by Neil Wilkinson | Nov 15, 2009 | Allotment
It’s been a little while since we updated the site – mostly because it’s been a little while since we could spend any time at the allotment as we have been busy with stag do’s, trail runs and allotment treasurer admin work for the last few weekends. We had another couple of hours of work to do this morning signing people up for the year but we then managed to spend a few hours tidying up the plot.
Pilla cleared up the last of the plants in the greenhouse, the only thing left in there now is a solitary fuschia plant although it is trying it’s best to look colourful. I tackled the beds at the end of the plot, removing the sprouting broccoli (bolted before we could eat it) and the red cabbage (ravaged by slugs – we did manage to take a couple of tiny heads today though).
We also removed the runner beans, they have been consisently producing tons of beans since June but there is a limit to how many you can eat or store in the freezer (Shhh… especially as one of us doesn’t really like them), so we decided to chop them down today. Also on the job list was adding last years leaf mould to the compost heap and adding this years leaves the leaf compost maker.
The last job was very exciting, i’m not going to say any more today but we’ll have some picutres and news soon.
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 | Apr 19, 2009 | Allotment
Sorry for the lack of photo’s in this post, someone* forgot the camera today. Well it feels like it has been quite a weekend – we are tired enough to suggest that we have got a lot done, but our plot it doesn’t particularly look like we have got anything done. Why? Well, we had a community job to do on Saturday – a job which we volunteered for last weekend then promptly forgot about until we were half way round Sainsburys on Saturday morning – helping clear out an unusable plot for some allotment chickens. We have put our names down to look after them with a few other people. Having chickens is something we have pined after for a while but it was never going to happen whilst we don’t have a garden. The allotment rule book says you can have chickens and one plot holder has a couple of geese, but looking after them on your own requires a dedication to visiting the plot that we probably couldn’t commit to. However, sharing this with a few others seems to make perfect sense. Plus, what were we going to do with 6 eggs a day anyway?
So we spent Saturday afternoon in the sun with quite a few other plot holders (and a few beers) and made some great progress clearing the plot. It really is quite amazing how much you can do when everyone gets involved, by the end of the day we’d even laid a lawn and dug out a pond. This was good – especially so given that we weren’t dressed for the allotment (it’s pretty hard digging a pond when you are wearing pumps for example). I must also thank Pilla for having the foresight to put some suncream in the shed – if anyone can get burnt in Manchester in April it’s me. We then realised we had stayed a bit longer than we meant to and had to rush off home before going to a comedy gig in Warrington.
We only managed to get to the plot after 12noon today and we had to leave before 4pm to get home for the football (which I wish I hadn’t bothered about now!). We had quite a lot to do and actually could have stayed and done a lot more. First up, some of our seedlings needed potting on. We don’t really have many appropriately sized pots so we had to visit the store. 50 bigger pots, 5 grow bags and 15 eight foot canes later we were all done (this is not the last of of our grow bag or cane needs either, more to follow). Before we started on the seedlings we had our onions to plant out. Spacings are bothering us right now – the packets are pretty vague (15-30cm between rows? That’s quite a big difference!) and you can plant tighter together in raised beds, so how close should they be? Well, we don’t know so we just guessed a bit and we’ll see what happens. If the onions don’t grow so big we’ll just tell everyone they were shallots! Planting always seems to take a surprising amount of time for us, once you have hoed the soil for lumps , weeded it, discussed spacings, found something to make a hole and finally planted, you don’t get change from a hour.
We then moved our broad beans into the cold frame to harden off (no giggling in the back there) and set about potting on. I guess we both thought that would be a pretty easy job – pop the seedlings out, into a new pot, done. Well it didn’t really work like that for us, we both seemed to think we made a right mess of it and it took ages! We’ll see what happens with the cabbage, sweetpeas and sprouting broccoli we did.
Speaking of sweetpeas, we need to figure out what we are going to grow them up (we actually need several things because we have about a million of them). I’ve become slightly obsessed this week about this and the support for some of the beans. I’m going to have a go at bending some canes over between the two rows of beds to create some arches – they are not long enough to do this without some sort of prop at head height so I had a test with a couple of canes and I think it will work pretty well. I’ll also thread cane between the vertical pieces to form a kind of cane trellis. We’ll just do the one bed for now maybe (I have designs on creating an arch for the front of the plot too) if it works it’ll give us quite a lot of extra growing space as we should be able to hang baskets from the top – although this really depends on my cane bending and knot tying skills.
* It was me.
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.
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