by Neil Wilkinson | Feb 26, 2012 | Allotment
Well, it’s been a quiet winter on the allotment. We’ve not had a huge amount of time to get down there and the weather has not been kind when we did have time. Just lately we have been able to get a few hours down there and have managed to start getting the plot ready for the year.
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Last week Pilla planted the garlic, this should ideally have been a couple of weeks earlier – it is said to thrive on a cold snap and supposedly relies on a frost to split the cloves properly but our previous attempt at planting found the ground still frozen! We might have missed the cold snap so it’s fingers crossed this year for it. It did give her a chance to use a rather fancy measuring stick we made last year. Bit of old pallet, glossed white and then drawn on with a Sharpie and it’s made a good planting guide for those allotmenters who are challenged when it comes to estimating distances!
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We dug up the old leeks today, the winter had made a bit of a mess of them, so they have gone to bulk out our compost. I had a bit of a tidy of the plots today; you tend to accumulate quite a bit of junk at an allotment when you take one over, from old plastic containers, to rotten wood, to all the bits of glass and rubble you find in the soil – it all adds up. One car full to the brim of the stuff and it’s now all gone and the plots look much better for it. I’ve also picked up quite a lot of 2×3 flags, my plan is to finish the path round the back of the shed and put the bench we have on a little patio area which should stop the weeds from picking through. These flags have been a pain – the plot looks loads better for having a proper path, but they are heavy and you need to shift them quite a long way from the car park to our plot.
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Pilla dug over one side of the big plot today whilst I was loading the car. We added about a tonne and half of compost to the plot in October and a casting of chicken mannure pellets last week and the soil is looking pretty good. Hopefully next week we’ll dig over the other side and this plot will be good to go for the season.
We remembered to bring the seeds back from the shed today along with some compost so we are going to have a look at what needs planting today in the heated propagator. I can’t remember from last year when we started, but we must be close to planting some chillis (and we have remembered we still have a load of chilli seeds from Shelley to plant this year – last year they got forgotten about in the fridge until after we got back from the wedding!).
by Philippa | Aug 1, 2011 | Allotment
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…at least not until the woodstain has dried! After a flurry of visitors last weekend, we realised that having our guests sitting on upturned buckets and bits of slate balanced on things was not very hospitable! Neil made a cheeky request to his dad that we could do with a picnic table. Little did we expect that less than a week later he would be telephoning to say he had made one and would drop it off this weekend! It is an absolute triumph and so we wanted to give it a couple of coats of preservative while the weather was dry to make sure that it lasts for years and years. Thanks Geoff!
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The weekend was a strange mix of larger projects and little bits and pieces that needed doing. Neil’s main project, again taking advantage of the warm weather, was to start recycling all of the bricks that have been collected on the plot during various clean up jobs into a barbeque. Armed with a plan and a spirit level he set to work. Rustic was the term I think he applied after a few courses of bricks were down! He worked long and hard on Sunday and it is almost finished. We will hopefully be able to christen it before the summer is out!
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I did a fair few barrow runs of wood chippings. It seems like feast or famine with our deliveries of chippings, so it is always tempting to get as many barrows as you can while they are around as you never know when the next lot is coming! I put an extra layer over the border between plot 97 and Sharon’s plot as whilst it wasn’t too long ago that we did the first layer those chippings contained quite a bit of green matter which has since rotted down. I also added some to the back of plot 118 as it is useful for keeping on top of the weeds that are determined to poke their way through the membrane there.
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The Solent Wight garlic and both varieties of shallot were ready for harvesting. Both are good indicators of when they are ready to pull up as the stems start to yellow and collapse down onto the beds. After harvesting, I gave the soil a good dig over and incorporated some chicken manure to start adding back some nutrients. The shallots have done particularly well, although as we have previously noticed the red Pikant variety is much smaller and less reliable than the white Topper. We strung them in bunches using garden string to hang them in the greenhouse for them to fully dry out and develop their brown papery skins. We are hoping that there are some prize winners amongst them so we can go for the hat trick at the summer show!
I also pulled up most of our lettuces as they had mostly gone to seed in the hot weather over the last couple of weeks. I need to get planting some more salad leaves next week as we have ended up with a gap in the planting plan, partly explained by a batch of Lollo Rosso just not germinating when I sowed a couple of rows a few weeks back. Think the bed might have been too shaded by the raspberry canes and the trees, so will try them elsewhere, hopefully it’s not the seeds that have passed their best.
We took a varied basket of goodies home with us this weekend – peas, broad beans, a green cabbage, calabrese broccoli, the first of the courgettes, tomatoes and chillies and a really good first harvest from the plum tree. Also, two lovely bunches of flowers, sweetpeas and dahlias, which are so fragrant and colourful. Am sure the basket will be even more full next weekend!
by Neil Wilkinson | Apr 16, 2011 | Allotment
We’ve been slack taking the camera to the allotment lately – hence the lack of updates really. However i’ve just got a nice shiny new one from Pilla, so I went to take some picture mid-week (I had to water too, that season has come around quickly). I’m going to change how I upload pictures too – i used to have them really small for storage reasons on my server, but i’m going to try and use Flickr for them which should allow much bigger images 🙂
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So, what’s new? Well whilst Pilla was busy working this week I managed to plant our early potatoes. I’m planning on doing the rest this week, but it’s pretty hard work digging them in (last year we used Bob’s technique of just using a bulb planter, which is rapid, but our soil is quite compacted and planting them by digging a trench and putting the soil back really breaks it up) . The potatoes are going in the land where the soil pile was, so this is really brand new growing space for us.
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The garlic we planting is shooting up and we have quite a bit growing in the greenhouse, although the squash seeds don’t seem to be doing much yet. The plots are both looking fairly decent now – the cherry tree is in blossom and quite a few of the flowers we planted are starting to bloom.
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We also have our first strawberry flower of the year and the figs are slowly starting to plump up!
I was just looking through the pictures of the new plot when we got it, we’re very proud of how much we’ve done in the last year or so. Since we put the greenhouse up the plot certainly looks ‘done’ (I do need to find some glass to finish it off…)
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by Neil Wilkinson | Mar 16, 2011 | Allotment
Well, that was a pretty healthy break from blog writing wasn’t it? In our defence we’ve been pretty busy with wedding things as well December was a write off due to the weather. Well almost a write off… we got our new shed in December and decided to put it up there and then with some help from Bob. Doesn’t sound much I suppose, putting up a shed, well the temperature didn’t get above -6 C and there was a good 4-5″ of snow. Still, at least the sun was out!
We haven’t done that much else over the winter really. The greenhouse we bought is still sat at the back of the plot, but we did put in a new apple tree at he back of the new plot. That makes three fruit trees in this part which I’m pretty sure equals an fruit orchard.
Things have started up again lately (well as much as they can when you have a wedding to plan). We’ve dug over quite a lot of the new plot, it’s quite nice how easy it is to dig after having things grown in it this year. The jury is still out on the effectiveness of the green manure but the roots do seem to have broken up the soil a bit..
Elsewhere we have started planting the new crops for the year – the garlic and shallots are in and Pilla started sowing some flowers in the greenhouse this weekend whilst I was away.
Roll on the summer!
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 🙂
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