent!). We had to have a lot of things explained to us by Susan, the retiring Treasurer and I am sure that there will be a lot more that we have to learn on the job but today is officially day one in office!
Following the meeting and a healthy amount of gossip we got down to some actual work. Neil has been researching various methods of growing climbing beans on the internet and happened upon the Munty frame. It has a short and a taller side, with the short side facing North, and pieces of bamboo connecting the two. Vertical pieces of string run from the base of the short side and then across the slanted top which the beans can be trained up. This makes the beans hang down from the plants so that they have room to grow and are easier to harvest and has the advantage of leaving the bed underneath free for other produce. Neil used spare wood from Site 1, bamboo canes and twine and it kept him busy for most of the afternoon. We will probably be putting the beans out towards the end of May.
I spent the day planting, both outside and in the greenhouse. Inside I planted melons, pumpkins/squashes and a mixture of lettuce. Outside I planted pak choi, red and green lettuce and some oriental salad, leaving some stripy soil so we know where they are! Ignore the rather pathetic looking mizuna in the photo below, it was only planted out yesterday and is still acclimatising-or at least that is what I am telling myself!
Another late finish today, we only left at 6pm but this was partly due to having to wrestle with some netting to go over the purple sprouting broccoli we put out yesterday. We are told the woodpidgeons are partial to such plants and we didn’t want to lose any during the week. We will have to consider a better way of netting them before next weekend but we were simply too impatient for our dinner to stay any longer!
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